Devil in the Grove summary

By the late 1940s, Thurgood Marshall had become a prominent figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for his efforts to dismantle Jim Crow laws. Initially, some colleagues were skeptical of him, but Marshall won them over with his sense of humor, commitment to equality, and exceptional legal skills. 

He worked for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF), taking on cases that highlighted racial inequality and had the potential to set legal precedents. However, Marshall avoided cases where the defendant was guilty. For example, when one of his subordinates brought him a case of a Black boy who’d been sentenced to ten years in prison just for stealing a bag of peanuts, Marshall’s investigation found that the case wasn’t a good one for the LDF – the boy had actually stolen a flatbed truck’s worth of peanuts, and hijacked the truck as well!

In 1946, Marshall defended 25 Black individuals who were accused of rioting and attempted murder during the Columbia Race Riot trials. Despite facing a near-lynching himself, Marshall managed to secure the acquittal of 24 out of the 25 defendants. His relentless dedication to the case took a toll on his health, but he continued working from his hospital bed until the trials concluded. During this period, Marshall traveled between Harlem and the South for his work.

The next year, a young white couple by the names of Norma and Willie Padgett encountered car trouble one night; as a result, they were stranded on a remote road in Florida. Two young Black veterans, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, stopped to help but were met with racist insults – and Samuel punched Willie in reaction. What followed was a tragic series of events.

The morning after Norma’s encounter with Shepherd and Irvin, she told a watchman by the name of Lawrence Burtoft that her husband had been assaulted and she’d been abducted by two Black men. He noted her oddly calm demeanor. Soon, the community was abuzz with a story of a young white farmwife abducted and raped by four Black men. Sheriff Willis McCall intervened to prevent a lynch mob and took Shepherd and Irvin into custody. Another Black teenager, Charles Greenlee, was also arrested simply for being out at night and carrying an unloaded gun, although he wasn’t involved in the incident in any way.

Outside the prison, a mob gathered, and Charles was brutally coerced into falsely confessing to the rape. McCall was present but did nothing at the time. He had a history of mistreating local Black residents, but an earlier FBI investigation never found adequate evidence to convict him – the Black families involved fled the area after threats from local white residents regarding the case.

In the days following Norma’s alleged assault, mobs swarmed the town. White vigilantes fired shots into Black homes and burned down Samuel Shepherd’s house. McCall failed to arrest these individuals, citing both concerns about further destabilizing the situation and his own business in investigating the case. Eventually, the governor called in the National Guard to try and prevent more violence.

Meanwhile, Charles’s friend Ernest Thomas had fled town the night of the alleged attack, likely out of concern for his involvement in illegal gambling. McCall illegally tracked him down, and a massive manhunt ended with Ernest’s death in a swamp. Despite contradictory accounts, Norma identified Ernest as another of her attackers, and the coroner’s jury ruled his killing as lawful.