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

said that when the two black prisoners arrived at his house in the backseat of Yates’s car he had simply opened the door and “asked them why they wanted to do such a thing.” According to the sheriff, the two army buddies then told him that “the other two made them do it.” Finally, none of the Florida highway patrolmen or Lake County law enforcement agents questioned by the FBI had noticed any bruises, marks, or blood on any of the rape suspects when they were transported to Raiford prison; yet special agents Quigley and Matthews themselves not only had observed and photographed evidence of the prisoners’ “trauma” but also had taken statements from several prison officials who had documented “numerous bruised marks,” cut wounds, broken teeth, and bloodstained clothes at the time the three black men were taken into custody.
    Quigley and Matthews took their investigation in Lake County beyond law enforcement personnel and established witnesses to civic officials, politicians, prominent businessmen, and grove owners in this largely rural area of central Florida with a population of thirty-six thousand. What they discovered was a county controlled not by politics, money, the citrus industry, or the law, but by an embittered contingent of the Ku Klux Klan intent upon codifying a racial caste system, through violent means if necessary, that would effectively deny blacks access to political influence, economic opportunity, and social justice.
    On August 13, the agents met with Groveland’s mayor, Elma Puryear, who had witnessed the gathering of the mob outside the jail on the morning of July 16 and had safely transported Charles Greenlee to Tavares. In his statement to the FBI, Puryear related his efforts to help Groveland’s “leading citizens” protect their lives and property from the KKK, which by the evening of July 16 was filling the streets of Groveland. Off the record, Puryear disclosed that most of the trouble around Groveland had been “caused by the people of the Bay Lake region.” He also told the agents that certain parties were aware of the FBI’s presence in town, and that “word had gotten to them [the town’s prominent white citizens] that if they didn’t keep their damn mouths shut about what happened around Groveland, their homes and business property would be burned.” Neither did Puryear identify in his statement who of those prominent citizens had enabled the blacks to be evacuated to safety, but he did indicate, again off the record, that Norton Wilkins, owner of B&W Canning Company, and L. Day Edge, the wealthy owner of a large mercantile store and formerly Florida’s speaker of the House and Groveland’s mayor, had been instrumental in the evacuation.
    The Edge family, having once amassed a fortune in the turpentine and timber business before the sawmill men “cleared the county of pine trees,” had since cultivated in the same fertile soil Lake County’s increasingly profitable citrus groves. Citrus baron L. Day Edge had earned a reputation among blacks for his generosity and fairness, and on the morning that Walter Irvin was picked up by Willis McCall’s deputies, both he and his father, Cleve Irvin, had been readying themselves for another day’s work at Mr. Edge’s groves. Agents Quigley and Matthews were thus eager to speak with Edge, who had in fact been quite willing to cooperate with the FBI until he, too, fell under the cloud of threats cast by the county’s Klan. Having been informed that if he didn’t keep quiet, “he wouldn’t have a building left in Lake County”—and having spotted one of the Groveland night riders, Curtis Merritt, “watching the City Hall” to see who might be cooperating with the FBI—Edge had decided it would “very imprudent” for him to meet with the federal agents. Edge, however, did tell Puryear—and the mayor told Quigley and Matthews (off the record)—that Curtis and Bill Merritt along with Wesley Evans, the illiterate, hose-wielding grove caretaker identified by Samuel Shepherd as one of the men in the basement, had been among the ringleaders of the mob violence nearly a month earlier and were behind the current rash of threats being leveled at Groveland’s respectable citizens.
    In an interview with agents Quigley and Matthews on August 14, Groveland’s chief of police, George Mays, told them he was a “one man police department” and he “absolutely refused to furnish a signed statement form.”