Harper Collins recently released Gilbert King's Devil in the
Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a
New America. The publisher's description and blurbs follow.
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 blac