The Reformatory
by Tananarive Due is set in 1950, Jim Crow Florida. Twelve-year-old Robert
Stephens, Jr. defends his older sister Gloria from the unwanted advance of
white Lyle McCormack. For kicking Lyle, he is sentenced to Gracetown School for
Boys—a brutal place run by the psychopath Fenton Haddock. The brutality of the
Jim Crow South is balanced by the nice people that Robert meets and the haints
(ghosts) that befriend him. A novel about the United States in the 1950s, and
well worth reading.
[Magic Realism] Like The Underground
Railroad by Colson Whitehead, The Reformatory mixes elements of
fantasy with realistic ones. Colson imagines the underground railroad as an
actual subway system from the south to the north. Tananarive personifies Fenton
Haddock’s past and guilt as haints—ghosts of the people murdered by Haddock.
The haints have the power to change the mortal world. They can appear, move,
steal, and even start fires.
The nice people included: David Loehmann
(white) from Children’s Services in Tallahassee (A Jewish man from NYC); Miss
Anne Powell (white), daughter of the late Councilman Powell; Lottie Mae
Powell (black), Robert’s godmother; Mrs. Hamilton (black), music
teacher at the Reformatory, John Dorsey, NAACP lawyer (“modeled loosely
after my father”);
The Reformatory aka Gracetown School for Boys
is a juvenile detention home inspired by the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School
for Boys in Marianna, Fla.
Historical person (Wikipedia): Harry Tyson
Moore (November 16, 1905 – December 25, 1951) was an
African-American educator, a pioneer leader of the civil rights movement,
founder of the first branch of the NAACP in Brevard County, Florida, and
president of the state chapter of the NAACP.
Historical person (Wikipedia): Ruby McCollum, born Ruby Jackson (August
31, 1909 – May 23, 1992), was a wealthy married African-American woman in Live
Oak, Florida, who is known for being arrested and convicted in 1952 for killing
Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a prominent white doctor and state senator–elect. She
testified as to their sexual relationship and his paternity of her child. The
judge prohibited her from recounting her allegations of abuse by Adams. She was
sentenced to death for his murder by an all-white jury. The sensational case
was covered widely in the United States press (including a press report written
by Zora Neale Hurston, as well as by international
papers). McCollum was subjected to a gag order. Her case was appealed and
overturned by the State Supreme Court.
Historical person (Wikipedia): Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 –
January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She
portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and
published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes
Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote over 50 short stories,
plays, and essays.
Historical person (Wikipedia): Thoroughgood
"Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an
American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme
Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he was
an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial
segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases
he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954
decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal
doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional.
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A
staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly
conservative.
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