Gatesville School for Boys, 1946

It is my hope this appears on the Gatesville Reformatory blog. I was there in 1946 at the age of 14 and wrote a little story about my stay. I left out the more gory details since I thought no one would believe everything I witnessed. The rape of some of the kids by guards was something I left out of the telling. What I've read covers much of what I was reluctant to write.

The cottages' names I can't remember. They were segregated by Mexican and white at that time and the black kids were in a completely different facility down the road.

When I arrived I had already been twice incarcerated in Minnesota and thought that was pretty bad. Texas was ten times worse. The real problem was the kids had no education and no connections on the outside to inform about the abuse going on inside. I was one of a very few who had an education beyond the first grade.

I would like to make my story available to the guys who have suffered far worse than I did. The guards were brutal but also very dumb and easy to mislead and outwit and I was good at never putting myself under their spotlight.

Reading this blog (which I more or less just stumbled on) was like a cloud passing and the sun coming out. It makes me know I wasn't dreaming it all.