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

Miami or Jacksonville, and thereby remove himself from any further proceedings in the Groveland Boys case. Instead Futch chose a venue within the Fifth Judicial District, where he could preside in the retrial. He postponed hearings until mid-January. That done, he “took the first step toward a legal lynching of Walter Lee Irvin,” as one newspaper reported: the judge barred Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg from defending Walter Irvin, on the grounds that they “stirred up trouble in the community.” The decision was made, Futch said, and as Hunter had earlier argued, “because they represent the NAACP” and not the client.

    H ARRY T. MOORE drove his blue Ford down “the Great Black Way” of Second Avenue, past the Lyric Theater and the brightly lit nightclubs and dance halls, into the heart of Overtown—or “Colored Town,” or the “Harlem of the South,” as the bustling, self-sustaining neighborhood on the other side of the tracks from downtown Miami was more commonly known. It was a world away from the rural communities of North Florida with their whitewashed community centers and tidy churches where Harry would try to raise a few more dollars for the NAACP. In Overtown, the churches were the centers of the community, vibrant, essential to the social and spiritual life of Miami’s black population. Moore parked his sedan not far from the Mount Zion Baptist Church. He relished the energy in the early evening air as he walked toward the imposing Mediterranean Revival building. He had expected the scores of stylishly dressed blacks who were filing into the church; he had not expected the police.
    Heavily armed, watchful, up and down the sidewalk, policemen were patrolling the streets outside the church. While Miami had seen a rash of violence over the past year, for the most part the bombings had been hit-and-run, the intention being to destroy property, usually unoccupied churches and synagogues, not to assault people. No doubt, though, the mass meeting of December 13 at Mount Zion Baptist Church—its topic widely advertised as “The Truth About Groveland,” its purpose to raise money for the Groveland Boys defense—was proving to be provocative: anonymous telephone threats stated the church would be bombed that night when the featured speaker, Thurgood Marshall, took the pulpit. Immediately upon learning of the threat, Mount Zion’s pastor, the Reverend Edward T. Graham, had notified a member of the City Commission, and shortly thereafter Miami’s chief of police—who “believed that the threat came from someone interested in the Groveland case since it was on that case that Mr. Marshall was to speak”—had promised the church, and Marshall, protection. Two weeks earlier, on a similar NAACP fund-raising occasion, Thurgood Marshall had spoken about Groveland at the Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York; he had not needed a band of police guards to shield him and sweep him safely into the church.
    At Mount Zion, armed guards surrounded the pulpit. Several white citizens were seated on the speakers’ platform with Marshall, and whites also filled the first few rows in the church. Thunderous applause greeted Marshall when he rose to speak; the police inside the church shuffled nervously. Moore had never heard Marshall argue a case before the Supreme Court, where, as Jack Greenberg observed, he assumed a courtroom style that was “ordinary, conversational, and undramatic.” Mount Zion Baptist Church was not a courtroom, and Moore watched mostly in awe as Marshall—fiery, impassioned, defiant—abandoned his lawyerly measures for preacher-like stylings in a slightly exaggerated Southern drawl. “In a mass meeting,” Greenberg said, “he could bring an audience to its feet, clapping and stomping.” And that night in Overtown he did.
    Moore marveled at Marshall’s power in the pulpit. Riveting his audience, eliciting gasps of horror and murmurs of sorrow, he unfolded the story of the Groveland Boys and summoned plaints of outrage in response to the questions that punctuated his tale: the same questions that Moore had been posing in his letters to Governor Warren over the past two and a half years.
    “Why did McCall have to remove the prisoners at night?” Marshall’s voice boomed, and when the rumble of discontent in the pews began to subside, he roused the audience again: “Why did he have to travel on an isolated road instead of the main highway?” And again: “And