All I heard was get up.

Stand in that corner.

When I got up off to bed I seemed like I was so heavy behind.

But I was afraid to reach behind me.

For fear that all I would bring out from behind me were flesh and blood.

I got over a hundred little lick with a strap from the small of my back to the breaks of my knees.

I passed out what woke me up is I started choking on my blood because my mouth was tore to pieces.

The evil that is still in those walls is palpable.

You can feel it.

You can hear it.

You can sense it.

Ramell Ross' film Nickel Boys received two Oscar nominations this year.

The movie is an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

It follows the experiences of two African-American boys at the fictitious Nickel Academy in Marianna, Florida.

The boys experience horrific physical and sexual abuse at the school.

That work of fiction is directly inspired by what happened to real children in Florida's panhandle.

This building dubbed the white house by survivors is the main location where children at the Arthur G. Dozier school for boys were beaten, abused and even killed.

Over 100 children died here at Dozier.

Since 2012, dozens of bodies have been recovered, mostly in unmarked graves.

This is the true story of the White House Boys.

And how the survivors of Dozier fought for years with the state of Florida for reparations and recognition.

Dozier went by several different names in its history.

It was the Florida State Reform School when it first opened in 1900.

A second campus opened five decades later.

By then it was the Florida School for boys.

Children were originally sent there for criminal offenses like theft and murder, but eventually kids were sent there for things like disobeying their parents, skipping school, even being an orphan or ward of the state could land a child that Dozier.

It soon became the largest reform school in the country.

when we got there, I, I felt we were in a place that, was like heaven.

Charles Fudge was ten years old when he and his brother got sent to what was then the Florida School for boys for smoking and skipping school.

we ended up there and I thought, wow, this is going to be great to have a, place to be to where we would be safe and and not be in any trouble.

Uh, that didn't last very long for my thoughts of the place, because on the third day that I was there in 1960, I was taken down to what was called the White House and was given 31 licks when they leather strap, that was just so horrifying to have been beaten like that.

Fudge was one of hundreds of boys who were taken to the White House building and administered extreme forms of corporal punishment.

He was one of many who say they were hit with a 20 inch paddle with metal rivets.

When the paddle made contact with the children, it would rip flesh.

when we took our showers, the other boys could see what your bottom looked like and your back, from from the licks of the leather strap.

And that put fear in all of the boys that was in my cottage.

Many boys were also sexually abused by guards in the White House.

In 2024, they spoke out to lawmakers at the Florida Capitol.

Yes.

Look at me.

I've been sexually molested by state employees.

That's hard to say for a man my age.

I'm almost 80, four children, 15 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Yes, it's difficult to talk about, but if I don't talk about it, who will?

The campus, like most public places in the South at the time, were segregated by race.

A road ran through the middle, marking the boundary.

Both sides had their own church, dormitories, dining halls.

That segregation was enforced with violence.

If a white boy spoke to a black boy, that was an automatic go down to the White House for a beating, and that was vice versa.

If the black boys attempted to talk to us, they would get the same beating as we did.

So we we were not allowed to communicate with each other.

The boys were forced to work without pay.

This included harvesting crops, manufacturing bricks, and other dangerous jobs for children.

When he was 11, Richard Huntley cut sugar cane at Dozier In doing so, I accidentally struck my right feet.

My right foot, and severed at the top of my toe.

the state of Florida held us like slaves.

I went to a field.

I worked every day, and I never got paid for it.

But I see my country talking to other countries about making their children work for nothing.

This happened on American soil.

People.

This happened in Florida.

This is a story about children who went into state custody, died and were never given back.

Their families were given answer, the remains weren't given back.

And that's, you know, why this is so important?

for years.

There were the rumors.

Kids disappeared in the night.

Families informed that their child passed away without explanation.

Even less communication and few bodies ever returned home.

At the edge of the campus is an area called Boot Hill.

White and black boys were buried there.

No markers were placed until the 80s.

For decades, it was unclear how many boys died at Dozier until the survivors and families of the dead began speaking up.

In 2009, the then still active Youth Correctional Institution on the former Dozier campus failed a state inspection.

Investigative reporting from the Saint Petersburg Times also shared the stories of survivors and families of those who died at Dozier.

Those factors prompted investigations from the state and federal government, which confirmed the historic and recent allegations of abuse and violence at Dozier.

That was just the start of the process to fully uncover the horrors of the reform school.

In 2012, the state of Florida granted permission for a forensic anthropological survey led by University of South Florida Associate Professor Erin Kimmerle.

Her mission determined how many bodies were buried at Dozier and returned those remains to their families.

We knew that there were crosses there that were put there in the 80s.

So they didn't necessarily correspond to graves, but that was kind of a starting point.

And so so the question was, well, can we figure out how many burials are actually here?

Records were messy and incomplete.

The state estimated about 30 unmarked graves on the campus.

Kimmerle found that many of the reported deaths were suspicious.

even at that time, it was highly contested and debated because the the black children had been abandoned and found days later.

And the state physician said the bodies were piling up.

Through the excavations, Kimberly's team recovered 55 bodies, 24 more than the state estimated in its report.

Her team ran DNA tests to match the children to their living family.

And it's a challenge because they were children, right?

So they don't have direct descendants.

They themselves never had children.

So you're looking for aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, kind of working out laterally.

And the reason we want maternal relatives is because when you have remains that are old or have been degraded, what's called degraded DNA, then the type of DNA that we typically get is called mitochondrial DNA.

And that's passed on through the maternal side of the family.

There was the disproportionate number of black boys who died, who were buried at the school, who didn't have death investigations or death certificates issued.

Of the bodies recovered.

Only eight were positively identified and returned to their relatives.

The rest were reburied in either Tallahassee or Marianna.

On behalf of the Florida House of Representatives.

Again, we stand here in solidarity saying we're sorry and we apologize for the wrongs that happened to you at the Dozier School, as well as the Okeechobee School In 2017, survivors of Dozier received a formal apology from the Florida House and Senate.

From there, they kept going to the legislature for the next eight years, seeking damages.

Each time they spoke with lawmakers and went to committee meetings to tell their story.

And a man stabbed me and my legs with a railroad spike attached to a pole.

Weeks later, they took their kids to Atlanta to a basketball game.

And everybody was planning to run.

And I couldn't run because my leg was busted open, Can you imagine the screams from a five year old being restrained, while getting a monstrous beating from a six foot five, 260 pound man?

If it were your child?

Would you be here?

Yes.

You know you would.

I've been doing this for 16 years.

Let me put that in perspective for you.

If your child had started the first grade, the first day, the amount of time that I've spent coming to Tallahassee, speaking with the governor, working on two committees with the Secretary of State, your child would be starting grad school.

We're asked to talk about this over and over and over.

It don't stop.

I'm 77 years old now that lives with me daily.

I can't help it.

Finally, in 2024, the Florida Legislature unanimously passed a $20 million program for survivors to get damages.

State Senator Darrell Roussin was one of the lawmakers who sponsored the legislation.

He pushed for the funding for about as long as the white House boys had been asking for it.

No amount of money, Madam Chair, is adequate.

But at least the voices that we heard today were not just the voices of those who came here, but they're speaking for the missing.

They're speaking for those that we can't talk to.

But we can pray for.

The application process for the money is still ongoing.

The state expected about 500 survivors to take part in the program.

So far, more than a thousand have applied.

The compensation is is very slim, considering, the abuse that we've endured for.

Well, I'm 77 years old now, and I was 12.

So you can, figure out how many years that I lived with this.

And I still live with it every day.

It's not something that one can ever forget.

The money is as close to justice as any survivor will get.

Due to the passage of time, erasing evidence and the deaths of several potential witnesses, none of the direct perpetrators of the abuse the white House boys experienced were ever charged with a crime.

The white House still stands on the former Dozier School for boys campus, preserved by the state of Florida as a memorial.

Next to it are several statues depicting what the boys experienced.

A bed and paddle like the one that was used to beat them.

A fan that was turned on to help drown out their screams.

Several statues of young boys, black and white, standing lined up, waiting their turn.

People have left toys, flowers and pretty rocks at the memorial.

Several of the buildings of the former campus, like the dormitories and churches, are crumbling around the white House, and other parts of the campus.

Buildings are renovated for government purposes.

Several schools are located just yards away from the white House.

Most of us guys had decided that if we never got a penny, but people found out the abuse that had taken place, that they may never, ever hear of another child being beaten and abused.

Some of them raped.

If if that never happens again in the state of Florida, in the whole United States, then we did something good for little children.