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

public. In a 1947 letter, Georgia governor Ellis Arnall had credited Kennedy with uncovering evidence that “has facilitated Georgia’s prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan.” In 1951, he had not yet published I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan , a book that would have more clearly revealed his identity to Elliott. Kennedy handed the Klan Kard to the special investigator.
    “Well, well!” Elliott said. “I see you know Mr. A-y-a-k [code for “Are you a Klansman?”] . . .”
    “Sure do,” Kennedy answered, “and Mr. A-k-a-i [“A Klansman am I”], too.”
    In reply, by Kennedy’s account, Elliott disclosed that he was a member of the East Point Klavern in Atlanta, and after a quick exchange in which he and Kennedy shared the names of people they both knew, Elliott “opened up immediately” to the reporter about the Groveland Boys case.
    “On the basis of that Kard you just showed me,” Elliott said, “I don’t mind telling you that when those niggers were first delivered to the state pen they’d had the hell beaten out of them.” Elliott remarked, too, that Raiford officials “were so afraid somebody might try to pin the beatings on them,” they’d had the Groveland Boys photographed as soon as they’d arrived.
    The conversation was interrupted when a fellow reporter showed up, and Kennedy excused himself, wanting to avoid any chance of his undercover work arising as a topic for discussion. He left with what he thought was a major scoop, although by then the FBI had already documented that the deputies Yates and Campbell had beaten the Groveland Boys. The other, perhaps bigger story was that Jefferson J. Elliott had admitted to being a member of the KKK: a detail that, to Kennedy’s mind, might point to a conspiracy on the part of the governor, himself a former Klansman, and his special investigator to whitewash a cold-blooded murder by Sheriff Willis McCall.
    Stetson Kennedy didn’t even stop to pack a toothbrush or his clothes. Bent on flying direct to Washington, he hopped a bus to Orlando and got to the airport, where he found himself short of cash to pay for the passage to D.C.—but not so short he couldn’t buy some bar bourbon, which he spilled down the front of his shirt so that he was smelling, if not entirely looking, like a common drunk. He telephoned Thurgood Marshall, now back at his office in New York. He offered the NAACP a deal: in exchange for a plane ticket to D.C., Kennedy would provide them with information about J. J. Elliott that directly affected the Groveland Boys case. “Red hot information,” Kennedy said, so hot he “had to get out of town in a hurry.”
    “What kind of information?” Marshall asked.
    “Can’t tell you over the phone,” Kennedy answered. “Don’t know who’s listening. Can you meet me at the airport in Washington at 11:30 tonight?”
    Kennedy also hinted to Marshall that he was looking “for further funds to continue further investigation.” Prepared to deal with only one proposition at a time, Marshall agreed to make arrangements for Kennedy’s airline ticket.
    “If the information he has can stand up,” Marshall told the Defender’ s Arnold DeMille, who was listening in, “it’ll be a heck of a good story and will mean a lot to the case. Let’s go down and meet the guy. Maybe he does have something.”
    Marshall booked flights for both himself and DeMille, and at 11:30 p.m. on November 11, he arrived in Washington from New York. He checked into Hotel 2400, where he waited in his room with DeMille; a local NAACP attorney, Frank Reeves; and a special agent from the FBI.
    The FBI was unimpressed by Kennedy’s information, whereas Kennedy was “completely surprised” by theirs: that a grand jury had already declined to indict Yates and Campbell on charges related to the beatings of the Groveland Boys. To better represent in his work the treatment of the Groveland Boys by the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Kennedy suggested that the FBI provide him with their internal reports. Further, Kennedy outlined for the FBI agent the nature of the investigation that would be required to effect a reopening of grand jury proceedings; he also indicated that the agents assigned to the investigation should not be from or currently located in the South, as the agents who had worked on the case, he believed, had shown “prejudice to negroes.”
    The FBI agent immediately challenged Kennedy. He wanted names, he wanted dates, he wanted instances,