Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (P.S.)
Winner
of the Pulitzer Prize
“A must-read, cannot-put-down history.” — Thomas
Friedman, New York Times
Arguably the most important
American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of
bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before
the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to
change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.
In 1949, Florida's orange
industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow
labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with
murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old girl cried rape, McCall
pursued four young black men who dared envision a future for themselves beyond the
groves. The Ku Klux Klan joined the hunt, hell-bent on lynching the men who
came to be known as "the Groveland Boys."
Associates thought it was
suicidal for Marshall to wade into the "Florida Terror," but the
young lawyer would not shrink from the fight despite continuous death threats
against him.
Drawing on a wealth of
never-before-published material, including the FBI's unredacted Groveland case
files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund files,
Gilbert King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
We all have heard the stories of lynchings, cross burnings, and sanctioned murder of black people by law enforcement, but this book really personalized it. You get to know the victims, and the perpetrators, in stark relief, that just makes it all even more horrifying. Thurgood Marshall and everyone on his team, and many others who were trying to fight against this racial violence, were extremely brave to even show up down there in Lake County, Florida. Threatened with violence constantly, he had to be whisked from courthouse to hotel, or another secret lodging, so nothing would happen to him. (Not to mention how hard it was to even find a hotel who would house a black man.)
This book mostly centers on one case -- the Groveland Boys "rape" case, as it was known, where a white woman fabricated a story about black men raping her, and the police manhunt for random suspects to blame it on; then the police fabricating an attempted escape by the suspects and Sheriff Willis McCall committing murder and attempted murder. Shocking, horrifying, and anger inducing. But amazing job by the author in highlighting the exhaustive work by Marshall and the NAACP to try to get some justice for these men, and eventually getting people to see the light on what was really going on in Lake County (albeit a little too late). This will stay with me forever.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.