Devil in the Grove
Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
HarperCollins · Print & ebook · February 19, 2013
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.
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- Who it’s for
- A clear, human-scale history that follows legal pressure and consequence without losing the thread.
- Genres
- Historical True Crime, Civil Rights, Black History
- Published
- HarperCollins, February 19, 2013
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Start with this bookAbout this book
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.
Continue reading
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.
Why It Clicks
A clear, human-scale history that follows legal pressure and consequence without losing the thread.
Come here for
- Thurgood Marshall, courtroom history, and the legal struggle around Groveland
- Warm, explanatory nonfiction with a clean historical sweep
Expect
- Southern U.S. history told with case-by-case focus
- Insight-forward nonfiction; steady, readable, unsentimental
Where it sits
| Historical True Crime | 34% |
|---|---|
| Black History | 31% |
| Civil Rights | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- 20th-Century America
- World History
- The Americas History
- Social History
Show all 8 publisher categories
- Black History
- Civil Rights
- African American Studies
- How Cultures Work
- Authors
- Gilbert King, Peter Francis James, Harper
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- February 19, 2013
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- 20th-Century America