In a 1948 Birmingham Post-Herald article, writer Jane Aldridge admitted to being a little confused about the boys’ institution on the outskirts of the city. “It’s far easier to tell what the Alabama Boys’ Industrial School ‘is not’ than to attempt to describe what it really is,” she declared. “It is not, for instance, a reform school. Not if by reform school you mean, as most people do, a sort of ‘junior penitentiary.’ You begin to realize this distinction,” she continued, “as you approach the school and notice that there is no fence around the grounds. No gates to pass through or guards to want to know what your business is . . . Though every boy is there by court order, and a few have been accused of very serious crimes, even grand larceny and murder, you’ll not find an iron bar at a single window.”
What the reporter did find was the complete opposite. “Instead, you see normal happy-looking boys, strolling casually over a lovely campus that would do credit to a fine prep school. They laugh and talk as they walk. Some romp there in the yard with dogs that have taken up at the school and have been adopted as pets by the boys. Others, their chores and lessons completed, play softball.” 1
Founder Elizabeth Johnston undoubtedly would have beamed at such a description. That is exactly what she and her all-female board of directors envisioned when they organized the school some fifty years earlier.
The innovative practice was first mentioned by Mrs. Johnston in her report to the governor in January 1905. The board president was commenting on the new leadership at the institution and the changes they were implementing.
“Mr. and Mrs. Connelley were appointed to succeed Mr. and Mrs. Griffin, coming to the work without previous training and when everything was in a state of unrest and confusion,” she related. “Their success [1904–05] has been wonderful and I feel we owe them our safe passage through some very troubled waters.”
“Among other reforms, they have adopted the ‘Open Door System,’ which seems to have been very successful,” she said of her new team. “The superintendent of a similar institution said ‘he had high walls around his school’ and expressed great surprise that we could hold the boys at all, when they were allowed such liberty.
“Mr. Connelley’s efforts are to make the boy strong enough to resist temptation and to develop his sense of honor,” she said. “One practical result of this plan was that the boys went into the neighboring fields, with no guard except the boy in command of the squad, and picked cotton for which they received one hundred and twenty-five dollars.”2
When David Weakley was hired the following year as the new superintendent, Mrs. Johnston could not have found a more enthusiastic ally. Weakley’s personality, experience, and philosophy were a perfect fit for this enlightened form of correctional administration. In his first report to his new employers, he goes into great detail in discussing his view of the institution.
“There appears to be a prevailing mistaken idea among the public in general as to the nature of the work and the kind of men we produce,” he explained. “There are some who persist in clinging to the antiquated and erroneous belief that the School is a horrid place of detention—a young penal institution with cross-barred windows and ominous frowning walls of detention which are a perpetual reminder to the hard, awful, crime-visaged jailbird that he is a prisoner.
“The Alabama Boy’s Industrial School is not a prison, nor is it a penal institution in any form, where erring boys are confined and cruel punishment unjustly meted out to them,” he informed his readers. “Neither is it a place of confinement where they put bad boys to keep them out of other people’s way.”
The young superintendent then gave the board the contrasting picture of the open-door system. “Our methods of keeping the boys are simple. We have no armed guards as some believe; we have no bolts or bars to keep them from running away—not even a fence. To retain the boys, we must show them by example and precept that we are interested in their future position as good citizens of the state, and much concerned about their spiritual welfare. Win their confidence, good will, and that best and strongest of all ties—love.”3
After his second year at the helm, Weakley was even more emphatic about the school’s new strategy. “The ‘Open Door’ experiment is no longer a theory, but a proven reality and has come to stay, but it never ceases to be a source of wonder to visitors from a distance, and our friends over the State marvel how it is that we manage to keep boys whom they regard as the worst element possible without the aid of bolts, bars and a high wall. Boys do sometimes run away from us, but they sometimes run away from home; in fact, many of them are here for that very reason.”4
For Weakley, the open door policy also meant that his office and his heart were always open for his students and their problems. There are numerous stories that demonstrate the attitude of the kindly administrator and the warm feelings he had for “his boys.”
One day Weakley had a conversation with a fleet-footed student who was continually using the school’s lack of security to his advantage. “Archibald, why do you insist on running away?” Weakley asked.
‘Well, sir,” the little boy replied, “every now and then I just feel like I gotta go, and . . . well, I gotta go.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Archibald.” Weakley nodded as he looked down at the youngster. “Sometimes I feel that way myself. Next time you feel like you gotta go, come tell me and we’ll run away together.”
About three weeks passed, when suddenly the habitual runner burst into the superintendent’s office. “Colonel,* I gotta go!” he said excitedly.
The colonel calmly got up from his desk, retrieved his hat, and the pair left. For half a day they roamed the woods near the campus, and even stopped to do some fishing with some make-shift line the colonel just happened to have in his pocket. After an hour of fishing, Archibald looked up and said, “Well, Colonel, I’m ready to go back.”
David Weakley may have had a military bearing, but there was true compassion behind the façade. His open door policy went against the norm found in most reform schools of the era.
“That’s funny,” said Weakley. “So am I.” The two friends walked back together, and little Archibald never ran away again.5
Weakley also delighted in telling about the time a colleague from another state visited the school. The colonel was showing his guest around the campus when they came upon a group of boys who were cutting a watermelon.“Colonel Weakley,” the boys waved. “Wouldn’t you like a piece of melon, too?” The visitor was shocked and curtly said that at his school a boy would never address the superintendent without first being granted permission to speak.6
Another example of Weakley’s homespun way of handling troubled youngsters is shown by his dealings with a boy named Joe. His mother had brought him to the school because he was always fighting. When he arrived, his mother had him decked out in a ruffled shirt, short pants, tan shoes, and stockings. Atop his head was a flat, white straw hat adorned with tassels. Weakley referred to it as a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit.
“Joe, we don’t have any fighting at the school,” Weakley told him. “I’ll do all the fighting from now on.” The boy left the office to begin his stay at the school. Within thirty minutes he was back for nearly drowning a much larger boy in the spring near the campus.
“Joe, what happened?” Weakley inquired.
“He laughed at my suit and said I was a sissy,” the boy said in his defense.
“Joe, we are going to get rid of that Fauntleroy suit,” Weakley concluded.
From that point forward, Joe’s wardrobe at the school consisted of a pair of baggy overalls, an old frayed palmetto hat, and bare feet. He never had any more trouble fighting and was soon released from the school. Weakley was correct that the problem was all ��in the breeches.” Joe later became a highway patrolman.7
The Archibalds and Joes aside, all situations could not be resolved that easily, especially in the latter stages of Weakley’s tenure. In the 1930–31 fiscal year, with a population of 450 students, the institution had a total of 129 escapes. Even Weakley recognized that times were changing.8
In his 1945 report to the board he stated, “We operate on the open door plan. We allow our boys more freedom than is usually permitted in similar institutions. We think it is more effective to put the boys on their honor than it would be to deprive them of their freedom. “Delinquency is increasing in intensity, however, and some of the boys are harder to control,” he admitted. “Their delinquencies are serious and deep-rooted. If this continues, we may have to build a detention unit where this type of boy can be segregated until such a time he can be safely allowed to associate with others.”9
The Alabama Boys’ Industrial School, however, went against the norm longer than most institutions of its kind. Due in large measure to the legacies of Johnston and Weakley, the school did not surround its campus with a fence until nearly a century after its founding.10
* As a consequence of the Alabama National Guard’s annual review of ABIS’s military program, David Weakley was commissioned an honorary colonel of infantry in service of the State of Alabama. Most of the boys at the school referred to Superintendent Weakley as “Colonel.”
1 Birmingham Post-Herald, Jane Aldridge, “His System May Be Wrong, but Colonel Gets Results,” June 10, 1948.
2 Fifth, 1-2.
3 Sixth, 18.
4 ABIS reports, Seventh Annual Report (East Lake: Alabama Boys’ Industrial School, 1907), 8.
5 Birmingham News, Allen Rankin, “He’s Saved many from Jail, They’ve Paid Him in Gratitude,” August 19, 1947.
6 Aldridge.
7 Rankin.
8 ABIS reports, Thirty-First Annual Report, (Birmingham: Alabama Boys’ Industrial School, 1931), 14.
9 Sparrow.
10 Tom Foster, interview by author, Birmingham, Alabama, January 2011.