Dozier graves press conference set for tomorrow at USF in Tampa

The University of South Florida is hosting a press conference tomorrow on its exhumation of the graves of former students and employees from the known cemetery on the campus of the former Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.

The following list is the one I assembled about known and potential burials in the cemetery. USF refused my offer to share with them the information I assembled on these individuals, a curious decision for scientists and researchers.

I will comment further after tomorrow's press conference, but if you are the next of kin of someone on this list and you have not heard from the university, you should make contact with them as they likely have dug up the remains of your relative.

Even though the graves were located in Marianna, USF is holding its press conference in Tampa.

Unless the university can locate the family members of the bodies it has exhumed - something I feel they should have done before digging them up - then they will have no way of identifying the remains and they will just be put back in the ground. That would be a shame after all the statements that this project was being done to "bring closure to families" (80% of which did not give their permission for the project).

Note:  Names with an * may or may not be buried at Dozier.  Names without one are known to be buried there. My list, which has been available online since last year, includes 64 names. I believe that 55 are buried in the cemetery, the others elsewhere.  USF expected to find 50 graves, based on use of ground-penetrating radar.

1. Unknown, Student (died prior to 1906 of heart condition)*
2. Unknown, Student (died prior to 1906 of exposure following escape)*
3. Unknown, Student (died in 1911 of unknown causes).*
4. Bennett Evans, Employee (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
5. Charles Evans, Employee (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
6. Joe Wethersbee, Student (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
7. Walter Fisher, Student (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
8. Clarence Parrott, Student (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
9. Louis Fernandez, Student (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
10. Harry Wells, Student (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
11. Clifford Jefford, Student (died in 1914 dormitory fire).
12. Scott Martin, Student (died of unknown causes in 1915).
13. Granville Rogers, Student (died of unknown causes in 1915).
14. Willie Fisher, Student (died of unknown causes in 1915).
15. Sim Williams, Student (died of unknown causes in 1916).
16. Tillman Mohind, Student (died of unknown causes in 1916).
17. James Joshua, Student (died of unknown causes in 1916).
18. Thomas Aikins, Student (died of unknown causes in 1918).
19. Unknown, Female Employee (died of influenza in 1918).
20. Lee Gaalsby, Student (died of unknown causes in 1918).
21. George Grissam, Student (died of unknown causes in 1918).
22. Wilbur Smith, Student (died of influenza in 1918).
23. Willie Adkins, Student (died during influenza outbreak, 1918).
24. Lloyd Dutton, Student (died during influenza outbreak, 1918).
25. Ralph Whiddon, Student (died during influenza outbreak, 1918).
26. Hilton Finley, Student (died during influenza outbreak, 1918).
27. Puner Warner, Student (died during influenza outbreak, 1918).
28. Joe Anderson, Student (died of unknown causes in 1919).
29. Leonard Simmons, Student (died May 9, 1919 of unknown causes).
30. Nathaniel Sawyer, Student (died December 12, 1919 of unknown causes).
31. Sam Morgan, Student (died in 1921 of unknown causes).
32. John H. Williams, Student (died in 1911, accidental death).
33. Arthur Williams, Student (died February 26, 1921 of unknown causes).
34. Schley Hunter, Student (died April 15, 1922 of pneumonia).
35. Calvin Williams, Student (died December 31, 1922, of unknown causes).
36. George Chancey, Student (died in 1923 of malaria).
37. Clifford Miller, Student (died in 1924 of unknown causes).
38. Charlie Overstreet, Student (died August 19, 1924, during a tonsillectomy).
39. Edward Fonders, Student (died May 18, 1925, of an accidental drowning).
40. Walter Askew, Student (died December 18, 1925, of unknown causes).
41. Nollie Davis, Student (died February 8, 1926, of pneumonia).
42. Robert Rhoden, Student (died May 8, 1929, of pneumonia).
43. Samuel Bethel, Student (died October 15, 1929), of tuberculosis.
44. James Brinson, Student (died in 1932 of pneumonia/influenza).*
45. Willie Heading, Student (died in 1932 of pnuemonia/influenza).*
46. Sam Nipper, Student (died in 1932 of pneumonia/influenza).*
47. Jesse Denson, Student (died in 1932 of pneumonia/influenza).*
48. Lee Underwood, Student (died in 1932 of Influenza).*
49. Fred Sams, Student (died in 1932 of influenza).*
50. Dary Pender, Student (died in 1932 of influenza)*
51. Archie Shaw, Student (died in 1932 of influenza).*
52. Lee Smith, Student (died January 5, 1932 in accident with mule).
53. Joe Stephens, Student (died May 9, 1932 of influenza).
54. Thomas Varnadoe, Student (died October 26, 1934 of pneumonia).
55. Joshua Backey, Student (died 1935 of blood poisoning).*
56. Richard Nelson, Student (died February 23, 1935, of pneumonia).
57. Robert Cato, Student (died February 25, 1935, of pneumonia).
58. Grady Huff, Student (died March 4, 1935, of acute nephritis).
59. James (Joseph) Hammond, Student (died May 2, 1936 of tuberculosis).*
60. Robert Seinous (Stephens), Student (died in 1937 after being stabbed by another student).*
61. George Owen Smith, Student (Escapee, body found decomposed under house in Marianna on January 24, 1941).
62. Earl Wilson, Student (Murdered on August 31, 1944, in severe beating given by 4 students.*
63. Billey Jackson, Student (Died October 7, 1952 of pyelonphritis)
64. Alphonse Glover, Student (died August 13, 1966, drowned in swimming pool).*

The following individuals are known to have been buried elsewhere or did not exist:

1. S. Barnett  (allegedly died in 1914 dormitory fire, name was a media mistake that later was corrected).
2. Louis Haffin (allegedly died in 1914 dormitory fire, name was a media mistake that later was corrected).
3. Waldo Drew (initially thought to have died in 1914 dormitory fire, but later was found to have escaped.
4. Earl E. Morris, Student (initially thought to have died in 1914 dormitory fire, but later was found to have escaped)
5. Raymond Phillips, Student (escaped, actually shot and killed by deputy sheriff in Alachua County).
6. Guy Hudson, Student, drowned while swimming with other boys in 1921, body returned home to Milton, Fla., for burial
7. Oscar Elvis Murphy, killed in 1932 after being run over by a car in Hardee County, Florida.
8. Lonnie Frank Harrell, died of tuberculosis in 1932, buried in Tampa.
9. Eddie Albert Black, murdered by another student in 1949, buried in Escambia County, Florida.
10. Clarence Cunningham, died in Tallahassee in 1954 due to "Mestastasis to Spinal Cord."
11. George Fordom, Jr., died in Tallahassee in 1957 due to "sarcoma of lung."
12. Edgar Thomas Elton, died in 1961 due to "acute dilation of the heart." Buried in Lake County, Florida.
13. James Lee Fredere, died 1965 in an automobile accident in Volusia County. Buried in North Carolina.
14. Martin E. Williams, drowned in the Chipola River in 1973 after falling from a canoe during a field trip, buried in Hillsborough County, Florida.

No Mass Grave at Dozier School Cemetery: Media Falls Silent

Dozier School Cemetery Site

Employees from the University of South Florida (USF) appear to have completed the exhumation of the graves from the Dozier School Cemetery. No mass grave was found.

The cemetery proved to be exactly what former school employees and local residents said it would be, an old cemetery where most of the graves were interred more than 75 years ago.

The media, which covered the beginning of the dig with carnival-like excitement, has vanished.

The university is expected to continue its research at Dozier for another eight months, trying to find a "second cemetery" that some claim must exist at the school. Former employees and local residents say there has not been a second cemetery within the memory of anyone alive in the community. State and Federal maps and plats dating back to the 1930s show only one cemetery, the one that has now been dug up by USF.

Wire from the original cemetery fence.

All of the graves found were inside the old fence line of that cemetery, which the media has sometimes confused with the small memorial erected at the site during the 1960s. In fact, an old wire fence surrounded a somewhat larger area and all of the graves were inside that area. The remains of that fence were visible in the spoil piles left behind when USF used heavy equipment to clear the historic site earlier in the year.

USF has not commented on the results of the dig and all media coverage stopped after the work revealed the bodies interred at the cemetery had been buried in coffins according to standard religious and mortuary practices of the time, not "dumped in holes" as some had claimed. USF employees - before falling silent - said during the first days of the dig that some of the coffins were "quite decorative."

Former employees of the school and local citizens with knowledge of its history had long said that the graves were not hidden or clandestine. They pointed out that people - both students and employees - had died at the school over its more than 100-year history and were known to be buried in the cemetery. They indicated that the bodies were buried in coffins and that funerals were held. A long-time maintenance employee of the school even pointed out that the graves originally had wooden markers, but that time and the elements had rotted them away. They disputed claims that the cemetery was a "dumping ground" for human bodies.  Despite the ridicule they faced in the media and on the internet, they maintained their stand.  In the end, they were right.

Although the university isn't talking for now, one thing is very clear: there were not 150 or more bodies in the cemetery as claimed by some former students of the now closed reform school. One former student told the media on the day that the dig began that there were "at least 100 more bodies up there" than the 50 or so thought by USF employees before the dig began.

The claims of hundreds of bodies in the cemetery received widespread coverage in state, national and international media. There has been no coverage since the claims proved false.

In answer to questions about why he had stopped covering the dig once it became clear that most of the allegations surrounding the cemetery were false, one journalist indicated he was "waiting for the final report because I don't want to report anything that isn't correct." Oddly, such journalistic standards were not at issue before the dig began. Wild stories then included allegations of everything from hundreds of graves in the cemetery to claims that it was a dumping ground for people murdered by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Attorney General Pam Bondi and the NAACP pushed for the dig, claiming repeatedly that "atrocities" had occurred. A leader with the NAACP even compared Dozier School to the infamous Nazi death camp of Dachau. U.S. Senator Bill Nelson did as well, posturing for television cameras with statements such as, "where there's smoke, there's fire."

More than $600,000 in state and federal tax money funded the dig, but in the end no clandestine mass grave was found.  The USF employees and volunteers have gone back to Tampa to analyze the remains and try to identify bodies for the handful of next of kin they actually found. The media has gone silent.

The little memorial placed decades ago by school employees and students in memory of those buried in the cemetery was destroyed by the dig. The graves it commemorated are gone.

Dozier School Cemetery dig DENIED by Florida Secretary of State

Florida's Secretary of State has denied a permit application from the University of South Florida seeking permission to exhume the graves at the Dozier School Cemetery.

The University confirmed in a letter to the state last week that its investigation was not criminal in nature and that the Dozier Cemetery was NOT a crime scene.  As a result, the State Department had no authority under law to grant permission to dig up the graves.

Here is the actual letter: