Martin Tabert

Martin Tabert was a 22-year-old man from Munich, North Dakota who was arrested on a charge of vagrancy after he was arrested on a train without a ticket in Tallahassee, Florida. Tabert was convicted and fined $25.[1] Although his parents sent $25 for the fine, plus $25 for Tabert to return home to North Dakota, the money disappeared in the Leon County prison system where Sheriff James Robert Jones earned $20 for every person leased out. He sent Tabert to work at the Putnam Lumber Company[2][3] in Clara, Florida, approximately 60 miles (97 km) south of Tallahassee in Dixie County.[1] He was whipped with a leather strap by Thomas Walter Higginbotham until he died.[4] Coverage of Tabert's killing by the New York World newspaper in 1924 earned it the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Governor Cary A. Hardee ended Florida's system of convict leasing in 1923, in part spurred on by the Tabert case and the resulting publicity.

The whip used on Tabert was called a Black Aunty.[3] Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote a poem about the killing.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 Staff (2013). "Timeline: 1921". Florida Department of Corrections. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  2. ↑ http://www.floridahistorynetwork.com/may-8-1923---killings-of-work-camp-prisoners-detailed-in-hearing.html
  3. 1 2 Florida's Past Volume 3 Gene M. Burnett, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, FL (1988) p. 122-25
  4. ↑ "Whipping Boss will Go Free", Associated Press, Jul 17, 1925, quoted in Miami News, from news.google.com
  5. ↑ Richard Godden; Martin Crawford (2006). Reading Southern Poverty Between the Wars, 1918-1939. University of Georgia Press. pp. 97–99. ISBN 978-0-8203-2708-2.


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