“We Carry Their Bones” — A Florida Horror Story

November 10, 2024

This book by anthropologist/archeologist Erin Kimmerle relates her authorized official investigations at the site of the Dozier School, a “reform school” in Florida’s panhandle, operating from 1900 to 2011. Actually a prison. Incarcerating thousands of boys, sentenced for mostly minor notional offenses, some as young as five, mostly Black.

“Throwaways” they’ve been called. Dozier was a nightmare world of violence and abuse. Its infamous “White House” a beating shack. Other victims were immured for weeks in tiny bleak isolation cells. It didn’t take much in the way of “misbehavior” to incur such drastic punishment.

Unsurprisingly, many boys tried to escape; usually recaptured, with severe repercussions. Authorities acknowledged 31 bodies buried on the premises, though mostly unidentified, with scanty records. Kimmerle, after surmounting a gauntlet of obstruction against her work, ultimately found 55 burials.

In such a place, some discipline, maybe even corporal punishment, would be expected. But what happened at Dozier could only have been sheer sadistic cruelty, for its own sake.

After all, these were mostly Black kids.

No better than animals, to the white men staffing Dozier. But in such cases, I always think not even animals should suffer like that.

Kimmerle has surprisingly little to say about sexual abuse. She does relate one head of the school singling out particular boys. But maybe such things are harder to be clear about.

There’s also only one vague mention of anyone (apart from inmates!) ever charged with crimes at Dozier. The outcome of those few cases isn’t stated.

The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed “involuntary servitude,” except as part of punishment for crimes. The South used this loophole to establish a pervasive crypto-slavery system, charging Black men with dubious offenses to force them into brutal unpaid work. Dozier was part of this, its boys put to work or sent out for it. All part of the Jim Crow regime to keep Blacks “in their place” — as reviled subhuman non-citizens whose very existence was barely tolerated — a “place” often enforced by terror. That was the point of lynchings. A victim’s guilt or innocence was beside the point.

Dozier’s horrors couldn’t be buried with all those bodies. Many inmates did emerge alive and spoke out. Over the decades, numerous official inquiries all resulted in whitewash.

Even after Dozier’s closure, Kimmerle shows, local sentiment and officialdom were hostile toward any exposure of the truth. A depressingly familiar syndrome. I was reminded of Britain’s recent Post Office scandal — faulty accounting software resulted in legions of local postmasters falsely prosecuted for theft. For years the bureaucracy refused to acknowledge anything wrong with this picture.*

In Dozier’s case, the unwillingness of locals to see anything amiss was compounded by racism. Victim advocates were viewed as just troublemakers with bad motives, racial attitudes pervading the whole picture.

Not so long ago, we fancied our racial divide was healing. With a Black president even. Turned out that enflamed matters — whites being okay with Black advancement, but only up to a point. Now many feel threatened. Trump has nakedly played to this and exacerbated it. Making his re-election all the more societally destructive.

The State of Florida eventually officially acknowledged the epic wrong that was Dozier, trying to make some amends. One legislative enactment along such lines passed the State House of Representatives 114 to 3. Among the three dissenters was then-member Matt Gaetz.

* * *

Kimmerle made great efforts not only to find burials but then to identify whose. Generally the bodies had been interred unceremoniously, hence with little left to exhume. But the team was able to extract DNA even from bone fragments and thereby identify many victims. Amazing modern science.

Much of the book concerns this work. There was a lot of hand-wringing over what to do with the unidentifiable remains, with consensus that they couldn’t just be reburied onsite. Some that were identified were sent to their families, enabling re-interments and some sort of “closure.” Boys dying at Dozier many decades before had not been forgotten. Loving familial bonds, the intensity of such human attachments, ennobles us.

Yet, though we are embodied in our physical selves while alive, afterward the dead corporeal remains should lose meaning. Our connections to our dead reside in our hearts and minds, our remembrance, not in their disintegrated bones.

Those families already knew, basically, what had befallen their kin. Receiving a box of remains really adds nothing. I think we’re too fixated on such physicality, it’s a kind of superstition.

Am I too rational? Early painters sometimes inserted skulls in still lifes, called “Memento Mori,” reminders we must die. I am indeed often reminded that I will someday be a skull and bones — and even those will melt away. Yet my existence will already have ended — absolutely. What happens to my bones thereafter can be no concern to me. Nor should it be to anyone else.

Coming to grips with this is a great challenge of life.

*I’ve written about this: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2024/05/12/the-british-post-office-scandal-how-not-to-handle-one/