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

believed that the defense had shown more than enough reasonable doubt. Thus, the Times argued, the situation now called for “compassion and calm judgment,” and in the event that the courts should in time discover the four defendants not to have been guilty of rape, the best way to ensure justice would be to commute Irvin’s sentence to life imprisonment.
    One week after LeRoy Collins took office, the U.S. Supreme Court declined Marshall’s fourth appeal on behalf of Walter Lee Irvin. Among the letters that continued to pour into the governor’s office in support of Irvin were two letters from the prosecution in the case. A letter from Sam Buie, the assistant state attorney, urged the governor, now that he was free to issue a death warrant, to “get rid of this case once and for all.” It was not the first time Buie had attempted to influence the case outside the courtroom. In November 1951, only weeks after McCall had shot the two Groveland boys, Buie had a shocking story to tell, and he chose a high-ranking NAACP officer in Ocala to tell it to. Jesse Hunter, Buie told the officer, was so livid with Marshall after the lawyer attempted to disqualify him from prosecuting the second Groveland Boys trial that Hunter entered into a conspiracy with Willis McCall to kill Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin. It was Hunter’s pride, Buie said of his boss, that “caused him to plot this killing with McCall.”
    Marshall was immediately notified of the alleged conspiracy and saw right through Buie’s ploy. He suspected that by tipping off the NAACP, Buie was doing the bidding of his friend Willis McCall, who was “trying to drag Hunter into this killing.” Marshall was convinced that Hunter was not involved in such a plot because by that time, Hunter had himself, through Mabel Norris Reese, been keeping the NAACP informed on the FBI’s investigation into McCall’s shooting of the Groveland Boys.
    Unlike Sam Buie, State Attorney Jesse Hunter made no argument for speedy execution. Hunter’s letter to Collins focused instead on the chaos that had erupted in Lake County, with the KKK and members of the National Association for the Advancement of White People breaking into targeted homes and threatening the occupants while their mobs huddled menacingly outside the door, all under the permissive eye of Sheriff Willis McCall.
    Hunter’s health had worsened since the last Groveland trial. Still, leukemia had not taken the battle entirely out of him. It was Mabel Norris Reese who reported to her seventy-five-year-old friend the recent plight of Allan Platt. While Platt and his family had managed to resist the bullying of Sheriff McCall and his deputy’s threat of arson, their landlady had not. A visit from the sheriff had convinced her to evict the Platts, out of concern, as she told Platt, that the “house might catch fire.” Hunter decided that Sheriff McCall was “out of control,” and on behalf of the Platts, the former prosecutor sued the Lake County School Board. On his own money he traveled to South Carolina to obtain documents necessary to support the Platts’ claims, and in court, demanding that the board produce evidence to prove conclusively that the Platt children had Negro blood, he left the school board’s unsupported and insupportable case in shreds. “Much as I hate it,” said the judge, Truman Futch, he had no choice but to rule in favor of the Platts, who in October 1955 won the right to return to the white public school. “The Lord be praised,” said Allan Platt, near tears. “I knew it couldn’t be any other way.”
    The verdict did not please Sheriff McCall any more than did Jesse Hunter’s apparently blossoming friendship with the “Communist” reporter for the Mount Dora Topic . “I have no comment to make whatsoever,” McCall told reporters. “Absolutely no comment.” He did have a comment for Allan Platt, though, a few days later when a band of “night-riding terrorists” firebombed the Platts’ home. McCall’s investigation turned up footprints at the scene that, the sheriff informed Platt, could have been made by some high school boys who “didn’t want to go to school with burrheads.” McCall then placed the blame for all harassment, threats, and violence aimed at the Platts, not to mention the embarrassment brought upon the Lake County School Board, on Platt himself, as he had instigated the whole series of events by contacting Mabel Norris Reese. “I’ve got more