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

accused men, and “since VD is so prevalent among the colored people he treats,” the doctor told Agent Roper that he had consulted with a physician and former instructor of his at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He had recommended that Binneveld put Padgett on penicillin, aureomycin, and some other prophylaxis to prevent any possible venereal infection and that he “give the patient the benefit of the doubt.”
    Binneveld had of course, by way of Sheriff McCall, provided the state attorney with a copy of the report, and he said that he’d also informed the sheriff “there were no other gross signs of bruises, breaks in the skin, or other signs of violence.” The doctor had not, however, discussed with any other party the results of his examination, as he emphatically stated to Special Agent Roper. Nor did Dr. Binneveld—the only physician, insofar as he knew, who had examined Norma Padgett—have any idea how such confidential information might have been leaked to the NAACP or anyone else. Agent Roper’s final question for the doctor echoed that of Sheriff McCall the month before: how would he testify should he be called as a witness by the prosecution and asked if Norma Padgett had been raped? The doctor had been pondering the answer to that question for weeks. He didn’t have to think about his reply. He’d said it before:
    “I don’t know.”

    T HE LAST WEEK of August 1949 brought newspaper reporters from all over the country to cover the trial of the Groveland Boys, a case that the press was calling “Little Scottsboro.” Certainly it was strikingly similar in many ways to the infamous 1931 case, in which young white women’s accusations of rape by young black men triggered coerced confessions, lynching attempts, and mob violence involving powerful sheriffs, unruly posses, and the Ku Klux Klan in Scottsboro, Alabama. In central Florida, the black papers had been covering the Groveland story since the rioting in mid-July, largely on the basis of information passed on to them by Franklin Williams in the course of his investigation. In late August local reporters were joined in Tavares by correspondents from the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender as well as a few “Northern” writers who had taken an interest in the story. So had the Christian Science Monitor ,but surprisingly, to Williams, the Associated Press and United Press International had not. Yet while Marshall and the NAACP in New York were trying to focus national attention on the racial tension and racist violence in Groveland, Florida, the big race story that August was unfolding in their own backyard.
    On August 27, 1949, in Peekskill, New York, Paul Robeson had planned to perform at a concert for the benefit of the Civil Rights Congress, an organization led by his friend the black communist, lawyer, and activist William Patterson. Earlier that summer Robeson had unpopularly delivered his controversial anti-American speech in France, and at the moment he was about to sing his first selection, hundreds of protestors stormed the stage, pelted the musicians with rocks or slammed them with chairs, and burned the “Dirty Commie” song sheets. Police did little to intervene, but Robeson vowed to return the following week. True to his word, he did, along with twenty-five thousand supporters and hundreds of union members who formed a human wall around the grounds at Cortlandt Manor to protect the performers onstage. A mob of protestors meanwhile threw rocks, overturned vehicles, and shouted epithets like “Kikes!” “Nigger lovers!” and “Go back to Russia!” They burned Robeson in effigy on a nearby hillside; close by they burned a cross.
    Five months later, in a speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy would brandish what he claimed was a secret list of more than two hundred known communists working for the U.S. State Department. Thus began the strong wave of venomous anticommunist sentiment that for the next decade would threaten not only government entities, but academia, the motion picture industry, labor unions, and the NAACP. Thurgood Marshall, ever vigilant, would strive continually to safeguard the reputation and activities of the NAACP from the taint of communism. As Roy Wilkins wrote, “We were having enough trouble getting Congress to consider even the most elementary civil rights legislation. The last thing we needed was to give