Devil in the Grove

by Gilbert King

  It all changed—and in his way, with the Groveland Boys, Marshall had helped to change it. “There is very little truth to the old refrain that one cannot legislate equality,” Marshall posited in a 1966 White House conference on civil rights. “Laws not only provide concrete benefits, they can even change the hearts of men—some men, anyhow—for good or evil.” In Groveland, Mabel Norris Reese had come round. So had Jesse Hunter. Governor LeRoy Collins had done the right thing. Maybe, too, that young juror with an honest face, the one who’d been listening so intently to Marshall’s summation at the retrial in Ocala, had fixed his mind on a different kind of future for the South. Marshall’s civil cases, the long battles for voting rights and school desegregation, unquestionably effected lasting social changes, but the criminal cases more immediately brought justice. They “did the most immediate good, because they saved people’s lives,” Marshall said.

  Mabel’s article did more than stir Thurgood’s memories. He picked up the phone, and just as he had done twenty years before, when the Groveland Boys story and the name Walter Irvin first crossed his desk at the NAACP in New York, he called the director of the FBI. From J. Edgar Hoover he learned that at the present time, no, the bureau was not conducting an investigation into Irvin’s death, presumably of natural causes, but the director would have all the materials relevant to the case delivered straightaway to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Marshall thanked the director and hung up the phone. Willis McCall would soon be hearing from Hoover’s men, again.

  Natural causes. There was room enough in that conclusion for reasonable doubt. When it came to the sheriff whom Marshall had long referred to as “the sonofabitch,” nothing would surprise him, least of all the murder of a Groveland boy.

  Marshall set aside Mabel’s article on Walter Irvin’s death for his files. Before he clipped the letter to it, he read the carefully handwritten words again. They were dated March 7, 1969.

  My dear Mr. Justice,

  Enclosed please find clipping which I believe needs checking.

  I have thought of this poor man often over the years. I was shocked to read this over my morning coffee.

  McCall is a disgrace to the law of this wonderful country of ours.

  I have lived in Holly Hill, Florida for 18 years. I am Catholic, I am white, married and have a son 16 years of age.

  I am proud of you.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs. Ruth N. Starr

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  There were many excellent works that were especially valuable in my research into the life of Thurgood Marshall. Jack Greenberg’s Crusaders in the Courts (1994) is highly engaging, and provided an indispensable firsthand account of his years spent working for Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund. I made considerable use of Juan Williams’s authoritative biography, Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary (1998), in my research. Williams did an extraordinary amount of legwork, and his interviews with Marshall helped shed a bright light on the life and career of the civil rights lawyer.

  Carl Rowan’s Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall (1993), Mark Tushnet’s Making Civil Rights Law (1994), and Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice (1975) were also exceptionally useful in helping me put the pieces of Thurgood Marshall’s life together. There were two other books that were most valuable companions to have at my side. Gary Corsair’s exhaustively researched book, The Groveland Four (2004), was most helpful, and anyone interested in learning more about the Groveland Boys would be well served to read Corsair’s thorough account of the case. And Ben Green’s Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America’s First Civil Rights Martyr (1999) is an engrossing and highly readable biography of Moore that deservedly spotlights one of the forgotten heroes of the pre–civil rights movement.

  Helpful to me in its own way was An Autobiography of Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, published by Willis V. McCall, a copy of which I received from the University of Florida Libraries, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History.

  The majority of the research for this book was compiled from the vast and unredacted Groveland FBI case files, which were released to me following my filing of a Freedom of Information Act request. These files had been sealed for sixty years, and their content provided an abundance of rich material and interviews that were essential to my understanding of the case. When former Florida attorney general Charlie Crist released the results of the state’s investigation into the murder of Harry and Harriette Moore in 2006, the FBI files from that case revealed further interviews and bureau reports relating to the Groveland case and the Ku Klux Klan that were most enlightening.

  I relied heavily on the personal papers of Franklin Williams at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as well as the papers of the NAACP and the papers of Thurgood Marshall, both at the Library of Congress. The Workers Defense League Collection at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University provided much insight into the relationship between the NAACP and the WDL, and was where I discovered the journal entries of Miss L. B. De Forest.

  Gaining access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files at the Library of Congress was by far the most challenging part of this research, and I continue to be grateful to Ted Wells, Debo Adegbile, and especially Jeffrey Robinson at the LDF, who went above and beyond his call of duty to carefully vet this material so that I would be able to examine it.

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  INDEX

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Italicized numbers refer to photographic illustrations

  Aderhold, Agent (FBI agent), 236

  Akerman, Alex, Jr. (attorney)

  Groveland Boys rape trial and work of, 143–44, 162, 172–73, 174, 210

  Groveland Boys (W. Irvin) retrial and role of, 222, 230, 232, 267–68, 292, 296, 299–302, 307–8, 311–13, 323–24, 335

  life threatened by KKK, 248

  post-Groveland Boys trial appeal to Florida Supreme Court and role of, 190, 194

  post-Groveland Boys trial appeal to U.S. Supreme Court a
nd role of, 216

  pre-Groveland Boys trial motions made by, 146–47

  shootings of S. Shepherd and W. Irvin and, 232, 233–34, 241, 242

  tense relations between W. McCall and, 221–22, 227

  writes Brown v. Board of Education briefs, 335

  Alexander, Carol, failure to testify in W. Irvin’s retrial, 295

  Allison, Bill (prison camp warden), 62

  Altamonte Springs, Florida, 37

  American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 204

  Anderson, Marian, 28

  Appeals process, T. Marshall’s strategy of establishing precedent in, 48–49, 123

  Archer, Roy (judge), 187

  Armstrong, Louis, 23, 24, 29

  Arnall, Ellis (Georgia governor), 259

  Askew, Reubin (Florida governor), 357

  Assaults on blacks by law enforcement officers, 53, 55–56. See also Lynchings of blacks

  beating and blinding of Isaac Woodard, 21, 111, 120–23

  beatings of Groveland Boys Shepherd, Irvin, and Greenlee, 73–74, 127–32, 135, 138–42, 147, 184–85, 259–62

  manhunt and killing of E. Thomas, 113–14, 115–19, 126, 131

  shooting of S. Shepherd and W. Irvin (see Groveland Boys, shootings of S. Shepherd and W. Irvin)

  Associated Press, 295

  Association of Georgia Klans, 86, 91

  Axilrod, Eric (labor organizer), 80–81

  Baker, Constance. See Motley, Constance Baker

  Baltimore African American, 330, 331

  Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 2

  Bates, Clyde (deputy sheriff, Broward County, FL), 277

  Baya, Harry (National Guard Lt. Colonel), Groveland mob violence and, 93, 98–99

  Bay Lake, Florida, 34, 36

  Bell, Robert Cecil, 263

  Belvin, Tillman “Curly,” 357

  Bennett, Herman (criminologist)

  prosecutor’s attack on credibility of, 316

  testimony in trial of W. Irvin, 311–14, 315, 323, 325, 356

  Biddle, Francis (U.S. Attorney General), 30–31, 104

  Binneveld, Geoffrey (physician)