Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

attorney general prosecute these individuals. He also offered the NAACP’s complete cooperation.
    On September 13, Alexander Campbell of the U.S. attorney general’s office informed Herbert S. Phillips, the U.S. attorney in Tampa, that “there is substantial evidence . . . that the victims were beaten and tortured as charged and that Yates, [Wesley] Evans, and [Leroy] Campbell played active parts in submitting the victims to the described indignities.” Then the strength of Alexander Campbell’s convictions wavered. The attorney general’s office, he said, would “greatly appreciate” if Phillips would consider whether action against Yates, Evans, and Campbell “would be warranted and desirable,” given the “temper of the people in the area” as well as their “fears and apprehensions.” In closing, he issued the weakest of directives: “[W]e must consider the need for enforcing the paramount law,” Campbell wrote, “so long as such action does not unduly interfere with local processes.” Campbell had provided Phillips with the opening he needed.
    In his response to the attorney general’s office, Phillips stated that, in his opinion, the defendants had “as fair a trial as any persons could have,” and that although Yates, Campbell, and Evans “may be guilty of committing a serious and despicable crime,” there were “certain matters connected with this case that should be carefully considered before prosecuting the parties for beating the alleged victims.” Reluctant to move forward with the case despite the overwhelming evidence proffered by the Justice Department, Phillips stated he “had serious doubt” that a grand jury would indict, but if one did, “it might result in another effort to commit serious violence on the defendants or victims.” In other words, any attempt to prosecute Yates, Campbell, and Evans might only incite violent parties to further harm the Groveland Boys, who were in fact rather fortunate , Phillips reasoned without irony, to have been beaten when they might have been lynched, the physical torture being “a small matter as compared to what would have happened if the sheriff had not handled the matter as he did.” A final point to consider, Phillips wrote, was that although “a strict interpretation of the law” protects prisoners from being coerced into confessing, it was important to remember that “the confessions were not used in evidence.”

    A S THE 1940S came to a close, Thurgood Marshall and his LDF attorneys were about to enter the most productive and important months of their careers. Cases were mounting. Aside from his work on the Groveland appeal, Marshall was preparing briefs for two cases that for twelve years the LDF had been waiting to bring before the Supreme Court. In addition, Marshall’s mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, who’d recently suffered a relapse after a heart attack, asked his former pupil to take over a case involving a black woman who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland’s School of Nursing.
    Fifteen years before, in 1935, Marshall and Houston together had successfully sued the University of Maryland to open the doors of its law school to black applicant Donald Gaines Murray, and Marshall now set out to convince the judge that the striking similarity between the two cases supported Esther McCready’s admission. The defendants, on the other hand, argued dissimilarity, since the Murray case had involved the law school whereas Esther McCready was suing a school of nursing.
    “Judge, I agree with that,” Marshall apparently conceded. “The law school and the nursing school are different, and I can prove it.” The judge leaned forward, attentive, curious as to the direction of Marshall’s argument. “I can prove it,” Marshall continued, “because I went to law school—and I didn’t come out a nurse.”
    It was the kind of line that Marshall’s mentor, “Old Iron Shoes,” as he was known, would never have uttered in court, but certainly the stroke of wit did not diminish the strength of Marshall’s argument. He did his ailing friend and mentor proud. He won the case for the plaintiff, and he didn’t even have to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in McCready’s favor.
    The New York office was meanwhile buzzing with activity. Busy “all day and virtually every night at the office,” the LDF lawyers—Franklin Williams, Jack Greenberg, and