Unreformed: the Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children

Hi listeners! This is Josie Duffy Rice. We wanted to give you some good news and ask once more for your help, if you wouldn’t mind! 

First the good news! I am so honored to tell you that Unreformed has won a few very exciting awards lately. We won an Ambie award for best history podcast of the year, an international women’s podcast award, and we also won TWO Signal Listener’s choice awards because of you and your votes. We are unbelievably grateful for this recognition. The opportunity to tell this story and bring more light to this dark chapter in our American history. 

And now, Unreformed has been nominated for a Webby Award! This is very exciting. It's up for "Best Writing." We really really hope that you'll be willing to vote for us in the Webby People's Voice Award. You can cast your vote before April 18 at "

So, please vote for us and support us by going to this link. Click on PODCAST in the categories and find us in BEST WRITING. A direct link to the category is here. 

The Deadline is April 18th to get your votes in. It has been the honor of a lifetime to be part of this project. Thank you SO much for listening AND voting.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unreformed has been nominated for two Signal Listener's Choice Award. Voting is open through October 5, 2023, you can vote for the show under "Best Host" and "History" in the Limited Series and Specials category. Link to vote is here. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Out of the Shadows is a podcast about America's tangled history of immigration hosted by award-winning New York Times writer Erick Galindo and entrepreneur and best-selling author Patty Rodriguez. Season 2: Dreamers Last season, we tackled Ronald Regan’s 1986 amnesty act, Season 2 will trace the origins of DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a contentious executive order to protect undocumented young people from being deported. Issued by former President Barack Obama in 2012, DACA was meant to be a temporary stop gap on a broken immigration system. Welcome to Season 2 of Out of the Shadows - Dreamers. Season 1: Children of 86 Immigrants and their children have long lived in the shadows of America, their destinies aren't just shaped by where they come from but by their particular place in history. In 1986, the lives of millions of immigrants and their children were changed by one lucky stroke of a pen by an unlikely ally, President Ronald Reagan. This podcast will examine the ripple effects the bill had on first-generation kids of immigrants who are navigating intergenerational mobility and transforming the cultural landscape. This is an untold story of luck, timing, triumph, opportunity, survival, and of course, hope.

Listen here and subscribe to Out of the Shadows on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!

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In the final episode, we look at where Lonnie, Mary, Johnny, Jennie, Johnny Mack, and Denny are fifty years after leaving Mt. Meigs. We also look at how juvenile justice in America has evolved and how other juvenile reform schools that mistreated their students have atoned for their wrongs. And lastly, we get a glimpse into the current state of Mt. Meigs. Has it changed? Or is it the same place it was more than fifty years ago?

If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email [email protected]. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, Josie here! We wanted to share a show that we think you might like. It's called 5-4, and it's about how much the Supreme Court sucks. 5-4 is all about how the Supreme Court DOESN'T provide justice, and we think that will resonate with Unreformed listeners. 

If you like it, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

About 5-4: A podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. It’s a progressive and occasionally profane take on the ideological battles at the heart of the Court’s most important landmark cases and an irreverent tour of all the ways in which the law is shaped by politics. 

Listen each week as hosts Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon dismantle the Justices’ legal reasoning on hot-button issues like affirmative action, gun rights, and campaign finance, and use dark humor to reveal the high court’s biases. 

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Many people who were incarcerated at Mt. Meigs as children ended up spending their entire lives tethered to the criminal legal system. Many were sentenced to life in prison. Many others were sentenced to death. This episode traces the lives of two of those people: Jesse James Andrews and Johnny Mack Young. 

If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email [email protected]. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Denny Abbott enlists the help of lawyer Ira Dement to sue the state of Alabama. What ensues is a years-long battle, multiple lawsuits, personal turmoil, but also...a glimmer of hope for the kids at Mt. Meigs. 

Special thanks to Denny Abbott and Douglas Kalajian for the use of their book, They Had No Voice: My Fight for Alabama's Forgotten Children.

If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email [email protected].

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mary Stephens and four other girls escape Mt. Meigs and are determined to tell someone about what's happened to them. Probation officer Denny Abbott must make a decision. 

If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email [email protected]. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the 1920s, notices started appearing in the local newspapers near Mt. Meigs. They said things like "Six armed negroes escaped Mount Meigs Industrial School” or “Police seeking escape artist in burglary." 

In this episode, we hear about the tradition of running away at Mt. Meigs. Lonnie tells us about his experience running away and the harrowing consequences that led him to spend months on the rock pile. 

If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email [email protected]. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By the 1960s, the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children was an early prototype of the for-profit prison. But it wasn’t designed that way. In this episode, we go back to the early 20th century when a Black woman and student of Booker T. Washington named Cornelia Bowen founded Mt. Meigs. She envisioned a safe haven for Black kids who weren’t being served by the state of Alabama and believed in reform through industrial education. She often was successful, and without her, America might not have had one of its most legendary Black athletes, baseball player Satchel Paige. 

If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email [email protected]. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.