May 12th 1923 (2. pg131)
I first got involved in the situation when a story came out in the paper that a North Dakota boy came walking into Florida and was arrested and put into a labor camp as a vagrant. They make the vagrants work very hard and they beat them when they didn't. This boy was named Martin Tabert. He was beaten to death in the labor camp.
The news of his death shocked me so much that I wrote a simple ballad titled "Martin Tabert of North Dakota Is Walking Florida Now"
When this poem was published it received enormous attention. It was read in Tallahassee, read in the legislature prior to today's decision. I think it may be the single most important thing I will ever accomplish as a result of something I've written. (1. pg133)
1. Douglas, Marjory Stoneman, and John Rothchild. Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River: An Autobiography. Pineapple Press, 1990.
2. Carper, N. Gordon. “Martin Tabert, Martyr of an Era.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 2, 1973, pp. 115–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30149028. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.
