Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New AmericaWinner 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. |
From inside the book
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... story. The case was key to Marshall's perception of himself as a crusader for civil rights, as a lawyer, willing to stand up to racist judges and prosecutors, murderous law enforcement officials, and the Klan in order to save the lives ...
... story of violence and cruelty in the South, and he knew that once again order would be restored, as always, with blacks' “blood running in the gutters.” An editorial in the Columbia Daily Herald proclaimed that the “situation is in the ...
... story of the Columbia Race Riot hadn't ended with the verdicts, and he chose to ride back to Nashville with Marshall and the NAACP lawyers. With their heads down, the lawyers humbly exited the courtroom. Gone was Marshall's usual ...
... story for the Daily Worker. “I am certain . . . a lynching was planned,” he wrote. “Thurgood Marshall was the intended victim.” Walter White was convinced that had Looby obeyed police orders and continued driving to Nashville on that ...
... story neo-Georgian building on Coogan's Bluff that towered over the town houses and tenements of Harlem. The poet Langston Hughes spoke of “two Harlems,” and he clearly had 409 Edgecombe in mind when he wrote of those who “live on that ...
Contents
Trouble Fixin to Start | |
A Little Bolita | |
7 Wipe This Place Clean | |
A Christmas Card | |
You Have Pissed in My Whiskey | |
Its a Funny Thing | |
No Man Alive or to Be Born | |
All Over the Place like Rats | |
Private Parts | |
A Genius Here Before | |
The Colored | |
A Place in the | |
Dont Shoot White | |
Quite a Hose Wielder | |
Bad | |
Atom Smasher | |
In Any Fight Some Fall | |
This is a Rape Case | |
Epilogue | |
Acknowledgments | |
Index | |
About the author | |
Read | |
Other editions - View all
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a ... Gilbert King No preview available - 2017 |
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a ... Gilbert King No preview available - 2013 |