The boys were sent out into the fields and told they can come back when their sack weighs 100 pounds. They had to pick 100 pounds of cotton every day. The incentive is purely industrial or, you know, agricultural industrial. It's also worth noting that a lot of these kids, just by function of geography, were coming from relatively big cities.
In this News Brief, we talk with Josie Duffy Rice about her new podcast, "Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children,” incarceration as racial disciplining mechanism, and what has––and hasn't––changed in our so-called "juvenile justice system".