The Reformatory: A Novel

The Jim Crow Era, which stretched from 1877 to the 1960s, was a period of institutionalized racism in the United States that manifested through stringent anti-Black legislation and organized domestic terrorism against Black communities in the South. Under the Jim Crow laws, Black Americans were segregated from white Americans in public spaces, upholding the view that they were “separate but equal.” Coined during the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, this phrase became a guiding principle for the legitimization of Jim Crow laws. “Separate but equal,” which implied that Black and white Americans had access to the same legal protections, paved the way for state governments to introduce policies that severely limited Black Americans’ civil liberties.

Throughout the early 20th century, segregation made it impossible for Black and white Americans to interact meaningfully in social and commercial contexts. The all-white demographic of the criminal justice system emboldened white people to beat and even kill Black Americans without fear of consequences. Racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan reached the peak of their popularity, and horrific violence against Black people became widespread. When Black Americans, particularly men, went about their daily lives, they could be accused of crimes without evidence or targeted for violence if a white person thought that they had violated a social code. Black men were falsely accused of crimes such as rape to expedite their incarceration or lynching, with little to no regard for due process.

Young Black Americans were not spared from the everyday violence during the Jim Crow era. The school on which The Reformatory’s titular institution is based is the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, which operated between 1900 and 2011. As a reform school, the Dozier School was designed as a penal institution for juvenile prisoners. The school was known, however, for the violence that its staff inflicted on students who were sentenced to attend the institution. Through segregation, the Dozier School ensured that its white students could undergo exclusive certification programs, while the Black students worked on the farms as planters and pickers. The Dozier School also housed a structure that was popularly called the “White House,” where students were regularly beaten and, in some cases, dismembered. By 2014, researchers had discovered at least 50 remains of former students in the campus cemetery, which is more than twice the number that the school had officially reported.

To write The Reformatory, Due conducted extensive interviews with the Dozier School survivors, allowing her to depict it in her novel with precision and clarity. Structures such as the “White House” are represented through the novel’s invented facilities like the Funhouse. Likewise, the societal rules that governed exchanges between white and Black people in the Jim Crow era are evident in the interactions between Gloria and many of the white characters who populate Gracetown. Finally, the novel features several historical figures who were civil rights activists. In Chapter 16, Gloria meets Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black Florida woman who testified against her white rapist, whom she later killed. In the following chapter, Gloria meets Harry T. Moore, the founder and president of the Florida chapter of the NAACP. These figures help to define the novel’s setting further while also foreshadowing the historical fates that befall them through Gloria’s prescient abilities.