Luminous-Lint - for collectors and connoisseurs of fine photography
HOME  BACK>>> Subscriptions <<< | Testimonials | Login |

HomeContentsVisual indexes > Unidentified photographer

 
  
Standard
  
  
Unidentified photographer 
African American boy in prison, State Training and Agricultural School for Colored Boys Pikeville, Tennessee 
1955 
  
Gelatin silver print 
7 1/8 x 9 ins 
  
La Bonne Vivante 
 
LL/34248 
  
The caption on the back reads:
 
DISCIPLINED
A juvenile prisoner lies on a cot in one of several disciplinary cells in the State Training and Agricultural School for Colored Boys in Pikeville, Tenn. The cells are for boys who get into trouble at schoo. Some institutions have abolished such jail cells. The term "reform" schol has been changed in many places to "training" or "industrial" school. -Associated Press
 
When children get too troublesome, the community tends to thrust them behind remote institutional walls where it can forget their existence for a spell. Interest is reawakened only when some dramatic event usually of a tragic nature propels the institution before the public eye. Take the case of Pikeville, for example. The Tennessee State Agricultural and Training School for Colored Boys at Pikeville was described by Osborne Association investigators in 1940 as "the most desolate and forbidding" institution for delinquents covered in their nation-wide survey. It stands on a mountaintop, seven miles from the nearest highway. The site was chosen because a coal mine is nearby, and ever since the school was established in 1917 the child inmates have mined coal.
 
For years reports made by horrified experts on conditions at Pikeville failed to arouse a response from the local citizenry. Then, in November 1944, the wife and daughter of the Pikeville superintendent white persons were murdered. At last the citizens were aroused. A posse marched on the institution and lynched a sixteen-year-old inmate suspected of the crime. After that they sank back into their accustomed somnolence. In 1945, a committee of citizens led by Bishop E. P. Dandridge inspected the institution and reported to the Governor of Tennessee. Their report stated:
 
The dining-room was cold, with broken windows and doors, gloomy, dirty and bad-smelling. The food was prepared by the boys themselves. The arrangements were unsanitary. There were no tables. The boys sat on long rough benches, and their plates and bowls were placed on horizontal boards fastened on the back of the bench. The boys ate in silence. The dormitories were cold, dirty and disorderly. In one room there were forty-three beds for ninety-three boys. Many beds had broken springs or no springs, and in many cases the mattresses rested on the floor. Each bed had a blanket and a mattress unspeakably filthy. The boys said they slept naked, two or three in a bed, and this was confirmed by the guards. There is no school of any sort at present. There is no vocational training. There is no religious instruction.
 
Many civic organizations in Tennessee, white and Negro, tried without success to get legislative sanction for removing the state training school for colored boys to a more appropriate site. However, the Pikeville reform school still stands on its gloomy mountaintop, virtually inaccessible to visitors, but conveniently close to a coal mine.
 
-Our Neglected Children. By Albert Deutsch 1951Punishments at Boys Colored School (1938) -- Corporal punishment is permitted by law and is the definite policy of the institution. The school principal administers all whippings. He uses a leather strap, 20" long, 1¢" wide, and 1/8" thick, which it was said is applied to the clothed buttocks of the boys. All whippings take place in the school building in the presence of the entire population. From one to ten licks are given, depending on the estimated seriousness of the offense and on the boy's reputation in the institution. The school principal stated that approximately fifteen boys are whipped every month. Boys may also be set back in the date of their release as a form of punishment. Segregation is not resorted to, largely because there is no available space à No records of disciplinary actions are kept. 
 

 
  
 
  
HOME  BACK>>> Subscriptions <<< | Testimonials | Login |
 Facebook LuminousLint 
 Twitter @LuminousLint