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

she boarded a bus in Leesburg on August 2. She got off the bus in Groveland and asked the proprietor at the station where Padgett lived. He suggested she talk to “Ma Padgett,” who lived in a house on Main Street. Ma Padgett invited the pleasant young woman in for lunch. De Forest was surprised by the hospitality.
    As it happened, a son had borrowed the family car, so Ma Padgett wasn’t able to drive her unexpected visitor down to Bay Lake; however, one of her neighbors, a Mrs. Flowers Cockcroft, was willing to help. A short while later, Miss De Forest was traveling over a dirt road with Mrs. Cockcroft and her young children—with the wife and children of the man who, as Terence McCarthy had briefed De Forest, had led the night-riding mob in Groveland—past the scattered bricks and charred remains of Henry Shepherd’s home. Mrs. Cockcroft remained silent, her eyes focused on the road before her.
    Norma and Willie were not at home. Nearby, Norma’s aunt was, and she introduced Miss De Forest to her “very cordial” family and invited her to spend the night. She met Padgetts and Tysons and Tomlinsons, who were also related, and she observed that they “live in a primitive way” in Bay Lake: “No bathrooms, out-houses a distance from the house; electric lights and oil stoves.” On fifty acres of Tyson property were “a horse, cow, hogs, chickens and tractor,” as well as a smaller house, owned by Norma’s uncle, in which Willie and Norma were living together again. That Betty Lou Tomlinson, Norma’s cousin, “talked about the case quite frankly” with the visitor did not sit well with other of the relatives: The Joiners especially “did not like the idea,” De Forest wrote. Betty Lou affirmed that the Groveland Boys had been offered liquor “to repay them” after they’d stopped to help Norma and Willie by the side of the road—an important narrative detail omitted in the trial testimony.
    Late in the afternoon of August 2, on her tenth day in Lake County, L. B. De Forest found herself finally face-to-face with Norma Padgett, at a prayer meeting. Norma was holding a newborn boy in her arms. A year after her alleged rape by the Groveland Boys “Norma had just given birth to a white child,” De Forest reported, and also noted that Willie “seems fond of his baby.” He was now working at a nearby sawmill and “finishing a course in farming.” Norma and Willie took a liking to the stranger; they, too, invited her to stay overnight and to go fishing with them the next day. Miss De Forest said yes, twice. In her bag she’d been carrying around a baby gift; an embroidered bib, should she and Norma eventually meet. Norma accepted the bib with a smile.
    The friendliness and hospitality emboldened De Forest. She began circulating among the parishioners at the prayer meeting of the Bay Lake Missionary Baptist Church. They admired her peace pin; they wondered about her book. She explained that her book was a petition to abolish capital punishment, and the Bay Lake Baptists nodded. They leafed through the pages, surveyed the signatures. De Forest handed one woman her pen. The woman turned to the last page of signatures and penned in her name. The book and pen were passed from one Bay Lake resident to another, from Tysons to Padgetts to Tomlinsons to Joiners. “None of the Padgetts are in favor of capital punishment,” De Forest wrote.
    Miss De Forest spotted Willie Padgett. He was standing beside Norma, Norma with a baby in her arms. De Forest thought that maybe “they would help to save the two boys from the chair, and shorten the life sentence of the youngest boy, even if . . . they committed the alleged rape.” She approached the young couple with a smile on her face, with the pen and book in her hands.
    T HURGOOD MARSHALL WAS in New York on November 6, the day before preliminary motions were scheduled to begin in Tavares. He was planning to fly into Orlando on the seventh. Perkins, Greenberg, and Alex Akerman, who had returned to Florida for the trial, would deal with the hearings on the motions the defense had filed. Akerman was staying at the San Juan Hotel, as was Greenberg, who had requested a 7 a.m. wake-up call to allow sufficient time for him and Akerman to drive comfortably to the Tavares Court House with Perkins for a 10 a.m. appearance before Judge Futch. The defense had moved for a change of venue and for the disqualification of State Attorney Jesse Hunter as prosecutor on