The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane

September 2nd 1935

The greatest
tragedy youve
never heard of
Vanessa Lafaye, author of Summertime,
on the true story of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane.
Although I was born and raised in
Florida, I was unaware of the events on
which this book is based until I stumbled
on them accidentally in 2010, while
researching the idea for another book.
The story then completely took over my
imagination. As my research progressed,
I began to realise that it was one of the
most scandalous episodes of the periodnot just for Florida, but for the US as a
whole.

1935 was a desperate time for many.

The nation was still on its knees from
the effects of the Great Depression.
The economic hardship and competition
for jobs did nothing to ease the racial
tensions going back as far as the Civil
War. These were exacerbated by the
return of thousands of black soldiers
from the battlefields of WWI, who
brought with them new ideas about
equality of opportunity which terrified
white Americans. Every aspect of daily
life was segregated by the Jim Crow
laws, enacted in the 1880s. It was
illegal for blacks and whites to marry or
cohabit; all facilities, from hospitals to
restaurants to prisons to libraries were
supposed to be separate but equal-but
of course only managed the former. It
was illegal to promote equality of the
races in written form. Even in death,
the doctrine reigned, as whites and
blacks could not share the same burial
grounds. These laws not only legalised
discrimination for whole generations, but
legitimised violence against those who
transgressed the laws. I was shocked
to learn of Floridas status as lynching
capital of the South in 1935, having
always associated this with the real
deep Southern states like Alabama and

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane

Mississippi. Lynchings were carried

out for a variety of supposed crimes,
including infringement of Labor laws, but
there was nothing more heinous than a
crime of violence by a black man against
a white woman, such as the one that
Henry is accused of. At this time, white
men ruled supreme, especially those
with money. At the other extreme were
poor black women like Missy, Selma and
Mama, with virtually no civil rights as we
understand them today.
For the veterans, both white and black,
life was extremely hard. Many had left
jobs to fight for their country, but came
back to destitution. In 1922, Congress
had approved a bonus for their service,
due to be paid out in 1945. As the teeth
of the Depression bit deeper, these
veterans began to pressure Herbert
Hoovers government into making an
early payment. In 1932, up to 40,000
veterans and their families made camp
outside the U.S. Capitol building while
Congress debated the question of an
early payment of the bonus. (One of the
most interesting yet overlooked features
of this camp was the complete integration
of black and white veterans-for the first
time ever. It went utterly unmentioned
by the press at the time, and would not

September 2nd 1935

be repeated for many years.) The House

of Representatives approved the motion,
but it was overwhelmingly defeated in
the Senate. Many of the veterans left the
scene at this time, even further dejected
and dispirited. Those 3500 or so who
stayed behind were perceived as both
a threat and an embarrassment to the
Hoover administration. Fearing that the
police would lack the resources to deal
with the veterans, Hoover authorised
the army to disperse the crowds. George
Patton, charged with commanding the
cavalry, said later that it was, the most
distasteful form of service. The violence
erupted into a national scandal that
was a key factor in ensuring Franklin
D Roosevelts victory in the next
presidential election. The penniless,
desperate veterans had helped bring
down a government-but had to wait until
1936 to get their bonus.
Roosevelt did not have long to enjoy his
election victory. With the economy still
in critical condition, and the spectre of
further unrest from the veterans, he was
quick to set up public works projectsboth to provide employment for the
disgruntled soldiers, and rebuild areas
devastated by the Depression.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane

It is not hard to see why this group

of hopeless men, scarred by their
experiences of war and defeated by their
government, would have been attracted
to a works project in the Keys. Many had
been living rough for years. As I learned
more of their story, I began to feel it was
important to make more people aware
of what happened to these men: that
they were housed in appalling conditions
and left to die, through a combination
of apathy and incompetence, when
a major hurricane struck. Equally,
the residents of Islamorada were
unprepared, either for the veterans
arrival, or for the hurricanes powers
of destruction. It is easy to imagine
the disruption caused by the hundreds
of bedraggled, disturbed soldiers on a

September 2nd 1935

small, isolated community, which itself

was struggling with economic hardship.
The tragedy that befell the Conchs was
no less shocking in its loss of life. With
their long experience of hurricanes, they
thought they were ready, but none of
their preparations could withstand winds
and waves of such magnitude. When
the storm finally receded, the area of
devastation resembled the photos taken
at the epicentre of an atomic bomb: no
buildings, no houses, no trees. Nothing
left standing. Even the soil was stripped
from the coral bedrock. A large stone
angel, a grave marker from the seaside
cemetery, was lifted and whisked 150
feet away by the wind. She still resides
in the same cemetery, her broken arms
never repaired, as a reminder of that
night.
Although meteorological science was
primitive by our standards, with none
of the hurricane tracking systems we
rely on today, the risks of storm season
were well understood by all. Ernest
Hemingway, who lived in Key West at
the time, was one of the first on the
scene after the storm and helped with
the clean-up operation. His conclusion,
published in the article Who Murdered
the Vets? (New Masses, September 17
1935), was clear:
Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans,
many of them husky, hard-working, and
simply out of luck, but many of them
close to the border of pathological cases,
to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys
in hurricane months? You could find them
face up and face down in the mangroves.
They hung on there, in shelter, until the
rising water and wind carried them away.
They didnt let go all at once, but only
when they could hold on no longerYou
found them high in the trees where the
water had swept themand in the sun
all of them were beginning to be too big

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane

September 2nd 1935

for their blue jeans and jackets that they Naturally a site was selected as far from
could never fill when they were on the Washington as it conveniently could
bum and hungry
be while still providing free labor for a
southern constituency which wanted
public improvements at somebody elses
Youre dead now, brother,
who left you there in the hurricane months expense.
Who left you there? And whats the
People will say that such a thing could
punishment for manslaughter now?
not happen today, but the residents of
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
New Orleans might disagree. We have
thousands of damaged soldiers making
In the investigation which followed, an uneasy re-entry into civilian life, with
no one was ever prosecuted for what a shockingly high suicide rate which is
happened to the veterans, despite an indictment of their treatment by the
compelling evidence of official culpability. military establishment and society as
One of the great ironies is that the same a whole.
scandal which brought Roosevelt to
power almost cost him the presidency, Heron Key does not exist, nor are any
such was the nations outrage at the of the characters based on real people.
veterans deaths. On September 12 The real hurricane struck Islamorada
1935, the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote and the other Keys on Labor Day, not the
that putting the veterans in the Keys Fourth of July. There would have been a
during hurricane season was:
separate colored area of the beach a
fair distance away, not right next to the
a piece of criminal folly committed by beach reserved for the whites. Such is
someone in Washington. The camps on the license of fiction. Many of the events
the Florida Keys were established to avert depicted did not happen, but many
another bonus march on Washington, with of them did, as told by the survivors.
all the political embarrassments involved General Douglas McArthur, given the job
in such a demonstration of discontent of breaking up the Bonus Army protest

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane

September 2nd 1935

march in Washington, was worshipped

as a hero by the very men he drove out
with bayonets and gas. Some of the
black residents were turned away from
a storm shelter in town, which was then
destroyed, forcing the white residents
to join the blacks in empty boxcars for
safety. The tragically late relief train was
blown off the tracks by the storm before
it could evacuate the veterans. Almost
all of the veterans died, and so did many,
many of the locals. People were found
high up in the lime trees, and as far as
forty miles away, dropped there by the
wind. Unlike Missy and Nathan, they did
not survive for long.
Some who did survive have recorded their memories in a fascinating video to be found
on the Keys History site at www.keyshistory.org/shelf1935hurrpage15.html
which also has photos of the memorial erected by the American Legion. The
decapitated remains of Flaglers magnificent East Coast Railway, never rebuilt to
this day, can still be seen in the turquoise waters off the Keys. They mark the place
where, on Labor Day in 1935, nature demonstrated her prodigious power over us.

Further Reading
Storm of the Century (Willie Drye, National Geographic, Washington, DC
2002) is a meticulously researched description of the storm and the investigation
which followed. The author concludes that the veterans were failed by every level of
government with responsibility for their wellbeing. Even if you do not agree with the
authors conclusion, his book is a factual account which reads like a thriller.
For a first-hand narrative of what it was like to live in the isolated, rural Keys of the
1930s, you can read hurricane survivor Charlotte Arpin Niedhauks Charlottes
Story (Laurel & Herbert, Sugarloaf Key, FL 1973) which depicts every aspect of
life during an extraordinary year.
And for a study of violence in the period, see Lynchings: Extralegal Violence in
Florida in the 1930s (W. Howard, iUniverse 2005).
Finally, everyone interested in this period of Southern history must read Zora Neale
Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper Perennial Classics, 2006),
which includes a stunning depiction of what it feels like to experience a hurricane.