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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "A must-read, cannot-put-down history." -- Thomas Friedman, New York Times Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. In 1949, Florida''s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old girl cried rape, McCall pursued four young black men who dared envision a future for themselves beyond the groves. The Ku Klux Klan joined the hunt, hell-bent on lynching the men who came to be known as "the Groveland Boys." Associates thought it was suicidal for Marshall to wade into the "Florida Terror," but the young lawyer would not shrink from the fight despite continuous death threats against him. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI''s unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP''s Legal Defense Fund files, Gilbert King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader.
About the author
Gilbert King has written about U.S. Supreme Court history for the
New York Times and the
Washington Post, and is a featured contributor to
Smithsonian magazine's history blog,
Past Imperfect. He is the author of
The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.
Summary
Winner
of the Pulitzer Prize
“A must-read, cannot-put-down history.” — Thomas
Friedman, New York Times
Arguably the most important
American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of
bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before
the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to
change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.
In 1949, Florida's orange
industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow
labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with
murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old girl cried rape, McCall
pursued four young black men who dared envision a future for themselves beyond the
groves. The Ku Klux Klan joined the hunt, hell-bent on lynching the men who
came to be known as "the Groveland Boys."
Associates thought it was
suicidal for Marshall to wade into the "Florida Terror," but the
young lawyer would not shrink from the fight despite continuous death threats
against him.
Drawing on a wealth of
never-before-published material, including the FBI's unredacted Groveland case
files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund files,
Gilbert King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader.
