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

said. What, she wasn’t sure, but something, even though she knew that he was ill. So she was waiting, and when she saw him ambling toward her, all the words she sought got lost in tears. Jesse Hunter gently clasped her arm; he tried to console her, suggested they might get something to eat.
    “Get away,” Reese said, pulling her arm away from him.
    The vehemence, restrained but unexpected, left Hunter aghast.
    “How could you do that?” she asked him, tears spilling from her eyes.
    Hunter swallowed. “I just had to,” he said.
    Reese shook her head, unable even to look at him.
    “It was my duty,” he said, his hoarse voice failing him. “As a prosecutor.”

CHAPTER 22: A PLACE IN THE SUN

    LeRoy Collins is sworn in as Florida’s governor on January 4, 1955. ( Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida )
    I DON’T SEE HOW in the name of God anybody could subject that boy to any more inhuman punishment. Florida is a bad place to live,” observed Baltimore Afro-American reporter Buddy Lonesome, dumbstruck by the cruelty he had witnessed both at Irvin’s trial and outside the courtroom. He was sitting next to Marshall, scribbling down notes for the next day’s paper, as their hired car sped toward the Orlando airport on Thursday night, February 14.
    The verdict made front-page news across the country on February 15. The reporters who’d covered the trial had hardly been surprised that Walter Irvin was found guilty; that Lake County justice had not been tempered by mercy, however, did confound many of them. Newspapers shouted outrage in boldface type, but even less inflammatory headlines noted the want of clemency, like that of Friday’s New York Times , which read: “All-White Jury in 3-Day Retrial of ’49 Groveland Rape Case Fails to Urge Mercy.” The national press expressed its expectation that in view of the beatings and shooting that Irvin had endured, Judge Truman Futch might exhibit some restraint, even in the absence of a recommendation from the jury, and sentence the retried and reconvicted Groveland boy to life imprisonment.
    Local newspapers praised the “tranquillity” of the trial atmosphere in Marion County, but editorials in the North’s leftist and black presses were unforgiving of white justice in central Florida. “Brutal and cynical white supremacy Florida has again announced its intentions of smearing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with the blood of a Negro,” declared an editorial in the left-wing Daily Worker . “A lynch court presided over by a lynch judge has gone through a lynch trial of the 24-year-old Walter Lee Irvin before an all-white citizenry, 99 percent of which believed the defendant guilty. This court differed only in form from a white-supremacist mob. Instead of the savage whoops, there were the prejudiced appeals of Prosecutor Jesse Hunter.” The newspaper called on citizens to swamp Governor Fuller Warren’s office “with demands for a pardon to Irvin” and to protest the court’s action with work stoppages and demonstrations. The editorial noted, too, that “not one of the more than 14 bombings in Florida has produced a defendant.”
    After the “lynch trial” in Ocala, Walter Irvin had been returned by the Marion County sheriff to Raiford, and to death row. A New York Post reporter interviewed Irvin at the state prison, where he again wore the gray coveralls issued to condemned prisoners. Irvin admitted to no regrets for having refused the plea deal proposed by the governor. “I’m not sorry, not even now,” he said. “Naturally, I would rather have a life sentence than the electric chair, but I thought it wouldn’t be right for me to plead guilty when I’m not guilty.” The decision had been his alone, he told the reporter—“my attorneys didn’t tell me what to do. They left it up to me”—although he did ask them “why the state made that offer. They didn’t know. They knew the case had lots of publicity and maybe that was why.” Irvin himself “thought the state probably thought I was innocent. I was happy about that, but I told my attorneys I didn’t think it would be fair to plead guilty. I would have been telling a lie on myself.” Even though, as Marshall had told him, he might be free in eight to ten years, barring bad behavior, if he accepted the deal, and despite the fact that, if he didn’t, his attorneys “couldn’t make me a definite promise about what would happen,” Irvin hadn’t needed time to think