Premium Members Get 10% Off and Earn Rewards Find Out More
The Morganza, 1967: Life in a Legendary Reform School

The Morganza, 1967: Life in a Legendary Reform School

by David E. Stuart
The Morganza, 1967: Life in a Legendary Reform School
Add to Wishlist
The Morganza, 1967: Life in a Legendary Reform School

The Morganza, 1967: Life in a Legendary Reform School

by David E. Stuart

Overview

Fresh out of college, David Stuart put off graduate school to take a job close to his West Virginia home as a counselor at the Youth Development Center at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Known locally as the Morganza, the facility was founded in the nineteenth century as a farm for orphaned boys. By the 1960s, the Morganza had long been burdened with a sinister reputation when it was converted into a detention center for Allegheny County youth convicted of crimes ranging from petty theft to armed robbery, rape, and murder. Reporting for duty during the racially turbulent and riot-torn summer of 1967, Stuart describes the life of students and staff in what was, in reality, a youth prison camp.

Confronted with the glaring shortcomings of the reform school's methods of rehabilitation, Stuart irritated the bureaucracy, advocating for detainees whose only crimes were a lack of education and belonging to the wrong race or economic class. He confronted an establishment that refused to distinguish between hardened criminals and those who would benefit from actual reform. In The Morganza, 1967 Stuart offers a brutally honest—at times touching—insider's view of a juvenile justice system that was badly in need of fixing.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780826346414
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Publication date: 09/16/2009
Pages: 237
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David E. Stuart, the first student in the State of West Virginia to earn a degree in Anthropology, came to UNM in '67/'68 where he earned the Masters and Ph.D. and, later, an honorary doctorate from WVa Wesleyan College. He has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, Alaska, Ecuador, and the American Southwest, where he continues to publish in both Anthropology and Archaeology. He served the University of New Mexico as a senior academic administrator for many years, and still teaches the Archaeology of New Mexico.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Author's Note xi

Chapter 1 We Have a Job Opening 1

Chapter 2 Students Will Be Rehabilitated 3

Chapter 3 Let's Break Him In 7

Chapter 4 The Tower 16

Chapter 5 Rabbit 23

Chapter 6 A Day Off 30

Chapter 7 Where's the Graveyard? 34

Chapter 8 I'm Black! 43

Chapter 9 Not Behind the White Fence 50

Chapter 10 Mr. Davenport, We Have to Talk 57

Chapter 11 Sorry About the Fork Thing 64

Chapter 12 Nefertiti 71

Chapter 13 What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate 76

Chapter 14 Jelly Baby 87

Chapter 15 We Got Duppies Up on 2 93

Chapter 16 The Price of Identity 101

Chapter 17 Daddy 109

Chapter 18 Billy, I Have Something to Tell You... 118

Chapter 19 Dammit! It's Rabbit Again... 131

Chapter 20 Cat Missing 139

Chapter 21 Happy Halloween, 1967 149

Chapter 22 Who? Who? 158

Chapter 23 Her Majesty's Dance 171

Chapter 24 I'll Take Extra Shifts 179

Chapter 25 The Changing of the Guard 190

Chapter 26 Punish Me! Punish Me! 196

Chapter 27 Sanna's White ... It Gonna Open for You 202

Chapter 28 We Lost Four? 212

Chapter 29 It's an Inside Joke 217

Epilogue 221

From the B&N Reads Blog
Page 1 of

Customer Reviews