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

bodies would “wind up in Duck River,” which they had to cross each day on the way to court. The white reporters covering the trial pleaded with Raymond to leave town with them, but he had a feeling the story of the Columbia Race Riot hadn’t ended with the verdicts, and he chose to ride back to Nashville with Marshall and the NAACP lawyers.
    With their heads down, the lawyers humbly exited the courtroom. Gone was Marshall’s usual swagger. There were no pictures or proclamations on the courthouse steps. Marshall walked briskly. Looby tried to keep up with him as best he could on his bad leg; he’d spent months in a cast after being struck by an automobile and was still limping noticeably. Marshall waited impatiently as the lawyers, with Raymond tagging along, hopped into Looby’s car. They drove a few blocks to Mink Slide, where they picked up soft drinks and crackers at Julius Blair’s drugstore—the epicenter of the race riots nine months earlier. After some congratulatory handshakes, Blair urged them to get moving. Marshall, though, wanted to do some private celebrating.
    Maury County was a dry county, but Marshall had become acquainted with the local bootlegger, so there would be just one stop to make before they headed north to Nashville. The sedan stole down a dirt road at just about eight o’clock in the evening. The bootlegger, however, had disappointing news. “I just sold the last two bottles to the judge!” he told Marshall. The four men headed for Nashville, empty-handed.
    With Marshall at the wheel, Raymond beside him, and Looby, in part because of his bad leg, in the back with Weaver amid piles of law books and case files, the four men heaved a collective sigh of relief as they headed out of Columbia. They had seen the signs posted around town during the trials:
    NIGGER READ AND RUN. DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU HERE. IF YOU CAN’T READ, RUN ANYHOW!
    To Marshall, they recalled a message he had received mid-trial from Walter White: “Take care of yourself and keep your feet in running order.”
    The sedan had just crossed a bridge over Duck River when they came upon a car parked in the middle of the road. Marshall honked the horn and waited, but the car did not move, so he drove around it and headed for Nashville. Inside the sedan it was quiet; unspoken went the fear that something was amiss. Then, piercing the silence, the sound of a siren screamed from behind.
    “Thurgood,” Looby said. “That siren. It’s a police car!”
    “Is it following us?” Marshall asked.
    “Yes. It’s coming after us fast.”
    “You’d better stop the car, Thurgood,” Weaver said.
    Marshall turned his head and was troubled to see three cars following them. The first, carrying highway patrolmen, roared past the sedan and forced Marshall to jam on the brakes. Quickly, eight men, some in police uniforms and some in civilian clothes, converged on the sedan. Marshall saw that a few of them had their hands on their guns while others shone flashlights on the men inside. Reporter Harry Raymond kept his mouth shut, but he knew this wasn’t a routine police stop.
    The lawyers and Raymond were ordered out of the car. They froze as one cop approached.
    “You men the lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?”
    “Yes, I’m Thurgood Marshall. This is Maurice Weaver and this gentleman is Alexander Looby.”
    The cop looked them over. “Drinking, eh?”
    “I beg your pardon,” Marshall replied.
    “I said you’ve been drinking. Celebrating the acquittal. Driving while intoxicated.”
    Weaver interjected that this stop was a civil rights violation and, furthermore, it was obvious none of them had been drinking.
    “Stay out of this, Weaver,” the cop said. “You’re a white man and have no business in this car anyway.”
    The police then asserted their right to search the car and Weaver demanded that they produce a warrant. Using flashlights, Marshall was able to read the “John Doe” warrant signed by a deputy sheriff, charging the lawyers with transporting whiskey in violation of “county local option law.”
    “Look,” Marshall told Weaver. “Let’s watch him. Don’t let him put any liquor in there, ’cause this is a dry county.”
    The police search of the car turned up nothing, so they decided to search the lawyers.
    “You got a warrant to search us?” Marshall asked.
    “No,” the officer responded.
    “Well, the answer is no,” Marshall said.
    The