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

for six years had supported him and his family, he knew he had no choice but to walk away. “My family is all scattered,” he said.
    Terence McCarthy, after seeing the burned ruins of Henry Shepherd’s house, wondered what would become of the other blacks who dared to desert the groves and independently farm land they had purchased. His Klansman driver didn’t have to wonder. “They’ll get out, be driven out or be killed, especially around Bay Lake.”

    T HE MOB HAD disbanded, but Groveland was restless, impatient for justice. One Lake County resident bluntly told a newspaper, “We’ll wait and see what the law does, and if the law doesn’t do right, we’ll do it.” Both Sheriff McCall and State Attorney Jesse Hunter hoped to forestall mob violence by ensuring that the wheels of justice moved swiftly in the Groveland rape case. Hunter began drafting indictments. On Tuesday, July 19, however—before any charges were made, before any details of the alleged crime had been announced to the public, and while the National Guard was still patrolling the area to prevent any further mob and Klan violence—the Orlando Morning Sentinel published prominently on its front page an editorial cartoon titled “No Compromise!” It featured a drawing of “The Lake County Tragedy” depicting four empty electric chairs, side by side, with a sign over them reading “The Supreme Penalty.”
    As Sheriff McCall had let it be known that the New York office of the NAACP had contacted him about the violence around Groveland, the Morning Sentinel addressed the possibility of an NAACP defense in an editorial:
    If smart lawyers or agents of different organizations seek to hamper justice through the employment of legal technicalities, they may bring suffering to many innocent Negroes.
    The paper also reported that Norma Padgett had been “bludgeoned” by her assailants; that all three prisoners had confessed to rape; and that Norma had identified Shepherd, Irvin, and Greenlee. While none of it was true, the Morning Sentinel editorial effectively captured the sentiment among most Lake County whites, especially in its implicit warning, or threat, that unless the accused men were, as McCarthy wrote, “offered up as a ‘legal’ blood-sacrifice . . . evil will befall the rest of the Negro community.”
    Mabel Norris Reese did her part as well to assure Lake County residents that lynching was unnecessary because McCall and Hunter would efficiently see to it that the rapists be executed soon by the state of Florida. In her editorial “Honor Will Be Avenged” in the Mount Dora Topic , Reese wrote, “It was a sorry thing that happened to the young couple. The trampling of their honor must be avenged [and that] revenge will be accomplished by a more frightening and awful means than a mob has at its command.”
    Sheriff Willis McCall, fearful of more violence, was not eager to release the National Guard, but by Tuesday morning he was butting heads with the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Baya, over a host of issues. For one, Baya knew false rumors were being circulated—that the blacks who had fled Groveland were now arming themselves and preparing to return—in order to allow groups of deputized whites to stop vehicles and confiscate weapons from blacks. For another, the commander knew that McCall, who had issued orders in writing that “any persons bearing arms shall be disarmed and turned over to the sheriff,” was himself ignoring this edict if the persons were white. For a third, the sheriff not only had refused to furnish Baya with the names of the mob’s ringleaders but also had declined to apprehend them himself, being “too busy trying to catch the Negro who had gotten away.”
    Because McCall was unwilling to arrest or implicate white rioters, on the grounds that such action “would result in a terrific race riot,” Baya wanted to withdraw his two hundred plus troops. He contacted Governor Warren, recommending that political pressure be put on McCall to pick up the ringleaders and take “positive action against them.”
    Willis McCall had been up all night and most of the morning. The hot Florida sun was beating down when he parked his car in front of the Groveland Hotel. He trudged to his room, where he hoped to catch a few hours of sleep before sundown, in the event that the Bay Lake men, and maybe the Klan, should night-ride again. He’d talked with Coy Tyson, and told him that the rioting had to