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

why didn’t he have a deputy sheriff with him in the car with the prisoners?”
    It was murder, Marshall was telling them, a lynching by law enforcement that had been subsequently whitewashed by Lake County officials and the court into an act of self-defense. But he was telling them, too, that the Miami NAACP was standing proud and firm against this travesty of justice, and with their financial support, their contributions tonight, they—the good people of Miami, undeterred by threats and violence—would help Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund fight Lake County.
    Over the crescendo of noise and enthusiasm, Marshall’s voice rose. He had a threat of his own to deliver: a message for Judge Truman Futch and anyone else who thought Thurgood Marshall was going to decamp or desert the Groveland case simply because a judge in Lake County had decided to bar him from defending Walter Irvin. “They can keep me from the courts of Florida,” Marshall shouted. “But there is no man alive or to be born who can prevent me from arguing the Groveland case before the U.S. Supreme Court!”
    The crowd roared its approval. For Harry T. Moore, it had been a remarkable event to witness. In his two decades of NAACP travels, he had heard his share of inspirational civil rights sermons with their biblical analogues of long desert journeys and parting seas, but Marshall’s vision was grounded in constitutional law and he drew the lineaments of his hope from his personal experience, from battles won and strategies mastered, from the efforts he shared with like-minded men and women determined not to see the future repeat the past. The Mount Zion Baptist parishioners reached deep into their pockets that night—their contributions exceeded a thousand dollars—with the highest single donations coming “from some of these white people in the audience.” One of the white men in attendance was Caxton Doggett, a minister from Rader Memorial Methodist Church in Miami, who later wrote to Marshall, “I was glad of the chance to hear you the other night in Miami. You are a very fine speaker. If you weren’t a lawyer, you would make a good preacher. . . . After hearing you, I decided to join the NAACP. . . . You are doing great work, and I want you to know that I am one of an increasing number of southern white men who have the highest respect for your professional ability and your integrity of character.”
    In common cause they found community and communion: this was why Moore had dedicated two decades of his life to the NAACP. He didn’t have Thurgood Marshall’s background in law, or Dan Byrd’s charisma, or Franklin Williams’s eloquence. He hadn’t the stomach for Gloster Current’s cold-eyed practicality. What he lacked in magnetism, though, he made up for in persistence and determination, and his commitment to his people in their struggle for justice and equality he would match with anyone’s. By the end of the hour in Mount Zion Baptist Church, with the clapping and stomping resounding in his head, and his heart stirred by Marshall’s words, Moore had reaffirmed his commitment to the cause. He remembered other words, too: ten years ago, when he’d fought at Marshall’s side in the Florida salary equalization lawsuits on behalf of black teachers, Marshall had said, “This is not a single battle, but rather a real war in which we will lose some battles and win others.” In the war for the Groveland Boys, Moore was ready for the next battle.
    He was driving north on U.S. 1. In two hours, he’d be back in Riviera Beach, where he and Harriette rented rooms during the school year. Classes would soon be ending for the holidays at Lake Park Colored School, and they would be returning to their house in Mims. Harriette’s brother, George Simms, a master sergeant in the army, would be home on leave from Korea, and with him and their daughters, Peaches and Evangeline, they would be celebrating not only Christmas but also their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He was looking forward to Mims, his family, the celebrations, the new year. He stopped, as he usually did on his drives up the coast, at a small grocery store in Melbourne; he’d gotten to know the owner over the years. They got to talking about the Groveland Boys case, and the man expressed concern for his friend’s safety. He wondered if maybe Harry wasn’t “going too far” in his work for the NAACP. “I’m going to keep doing it,” Moore replied in his