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

“Lynching Editor,” who was covering the events in Eustis on behalf of the Pittsburgh Courier . “Colored men who are accused of raping white women don’t have a chance in this part of the world,” she wrote. “Walter Irvin’s chances found a thin string to hang on Saturday when Lake County finally woke up and began to believe that maybe he was innocent after all.”
    One reporter tracked down James Yates at his home in Mount Dora. The deputy appeared to be caught off guard when asked to comment on Irvin’s claim that it was Yates, not the sheriff, who had fired the intended kill shot into Irvin’s neck. “It’s a funny thing,” Yates stammered, adding, “no comment at this time.”
    Hunter, who “was visibly shaken” by what he had witnessed on Tuesday night, had, “since the shooting, virtually run out on Sheriff McCall,” one reporter observed. “This is the worst thing that ever happened in Lake County,” Hunter said. “It will ruin the county.”
    The FBI agents returned to their district bureau to type up their notes and file their reports. In confidential report MM 44-267 the following notation would appear: “IRVIN agreeable to lie detector test. Sheriff McCALL and Deputy YATES do not desire to take lie detector test, McCALL claims sees no reason to take test as he has told truth.”
    B ACK AT THE San Juan Hotel, the lawyers worked on strategy. Greenberg amended a motion for a change of venue, citing the attempted murder of Walter Irvin by the sheriff and his deputy as a reason that Irvin could not get a fair trial in Lake County. Marshall, meanwhile, telegraphed the Justice Department; he wanted McCall and Yates to be found in contempt of court for defying the U.S. Supreme Court “and the laws of this country.” Marshall also contacted Roy Wilkins and Walter White in New York, to have them instruct all NAACP branches that as of now the Groveland Boys case was their top priority. Marshall wanted Walter Irvin’s story to be recounted in every black church on the upcoming Sunday; he wanted protests staged at the local level everywhere across America. In response, Wilkins set up a plan whereby every NAACP branch would arrange a “Groveland Memorial Protest Meeting” and engage in an organized letter-writing campaign in newspapers and on the radio to draw attention to the nature of Southern justice. “We must leave no stone unturned to see to it that the entire Nation learns the facts about this cold-blooded murder of a boy in shackles,” Wilkins informed NAACP officials. “We must bring every possible pressure to bear to the end that these legal lynchers are brought to justice. If we fail in this, our whole struggle for human rights will be in jeopardy.” Very soon—from labor unions, from churches and synagogues, from veterans committees and fraternal organizations, from individual outraged citizens across the country—Governor Fuller Warren’s office in Tallahassee would be inundated with letters and telegrams condemning Sheriff McCall’s brutality.
    Marshall also sent a telegram to his old friend Harry T. Moore: the one man in Florida with the tenacity and fortitude to bring pressure to bear on the men in Lake County who were not only responsible for the injustices in the Groveland Boys case but also determined “to whitewash the whole affair.” Moore, in fact, had already wired Governor Warren to urge an investigation into the sheriff’s shooting of the two Groveland boys; and for years, with no success but with perseverance nonetheless, Moore had been pressing the governor’s office to launch an investigation into lynching in Florida. Marshall wanted Moore beside him in the Groveland Boys fight for justice, no matter the precariousness of Moore’s position in the NAACP. The national office, and more particularly Gloster Current—in Marshall’s view, a good company man with an eye only for budgets and membership rolls—had been building a case against Moore’s management and leadership in Florida’s branches, but Marshall, by virtue of his own experience in the South, knew more particularly the hostile conditions that dedicated men like Moore had to endure continually in the regions they represented. “There isn’t a threat known to men that they do not receive,” Marshall said. “They’re never out from under pressure. I don’t think I could take it for a week. The possibility of violent death for them and their families is something they’ve learned to