On July 24, 1918, just 17 days after his 12th birthday, Leroy was sentenced to six years—or until his 18th birthday, whichever came first—at the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Negro Law-Breakers in Mount Meigs, Alabama. It is commonly believed that he was sent off to reform school because of shoplifting. New research shows that it was the rock throwing battles that Leroy and friends engaged in against the white boys of the nearby Oakdale School that was the major reason he was sentenced to reform school. The person who taught Leroy to pitch while in reform school was the Reverend Moses Davis. It was Davis, who was also a trustee of the school, who devoted the long hours coaching the boys in baseball, and it was he who struck the deal with the sporting-goods store in Montgomery to secure the team's first uniforms. Davis was African American as was the entire teaching staff at Mount Meigs including the school's founder, Cornelia Bowen, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute. Leroy was released from the institution in December 1923, seven months short of his 18th birthday. He summed up his years of incarceration: "I traded five years of freedom to learn how to pitch. At least I started my real learning on the Mount. They were not wasted years at all. It made a real man out of me."