Forensic anthropologists seek clues in 50 unmarked graves on segregated reform school campus in Florida

The University of South Florida anthropologists conducting the investigation this weekend worked for months to identify more unmarked graves and then had to appeal directly to Governor Rick Scott (R) to exhume the bodies they found, after his Secretary of State refused permission for the dig. Head anthropologist Erin Kimmerle told CNN, “These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods.” She is hoping to be able to match the DNA of some of the recovered remains to families who have been waiting for answers, and to determine some of the causes of the deaths of the bodies she finds. “When there’s no knowledge and no information, then people will speculate and rumors will persist or questions remain,” she added.

Christian Wells of the University of South Florida told Al Jazeera, “There is a legal obligation of the State of Florida to return those remains to their families for proper burial. And some have argued there’s also a moral obligation that the state has to do this.”

One person who expects her relative’s remains to be unearthed and finally returned for burial is Tananarive Due, whose great-uncle Robert Stephens was reportedly stabbed by another child at the facility in 1937 but whose remains were never returned to his family. She hopes to clear up the circumstances of his death and bury him in a family plot. Another is Ovell Smith Krell, whose brother Owen Smith ran away from home at 14 and was sent to the facility after being caught with a stolen car. Officials told Smith’s parents that he died of pneumonia after his second escape attempt and was buried on the facility’s grounds, but a fellow inmate told them that Owen was shot by school officials during the attempt and buried to hide it.

Students like Richard Huntley, who was sent to the school in the late fifties, told Al Jazeera that he and his fellow inmate-students were forced to do farm work under dangerous conditions under threats of worse. “This, to me, is a form of slavery,” he said, “because they, damn it, beat you to what they wanted you to be.”

Boys who didn’t comply with orders were sent to “The White House,” which Huntley likened to a “torture chamber.” He said, “If you didn’t know how to pray [before being sent to The White House], you learned pretty fast.”