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

through a “cotton patch and through a hog pen, and . . . through a big swamp.” The posse knew they were on Ernest’s trail in the swamp when one of the dogs found where Ernest had “cut his breeches legs off”; the hound got so excited, he pulled the leash out of the hand of the Perry prison camp inmate. For six miles they pursued the trail, until the dog gave out and they had to send back to their camp for more hounds. This reprieve allowed Ernest Thomas a little more time to put some distance between himself and the posse, but by early afternoon the dogs had again picked up his scent. The sheriffs continued the chase. As the hours passed, however, they recognized that the black fugitive’s apparent familiarity with the backwoods and swamps of Madison County had made of him elusive prey.
    Word of Thomas’s escape had spread by then, and the posse grew. Since before nightfall cars had been descending on the area, and men were being deputized in groups to join the manhunt. McCall made sure that the men of Bay Lake and Groveland had been alerted, in the event that any of them might still be seeking justice for the rape of Norma Padgett. With more than a thousand armed men having answered the call, they were able to encircle the farmlands and cypress swamps where they believed Thomas had hidden. Around dusk, a group of men on horseback spotted Thomas briefly and gave chase, firing their guns and ordering him to halt. Again Thomas escaped his pursuers. He disappeared into a thick cypress pond, where the dogs less effectively followed his scent and darkness hindered the search. Still, the posse had him confined, and by daylight on Tuesday, July 26, when they resumed the chase, every road Thomas might have hoped to cross had been blocked off. His sole recourse was the swamp.
    In his legless dungarees, a dirty white flannel shirt, and a pair of muddy tan slippers, Ernest Thomas had been worn down by lack of sleep and his unending flight beneath a ruthless sun. He’d run twenty-five miles, at least, when he found himself in an area of densely wooded pines at the edge of the swamp; he was not far from Moseley Hall—a black section of Madison County in which he hoped to be able to disappear. The hope evaporated when he saw the cars and the armed men patrolling the road. He retreated deeper into the woods, and sitting down, his back against a tree, he drifted into sleep. Nearby, so did one of the bloodhounds in his pursuit. Sheriff McCall had no way to determine if Ernest had befriended the dog asleep at his side or if the dog was guarding the quarry until the posse arrived. The sheriff couldn’t ask Ernest because the posse’s first sight of him asleep prompted a volley of shots that rang out across the swamp. Around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 26, Ernest Thomas’s lifeless body lay crumpled in a pool of blood, clay, and pine needles. A broken, half-empty pack of Camels was sticking up from the one pocket of his shirt.
    The next day, McCall and Yates drove Norma and Willie Padgett to Madison County in order to view the body of Ernest Thomas at the T. J. Beggs Funeral Home. Also present was the state attorney Jesse Hunter. Norma approached the casket. “That is him,” she said, staring down at the corpse. No matter that Ernest’s face and head were riddled with bullets, she further affirmed, “I would know that face anywhere. He is the one that had the gun and he is the one that drove the car.” Willie Padgett never said a word.
    Two days after the shooting, at a coroner’s inquest, a string of witnesses paraded before county judge Curtis Earp. Almost all of them testified they had been close enough to observe that Thomas was armed and had attempted to fire a .32-caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver when he was discovered; yet virtually none of them could say or even approximate, not with “so much excitement” at the scene, how many shots were fired or who was actually present to fire them when Thomas was killed. One of them claimed he was close enough to hear Thomas’s last words, “Don’t shoot, white man, don’t shoot,” but not to see who did the shooting. Nor could he say how many shots had followed, although he did attest that with all the bullets flying, one of the dogs was shot.
    On the one hand, Willis McCall told reporters that Thomas was “belligerent as the devil. He had a loaded pistol in his hand and he had his finger around the trigger”; on the other, under oath, McCall stated