The Stonewall Jackson Youth Development Center is a juvenile correctional facility of the
North Carolina Department of Public Safety
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) is an umbrella agency that carries out many of the state's law enforcement, emergency response and homeland security functions. The department was created in 1977 as the Department of Crime Co ...
located in
unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to:
* Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality
* Unincorporated entity, a type of organization
* Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...
Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
.
The Stonewall Jackson Manual Training and Industrial School was established by an act of the state legislature in 1907 and opened in 1909 as the first juvenile detention facility in
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
. The school was named for Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. The institution is located three miles (5 km) from
Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
. Walter Thompson was the first principal. Originally encompassing , the campus is , of which are still used, with 5 buildings on the property. As of 2018–19, the Youth Development Center had 107 residents and the Juvenile Detention Center had 26, with full-time equivalent staff of 257.
Due to the school's pioneering status and the quality of several of its early buildings, the Stonewall Jackson Training School Historic District has been listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
Established to provide a place for troubled youths separate from adult prisoners, this was considered a progressive institution. Its founding was the result of twenty years of organizing by white women's groups in North Carolina. They lobbied for construction of a reformatory for white boys as part of prison reform.
Particularly influential were the King's Daughters (North Carolina) from 1902 on, and the
Women's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program ...
(WCTU). The
North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
(NCFWC) and the
United Daughters of the Confederacy
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, ...
(UDC) also participated in campaigning strongly to raise funds and influence the legislature. When the King's Daughters promised to name the school after General Stonewall Jackson, many Confederate veterans in the legislature finally approved the project, which was authorized in 1907. As a sign of their influence, four women were named to the board of the school.
Boys were generally incarcerated for relatively minor scrapes with the law, including school truancy.
At the school, the young men lived in a series of dormitory style buildings, and received an academic education as well as learning a trade. Students worked in industries including shoemaking, printing, barbering, textiles, and a machine shop. Many of the young men worked on the school's farm, learning modern agricultural techniques, and maintaining the fields and cattle herds that supported the school. The print shop produced a small newspaper called ''The Uplift''."Stonewall Jackson Training School" North Carolina Historical Marker Program, accessed 8 Jan 2009
Both white and
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
women's groups pressed the legislature for similar facilities for white girls, and for African American boys and girls. Such facilities were not constructed for several years: the first, for white girls, was built in 1918 in Moore County and called Samarcand.
Post-World War II
In 1948 as part of continuing statewide efforts to limit "feeblemindedness" and improve the population, the Stonewall Jackson Training School was the site of sterilization by
vasectomy
Vasectomy, or vasoligation, is an elective surgical procedure for male sterilization or permanent contraception. During the procedure, the male vasa deferentia are cut and tied or sealed so as to prevent sperm from entering into the urethra and ...
of six teenage white males, in operations authorized by the state
Eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
Board. Most sterilizations were performed on girls and women rather than boys or men. North Carolina was one of the last states that continued to perform sterilizations on people under state care.
During the decades of its existence, the School was criticized for abuses common in many detention facilities, such as overcrowding and prisoner violence. At its peak the facility held about 500 youths. At times there were inhumane conditions in which youths were attacked and raped by other inmates. Prison activist Russell Smith stated he suffered such attacks there when imprisoned in the 1960s from age 13–15. As an adult (and after time in state and federal prisons), Smith became an activist against prison violence, founding both the National Gay Prisoners Coalition (NGPC) and, in 1980, People Organized to Stop Rape of Imprisoned Persons (POSRIP).
In the 1970s, ideas about treating youths changed, and they were seldom incarcerated for offenses as minor as delinquency. The state reduced the population at the facility. The size of the campus had been reduced earlier when the extensive agricultural program was dropped. Later called the Stonewall Jackson Youth Development Facility, it was used for serious offenders involved in drug abuse and weapons-related charges. About 150 young men were generally held there. Sixty acres of the facility were enclosed by a -high fence.
Starting in 1992 the center had a Pet Therapy Program, in which youth learned to care for dogs. Animals were sometimes made available for adoption outside the center.
Architectural historian Peter Kaplan, speaking to a 2014 meeting of the Historic Cabarrus Association, called the historic campus "which I understand is now completely vacant ... a remarkable collection of Colonial Revival buildings and one of Cabarrus County’s most impressive architectural groupings."
As of 2015 23 of the 60 structures were used, and most of them were used for storage purposes.
As of 2019 the Youth Development Center served "at-risk youth", allowing them to attend high school or receive a
GED
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...
. The latest figures show 107 residents.
In 2020, North Carolina State SenatorPaul Newton sponsored a bill transferring the historic campus to Cabarrus County along with Frank Liske Park, which was a farm used by the school and became a park in 1979, leased to the county since then. Demolition of the historic buildings would cost $3.8 million but selling the buildings increases the chance for preservation. This bill has become law.