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

had simply let the old man tell his story while she took notes. “Mabel,” he’d said, “I don’t believe those boys attacked the sheriff at all. I think it was deliberate.” He’d said what he’d concluded.
    So, the next morning, his step slow but his direction sure, the old man was walking down a brightly lit hallway of Waterman Memorial Hospital. One hand tucked into his red suspenders, he smiled warmly back at the nurses—everybody knew him. At the doorway to Walter Irvin’s room he offered Deputy James Yates a firm nod of his head, but he did not break his deliberate pace. He paused at the side of Irvin’s bed; he’d gotten what he wanted, a private moment. He surveyed the room, made sure it was the two of them alone. He leaned forward, looked Walter directly in the eyes. Then, in a whisper, Jesse Hunter began to speak.

CHAPTER 16: IT’S A FUNNY THING

    Walter Irvin at Waterman Memorial Hospital, Eustis, Florida. ( Federal Bureau of Investigation )
    T HIS IS WHAT human rights means in the United States! This is the American way of life,” shouted Soviet foreign minister Andrei Vishinsky from a podium at the United Nations to Security Council members and the world. He was brandishing a copy of the New York Post trumpeting, in an extra edition, the latest shocking news to come out of Lake County about the Groveland Boys shooting. “I think some people should look after their own business before sticking their noses into other people’s business,” Vishinsky scoffed.
    O N NOVEMBER 7, 1951, the Groveland Boys case again exploded onto the front pages of newspapers around the country. Locally, the St. Petersburg Times bannered “Lake Rape Case Negro Shot, Killed” across the top of its front page, and the following day, an editorial stated that “the shooting of the Groveland defendants was inexcusable” and called the incident a “terrible black eye” for Florida justice. Reporters like Stetson Kennedy, who was covering the story for the Nation , were pouring into Lake County, many of them checking into the Fountain Inn in Eustis.
    Amid the firestorm of publicity across the nation and even abroad over the killing of Samuel Shepherd and shooting of Walter Irvin, Thurgood Marshall landed at the airport in Orlando, where he was met by attorneys Alex Akerman, Jack Greenberg, and Paul Perkins. When they arrived at Waterman Memorial Hospital, awaiting them was a throng of journalists eager for comment from “Mr. Civil Rights.” Marshall’s presence amplified the importance of the recent events in Lake County, for sure; yet, comfortable though the NAACP’s most public figure was with the press, he cut the reporters short. His first order of business that day was to talk to his client, Walter Irvin.
    About the same time, special investigator Jefferson Jennings Elliott had pulled into the hospital parking lot in his 1950 Ford coupe, which comprised a “primitive mobile crime lab outfitted with kits for identifying semen, blood, and fingerprints; paraffin for detecting recent gun firings; portable lights for illuminating crime scenes; and a complete autopsy kit.” Elliott had been sent to Eustis by Governor Fuller Warren’s office to “check all angles” in McCall’s shooting of the prisoners—and to “let the chips fall where they may.” Heavy-jowled, with a big belly that hung over his belt and a large fedora tipped awkwardly on his head, Elliott might have walked out of a hard-boiled detective novel. Adjusting his round, horn-rimmed glasses, he told the reporters, “Well, boys, I’m here, but that’s all I can say.”
    Hoping to keep within Lake County’s jurisdiction any inquiries into the fatal shooting, Willis McCall had asked Judge Futch to have a “court-appointed elisor” investigate the death of Samuel Shepherd, but Futch had declined, stating, “the Governor said he wouldn’t recognize such a person.” Instead Elliott would be conducting the investigation; so, on Wednesday, November 7, with a court stenographer in tow, the governor’s man was leading Marshall, Akerman, Greenberg, Perkins, Mabel Norris Reese, seven other members of the press, and a “special nurse” into Irvin’s hospital room.
    The feeding tube was still taped to the patient’s face; Irvin was weak but lucid. The room grew very quiet in anticipation of the rumored “entirely different story” from Sheriff McCall’s version of events. Alan Hamlin, the court reporter, steadied his stenographic