Our September Author: Gilbert King

This month we journeyed back in time to read Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, the Pulitzer-winning book by Gilbert King detailing the case of four African-Americans falsely accused of rape in the early 1950's. I found the book to have tremendous relevance to our contemporary headlines regarding police abuse and prosecutorial misconduct. In addition to the engaging presence of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the story has many compelling characters, so it's not surprising to learn that film rights have been sold and a screenplay is being written. Let the casting speculation begin!

You can get to know Gilbert King via his personal website and Facebook page, where he regularly shares articles that reflect how the themes of the book still resonate today. For a short synopsis of the case, see this "Real History" segment.  For a longer introduction, the Miller Center has a good video and audio interview. If you like podcasts, The Drunken Odyssey also has an interview, My personal favorite though, and a good one if you've already read the book and aren't looking to recap the details, is this free-flowing conversation between King and novelist Maaza Mengiste (someone we will will surely read at some point) from New York University. It's just great to see two seemingly very different writers find so much in common.

King's previous book looks like it would be of interest to our Loyal Readers as well. The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South details the botched electrocution of a seventeen-year-old Louisiana boy. In light of more recent botched executions, King wrote a compelling op-ed for the New York Times about the case. Noting that both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas cited the Francis case in opinions regarding execution protocols, King wrote,

And 60 years after two drunken executioners disregarded the tortured screams of a teenage boy named Willie Francis, the Supreme Court continues to do so.

Sounds like Willie Francis is a must-read for all death penalty abolitionists.

I'm sure our Pasadena Readers with loyalties to NASA will enjoy learning that King is involved in the writing of a forthcoming series called Unravelling the Cosmos involving what sounds like a lot of JPL-generated imagery. King also writes for the Smithsonian on a variety of topics. Here's a short article about astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Finally, reading this book reminded me that Laurence Fishburne did a one-man show Thurgood, about Thurgood Marshall a few years back which was made into an HBO film. This book really whet my appetite for learning more about this important historical figure and the film sounds like a fun place to start to learn more.

For September: Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

Next month please join us in reading Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America  The book was the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. I am really looking forward to exploring the relevance of this historical incident in light of today's headlines regarding police brutality and race relations. In fact, if you are a fan of Slate's Political Gabfest, you know that Yale Law professor, James Forman recommended Devil in the Grove this week for that very reason! Start reading now and mark your calendar for our September 21st discussion!

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 an explosive and deadly 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. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.” 

And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terror” at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next. 

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, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”