A century ago, in the 1920s, news of the violent death of a young man in a Florida swamp revealed a brutal convict labor system in the state. Law enforcement officers would arrest young men, usually Black but also white, on spurious charges and lease them to private companies for profit. When this system was revealed, the scandal shocked the nation. In the words of one reformer, Amos Pinchot, the story put the “state on trial before American public opinion.”
This controversy began in 1921, when Martin Tabert of North Dakota was arrested on a Florida train for not having a ticket. The 21-year-old was a vagrant traveler with little money. When he couldn’t afford to pay the $25 fine, he was taken into custody by the county sheriff.
Tabert was one of thousands of new arrivals during Florida’s land boom. In the late 19th century, developers such as Henry Flagler began draining swampland to construct railroads, towns, and hotels to draw tourists and settlers to the state. Miami, which had just over 500 registered voters when it was founded in 1896, grew to 30,000 residents by 1920. Fifty to 75 train cars full of eager visitors rolled into the city daily. In the first few years of the 1920s, 13 new counties sprang up.
Real estate agents reaped handsome profits from the skyrocketing value of Florida real estate. Tabert, however, was pulled into the grim underside of Florida’s rapid expansion. After his arrest, the sheriff ordered Tabert to the Putnam Lumber Company to serve 90 days of hard labor. Soon, young Tabert was working waist-deep in swamp water alongside other convicts.
A few weeks later, his family in North Dakota received a letter from the Putnam Lumber Company. It informed them of his illness and subsequent death.
Initially, the family believed the letter. But the next year, a man who had witnessed Tabert die came forward and wrote to the family, explaining that all was not as it seemed. Tabert’s family enlisted North Dakota’s attorney general, who traveled to Florida to investigate.
What he found was shocking. According to numerous eye-witnesses, the convicts’ working conditions were hot, dirty, and brutal. Tabert and the other men were overseen by a “whipping boss” who brandished a seven-pound strap. The men explained that bosses would often drag the whip through syrup or sand between lashes to enhance its effectiveness.
During his sentence, Tabert struggled to keep up with the harsh demands of convict labor. He fell ill, his feet swollen from standing in swamp water. He worked too slowly for the tastes of his whipping boss, Walter Higginbotham. So, in front of some 80 other men, Higginbotham forced Tabert to lie down with his shirt lifted, and beat Tabert dozens of times with a strap. When Tabert resisted, the overseer stood on his neck and continued whipping.