The White House Boys: An American Tragedy (17 page)
At a state convict camp in Orange County in 1921, two of the thirty-six young workers assigned to the road construction crew refused to work, which resulted in severe beatings for these boys. This ultimately created an uprising and commanded the attention of the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions. As if the severe beatings and poor living conditions weren’t enough, a fire in November of 1914 took the lives of six of the boys and two of the school’s staff members. Four years later the school suffered another major loss during the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic.
By 1920, the Boys Industrial School in Marianna (renamed in 1913) maintained two racially separate campuses. It housed a minimum of three hundred children, even though it had been originally designed to hold only half that number. By 1926, severe overcrowding was reported and the suggested solution was to parole some of the boys in order to ease congestion. However, by the 1930s, the school was reporting a rapidly growing population and a high rate of escapes.
By 1923 Florida had been forced to abandon the convict lease system because of increased public pressure. However, many counties found the system to be far too profitable and continued to lease labor to local residents for business or individual use. It wasn’t until a 1930 investigative survey of the juvenile system that Florida was required, by law, to revamp their legal proceedings of minors and bring their standards up to par with the national level.
In 1946, a former schoolteacher named Arthur G. Dozier was named as superintendent of the school, and later the school was renamed for him. It wasn’t until 1982 that advocates for children and prison reform filed a statewide class-action lawsuit to reform the state’s juvenile justice system. Among their allegations: children, some as young as ten, were held in severe crowding and sometimes were shackled and hogtied.
Florida’s treatment of young offenders was well-documented in the 1983 class-action civil rights lawsuit, known as the Bobby M. Case. The case, brought on behalf children who were mistreated in the state’s juvenile justice facilities, including Dozier, ushered in a new era of reform. At Dozier, the atrocities documented included the actions of the “dog boys,” a group of guards who used attack dogs on the boys. It is reported that the late Louis de la Parte, the crusading former state senator from Tampa, personally saw the blood-splattered “White House” building where vicious beatings had occurred.
In 1987, after a four-year legal battle with the state, another overhaul of the youth corrections system was mandated. Then, in October 2008, the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice dedicated a plaque outside the white cinder-block building in the rear of the Dozier School for Boys where they have acknowledged that boys incarcerated at the facility had been beaten. The doors to the White House were to be closed forever.
In December 2008, the governor called for an investigation into allegations of child abuse and possible homicides at the school during the 1950s and 60s. At the center of the investigation are the unmarked graves of unknown persons, marked only by crude white crosses.
SOURCES:
http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-10252005-172103/unrestricted/
Main_Dissertation.pdf; Florida Times Union Governor’s Letters and Correspondence, Letter from W. S. Jennings to Board of Commissioners of Duval County January 30, 1902, p 432; Minutes of the Board of Commissioners of Marion County, August 8, 1905, p 2; , April 5, 1901, np; Carper, “Convict-Lease,” p 209; The Marianna Times Courier “House Journal, 1905, Governor’s message, pp 15-16; , March 10, 1905, np.;
www2.tbo.com/content/2008/dec/15/na-state-right-to-raise-ghosts-of-dozier-schools-p/;
Juvenile Courts, p 31; Schlotterback, Darrell Louis, “A Study of the Pre-Institutional Background and Institutional Conformity of Eighty Students At the Florida School for Boys at Marianna,” Masters Thesis, Florida State University, 1961, pg. 26; New York Herald Samuel McCoy Papers, “Concurrent Resolution on Tabert Affair” passed by North Dakota Legislature, February 27, 1923; March 8, 1923, np; Gudmunder Grimson Papers.
About The White House Boys
Organization
I
have worked for many years to try to expose the horrors that I and many others experienced at the Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna. Then one day, I reached for the ringing telephone, and, finally, all hell was about to break loose on the State of Florida.
“Is this Roger Kiser, the fellow who wrote the stories about the White House at Marianna?” a gentleman asked.
After I confirmed that I was Roger Kiser, the gentlemen told me his girlfriend had come across my stories on the Internet and that he had also been at the school. That call compelled me to build the website “The Horrors of the White House-FSB Marianna.” Through various websites and message boards, I was able to reach more men who had been beaten and abused at the hands of the State of Florida. Through these connections, “The White House Boys” organization was formed. Hundreds of calls and emails started pouring in, telling us of the horrors, rapes, beatings, and murders of hundreds of boys over the past fifty years.
We have come along way in seeing justice served, but we still have far to go. Due to different ideas on how to proceed now that an investigation is underway, our organization has split into two separate entities, with each proceeding in the manner they feel best to accomplish the difficult tasks at hand. God speed to us all.
Visit us at
WWW.THEWHITEHOUSEBOYS.COM.
R
oger Dean Kiser’s stories take you into the heart of a child abandoned by his mother and abused by the system responsible for his care. In a style reminiscent of Mark Twain, Roger Dean Kiser’s collection of almost 1,000 stories capture the drama and emotion of a sad, lonely, and confused childhood as well as the heartwarming views and emotions of a kind man who truly understands how precious life is. Kiser’s writing carries with it strong images and feelings that search out and find that thread inside that connects each of us to our own emotions.
Kiser’s stories have been published in books and magazines around the world, including
Heart-warmers, Heartwarmers of Love, Chicken Soup for the Grandparent’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Caregiver’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Friend’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Grandma’s Soul,
and
Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul.
Kiser’s short story “The Bully” was made into a short film by Executive Producer Edward Asner and has been entered into several major film festivals in the United States.
Kiser lives in Brunswick, Georgia, with his wife, Judy, where he continues to write and spend time with his family.
Visit him at
www.RogerDeanKiser.com
.
“Well, Toto, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”