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

was “pretty well acquainted with the people of Lake County,” because at that juncture Akerman objected. For reason of being a member of law enforcement, McCall was excused by Futch.
    The court proceeded to closing statements, with Sam Buie beginning the arguments for the state. The young attorney first took the jurors through the evening of July 15, 1949, as it had been experienced by seventeen-year-old Norma Padgett: how she had been ravished by four black men but had had the presence of mind to get good looks at all four of them as well as to take note of the car they were driving. “Gentlemen,” he told the jury, “in this case the only thing you have to consider is which testimony you are going to believe. Are you going to believe this girl, or are you going to believe that defendant? They are the only two persons living who were present at that thing to know anything about it. . . .”
    Buie next addressed, and deprecated, the testimony by “crazy” Herman Bennett in regard to the plaster-cast footprint evidence. “Now, gentlemen, if you believe the testimony from that man from Miami, then please God turn the boy loose,” Buie implored. “Turn him loose, that’s what you’ve got to do if you believe that man, turn that boy loose. And no matter what that poor country girl Norma Padgett said to you, if you believe what that man says for God’s sake, turn the boy loose. . . . I submit to you gentlemen that the statements that he made is the most asinine statement that I have ever heard before any competent court in the state of Florida, and yet he sits up here and expects you to believe any such junk as that, I tell you gentlemen, that is an insult to your intelligence.”
    In closing, Buie reminded the jurors that the officers and deputies of Lake County had solemnly sworn to uphold the law. “Now, are all these men liars? Have they any reason whatsoever, under God’s name, and has either Yates . . . or Campbell or any of the rest of them any reason to lie? No, gentlemen, I don’t believe they would, and I know that you do not believe it either.”
    Marshall knew that he really had no choice; he would address the jury. “They’re probably wondering what that big Negro is sitting at the defense table for,” he’d told reporters outside the Ocala court. Inside the courtroom, when he rose, Marshall could sense, as he often did when trying cases in the South, that neither the spectators nor the jurors knew quite what to expect from him. He stood “in a difficult spot,” as one reporter observed, for, “if he didn’t speak, the jury might regard him as some sort of sinister puller of strings for Akerman,” but, “if he did speak, he had to avoid seeming ‘uppity’ to the white jury.” He was of course going to speak, because it wasn’t a matter of choice; it was an obligation, not only to his client but also to the community. Blacks had crowded into the balcony in large part to hear and see Mr. Civil Rights, and to witness possibility; and in “that big Negro” the whites on the main floor might see something of the future. He surveyed the jurors. The older men among them looked vaguely stunned, “as if they never knew a Negro could ‘stand right up there and talk.’ ” On the other hand, a young juryman with an “honest face” regarded the special counsel as attentively as he had followed the entire trial. He “seemed to listen with respect” as Marshall delivered his address to the jury.
    “Gentlemen of the jury,” Marshall began, “if you will bear with me for a moment, I will please explain to you who I am and where I am from. I am Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and I am from Baltimore, Maryland, and am associated in this case as defending counsel, and Mr. Paul Perkins is from Orlando, and he is also associated in this case and is a member of the bar of the state of Florida, and gentlemen, I want to tell you that I think we understand the problem we have here, and insofar as I do understand it, I would like to discuss it with you for a few moments.”
    Irvin sat erect in his chair, “drumming his fingers together, listening the way a man listens when his life depends on what he’s listening to,” one newspaper reported. Another noted that off to the side, Willis McCall “listened intently, gritting his teeth.”
    “Now, in cases of this type,” Marshall continued, “we are all of us up