(Pictured: Grace Bauer-Lubow speaking at the Closing of Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth)
For twenty-five years, Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) has organized with one truth at its core: no parent should face the system alone. When families stand together—sharing knowledge, grief, courage, and determination—entire futures can change. Communities can transform. Systems can shift.
Few stories embody that truth more powerfully than the story of one of FFLIC’s earliest members, Grace, whose journey from devastated mother to relentless advocate helped spark a movement and change the course of countless young lives.
A Mother’s Fight for Her Son
Long before she helped close Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth, Grace Bauer-Lubow was simply a mother trying to save her child.
Her son, Corey, was just 14 years old when he and two friends broke into a truck and stole a radio. For that mistake, he was sent to Tallulah—a place that would soon become infamous for violence, abuse, and neglect. Grace hoped the program would help him turn a corner. Instead, she walked into a nightmare.
When Grace went to visit her son, she was confronted with the reality that he was experiencing severe and violent abuse inside Tallulah. Professionals warned her that the conditions were breaking him down, and every avenue she pursued for help seemed to end with the same message: there was little she could do against a system designed to swallow children whole. What she witnessed and learned over the years left wounds that no family should ever have to bear—and revealed to her just how urgently change was needed.
Grace could not save her son from what the system became. He would spend years still cycling in and out of incarceration, surviving trauma no child—or person—should ever endure.
But Grace’s love didn’t break. It transformed into something fierce.
In 2001, she attended a FFLIC event where the organization was holding a mock funeral in the style of the New Orleans jazz tradition to publicly mourn the death of the dreams of incarcerated youth. What Grace saw was a community of parents and organizers who saw her pain, shared her anger, and believed her voice mattered. Alongside FFLIC co-founder Gina Womack, Grace helped build the Lake Charles office, recruit families, testify, organize, strategize, and demand a better way.
Together, families shut down Tallulah. They passed sweeping legislation in 2003. They built a movement that is still reshaping Louisiana today.
And then, years later, that movement helped Grace save another child.
The Daughter She Saved
In 2008, as Grace was mourning the slow, painful loss of her brother, tragedy nearly struck her family again. Her youngest daughter, Caroline, struggling under the weight of what was happening in her family and adolescence, was arrested one summer night—drunk, angry, and resisting officers who tried to take her in.
For many children, that moment—one bad night—becomes the beginning of a lifelong entanglement with the justice system. The same system that failed Corey stood ready to pull Caroline in too.
But this time, Grace was no longer alone.
By then, she had organized alongside families for eight years. She had fought battles, changed laws, and learned exactly how to protect her children—and other people’s children—from a system that too often destroys rather than heals.
When the detention facility called and said, “We don’t want her here,” Grace already knew what to do.
She told them:
“There’s nothing you people can do to help my kid. I will get her what she needs.”
And she did.
Grace took her daughter to Maryland, where she enrolled in school, graduated, attended a two-year college, then a four-year college. Today, Caroline has never had another encounter with police. She’s a mother raising a brilliant little girl. She is kind, compassionate, generous—touching lives everywhere she goes.
Everything the system was ready to strip from her—her spirit, her future, her brilliance—was protected because her mother knew the impact of advocacy.
And in the years that followed, Grace continued turning her lived experience into leadership and power for families across the country. In 2011, she co‑founded Justice for Families, carrying with her everything she learned at FFLIC. What she had once fought for alone, she now taught other parents how to fight for—training families nationwide to organize, advocate, and protect their children from the very systems that once harmed her own.
The Impact of Organizing Side-by-Side
Grace often says: “You can’t undo what happens. So stopping it before it happens is critical.”
This is the work of FFLIC.
For 25 years, our power has come not from policy expertise or political access—but from the deep, unwavering solidarity of families who’ve lived through the system and refuse to let others suffer alone. Families who:
- show up to court together
- call out abuse, demand accountability, and push for alternatives
- and continue fighting even while healing their own wounds
Grace’s story shows the dual truth of our movement:
We fight because of the children we couldn’t save. And we organize to save the ones we still can.
A Legacy That Lives Through Families
As FFLIC celebrates 25 years, we honor parents like Grace whose courage built this movement—one story, one meeting, one late-night phone call at a time.
Her son’s story is part of the painful history that made reform necessary. Her daughter’s story is part of the hopeful future that makes organizing powerful.
But the heart of her story—and of FFLIC—is this:
When families stand together, children thrive.
When parents organize, systems change.
And when one mother finds her voice, she can protect generations.
Thank you Grace.
And thank you to every family who has walked this journey beside .
Together, we step into the next 25 years determined to protect every child’s potential—and committed to building a Louisiana where all young people can grow, heal, dream, and shine.