Saturday, August 31, 2013

Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

Started: 8/27/13
Finished: 8/31/13
Year: 2012
Pages: 361
Genre: Non fiction
Grade: B
Reason for reading: borrowed from library
Blurb (from book jacket): "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 Supreme Court when he become embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change to 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 form 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."
Opinion: An interesting case where it continues to amaze me the closed mindedness of others, just based on a person's skin.

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