As a team of University of South Florida archaeologists wait to receive a special permit explicitly authorizing them to exhume bodies from the state's infamous Dozier School for Boys, one former inmate tells Sunshine State News there's more than just one gravesite, and he's got pictures to prove it.
According to the official story, the now-closed state reform school has only ever had one cemetery, named Boot Hill and located in what, back in the days of segregation (1900, when the school was opened, to 1968, when segregation was outlawed), used to be the African-American section of the Marianna campus.
Supposedly, and contrary to prevailing practice at the time elsewhere in America (especially the South), the school complex did not have separate cemeteries for blacks and whites. All children who died in the state's custody, whatever their race, were buried on Boot Hill, enjoying in the grave the racial ecumenism they were denied while they were alive.
Daniel Holloway, 54, of Lake Wales, who was incarcerated at the school from 1973 to 1975, says that's just nonsense.
I know there's a white cemetery there, and I know they're gonna find it, he tells SSN. I'm not worried about it. Nobody can really say otherwise if they wasn't there.
Holloway a son of eccentric Tampa millionaire legend Gene Holloway, co-founder of the Red Lobster restaurant chain was sent to the school when he was 15, after running away from home and having several minor run-ins with the law. His dormitory called a cottage was located in what had previously been the African-American section of Dozier; but he insists he walked past what had been the white cemetery six times a day, every day, for two years when he walked back and forth from his cottage to the cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The existence of a separate white cemetery has long been rumored, but Holloway says he now has concrete evidence of what he witnessed: two aerial photographs of the school, accessible from the archives of Florida Memory, a website maintained by the Florida Department of State's Division of Library and Information Services.
Holloway discovered these images about six weeks ago. Both are undated. The first is an aerial view looking south over the campus:
The second, clearly taken many years (if not decades) earlier than the first, looks southeast:
Holloway insists that both pictures, when zoomed in, reveal the existence of the white cemetery. When magnified, an area between two buildings in the white section of the school shows several white dots. Holloway says those dots are white crosses marking several graves.
Unfortunately, since Holloway's days at Dozier that area whatever it was has been paved over and replaced by some sort of parking lot, including a covered carport.
Holloway tells SSN he shared his testimony with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) in 2010, when then-Gov. Charlie Crist investigated numerous allegations of decades-long abuse. A year later, Holloway sat down for about an hour with Erin Kimmerle, who heads the team of USF archaeologists. He says he hasn't had the chance to show her these photographs because she now declines to speak with him, thanks to his associations with a victims advocacy group the White House Boys (named after a Dozier building which many allege amounted to a torture chamber) that is trying to bring a class action suit against the state. Holloway himself is not a party to any such suit, though the victims' website does publish part of his testimony.
Kimmerle did not return repeated requests for an interview before this story went to press.
After its investigation was completed, FDLE said the Boot Hill cemetery contained only 31 graves; Kimmerle's team have uncovered at least an additional 19, and has said the cemetery might contain even more. Nearly 100 students are believed to have died during their stay at the campus, from numerous causes, and Holloway insists the state's investigation will again be incomplete if it does not dig up the white cemetery.
I don't like being called a liar about the existence of that cemetery, he tells SSN. When they discover that cemetery, it's going to raise the body count up. I think the relatives need to get their kids' [bodies] out of there.
Holloway says his testimony can be verified by one Mr. Couch, who was Holloway's supervisor cottage father during his time at Dozier. Holloway says Couch, an African-American, was a true father figure and the only adult who ever showed him and many of his fellow inmates any kindness. SSN reached out to Couch through Elmore Bryant, an area director of the NAACP who serves with Couch as a deacon in the same Marianna church.
Bryant tells SSN that Couch, now in his 80s, will neither confirm nor deny the existence of a separate white cemetery at Dozier. Indeed, he refuses to talk at all about what he experienced during his employment at the school decades ago.
There isn't anybody in Marianna who's going to talk to you about what went on at Dozier, Bryant sternly insists. There's a lot of bad stuff that went on there, not only to the kids but many of the employees. People are afraid.
Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116.
