Elizabeth Williamson & Erin Kimmerle: A Conversation

Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for The New York Times. She joined the Times as a member of its editorial board, writing about national politics during the 2016 presidential campaign. Previously, she was a writer for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. On December 14, 2012, a gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Ten years later, Sandy Hook has become a foundational story of how false conspiracy narratives and malicious misinformation have gained traction in society. Driven by ideology, profit, or for no sound reason at all, some people insisted the shooting never occurred or was staged by the federal government as a pretext for seizing Americans’ firearms. They tormented the victims’ families online and accosted them on the street and at memorial events, accusing them of faking their loved ones’ murders. Some family members were forced into hiding. Someone fired a gun into the home of one parent. The Sandy Hook families refused to accept this, and Williamson’s landmark Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth (Dutton) tells the story of their battle to preserve their loved ones’ legacies despite threats to their own lives.

Erin Kimmerle, Ph.D., is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, and executive director of the Florida Institute of Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science at USF. In We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys (William Morrow), she presents a searing and heartbreaking account of the Arthur G. Dozier Boys School. A well-guarded secret in Florida – until reports of cruelty, abuse, and “mysterious” deaths could no longer be squelched – the institution was shut down in 2011. Established in 1900, the juvenile reform school accepted children as young as 6 for crimes as harmless as truancy or trespassing. The boys sent there were subject to brutal abuse, routinely hired out to local farmers by school management as indentured labor, and died either at the school or in attempting to escape its brutal conditions. After Dozier closed, Kimmerle stepped in to locate the school’s graveyard and determine who and how many were buried there. The school’s accounting suggested there were 31 boys in unmarked graves; the actual number was at least twice that. In spite of residents and local law enforcement threatening and harassing Kimmerle and her team on their task, what’s emerged from their work is an indictment of the reform school system – and a reckoning with racism and shame in the legacy of America.