Devil in the Grove

by Gilbert King

  WALTER IRVIN, WITH handcuffs around both wrists, emerged from a state highway patrol car at the county courthouse in Tavares, where pretrial hearings in the Groveland Boys case were beginning on December 6. Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg both winced at the sight of him, for the defendants in the second trial had been reduced to one. “As matters now stand,” Marshall told reporters, “two colored men have already lost their lives as a result of this charge of attack of a white woman; one being killed by a sheriff’s posse and one by Sheriff McCall. Another is serving a life sentence. The fourth, Walter Irvin, although shot twice in the chest and once in the neck, must still stand trial and face the threat of the electric chair. This is typical Southern Justice.”

  However ambiguous Jesse Hunter’s own feelings about the sheriff of Lake County may have been, the state attorney was not about to rein in his fervor in the prosecution of Walter Irvin for the rape of Norma Padgett. First off, Hunter moved that Marshall and Greenberg not be admitted as counsel for the defendant, on the grounds that the NAACP had been responsible for the publication of “vicious, slanderous and libelous matter” in regard to the case. Hunter introduced fund-raising materials that the Florida Committee of 100 had circulated nearly two years earlier, which included Ted Poston’s Groveland Boys article, “The Story of Florida’s Legal Lynching,” and he then contended that the committee, under the aegis of the NAACP, had set out to “stir up scandalous and libelous matter and material against the good people of Lake County, Florida.” Marshall countered that he was a lawyer representing a client, Walter Irvin, and that the committee “has nothing whatsoever to do with my office.” He had also experienced his first sting of the hostility that had unsettled Franklin Williams in this same courtroom.

  Still, Marshall had come to Florida prepared. The defense moved to disqualify Jesse Hunter, not because they held any hope that Judge Truman Futch would so move but because they wanted to have Hunter’s actions vis-à-vis Lawrence Burtoft, the first person known to have spoken with Norma Padgett after the rape, entered on the record. They called the state attorney to the stand.

  Akerman asked, “Did you interview him [Lawrence Burtoft] as a prospective witness in this case?”

  “Yes, I did, but I am not going to tell you what he told me,” Hunter answered; “he is your witness and you can find out from him.”

  Challenging Hunter, the defense pointed out that in an interview with the reporter from the St. Petersburg Times, Burtoft claimed he had told Hunter that Norma Padgett had said she wasn’t hurt and had said she could not identify her abductors.

  “That statement is entirely false,” Hunter barked in his gravelly voice. “He made no such statement to me at any time, and I am not going into what he did tell me. . . . You can prove it by Mr. Burtoft, not by me.”

  “Mr. Burtoft is out of the province of this court, he is in the armed forces of the United States, in North Carolina,” Akerman noted.

  “Well, you will have to go further than that before you ever get him back here to make any such statement as that, because he never made the statement,” Hunter replied.

  Now that Hunter had been fully engaged in battle with the defense, he’d resorted to old, tried-and-true tactics. He dodged and he denied, for of course he had not had Burtoft testify under oath in the first trial, for the same reason he had not called Dr. Geoffrey Binneveld as a witness: in neither instance would the testimony have supported the prosecution’s case. Hunter also doled. As if he had never heard the Supreme Court’s admonishment in regard to the doling out of disinformation to the press before the first trial, Hunter was telling reporters that the FBI had concluded that all six bullets had been fired from the same gun, when, in fact, the FBI had informed the state attorney that the sixth bullet could not be positively connected to McCall’s gun.

  On the motion for change of venue, despite Jesse Hunter’s argument that “this whole thing has been in the hands of a bunch of radicals . . . and it is directed to the men who came in here from out of the state to create race hatred,” Judge Truman Futch had little choice but to rule in favor of the defense. While the judge wanted a speedy conviction no less than Hunter did, Futch recognized that he had been clearly mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court to move the trial out of Lake County. Not that the ruling would prove to be an advantage to the defense.

  Marion County shared Lake County’s northwest border and its demographics. Its sheriff had also been recently involved in a shooting with a sixteen-year-old black youth, much to the consternation of Thurgood Marshall and the defense. For in this case the black youth, who had been picked up by Sheriff Edward Porter Jr. for questioning in the theft of a coat from a men’s store, had first attacked the sheriff with an ice pick, then shot Porter several times with his own gun. Sheriff Porter’s death was a clarion call to the people of Marion County; law and order had to be upheld at all costs, particularly in the face of unruly blacks. In December 1951 no other county in Florida could have been more predisposed to sympathy for a sheriff who claimed that two black prisoners had attacked him in his car.

  Marshall had hoped that Judge Futch would move the retrial to a more urban setting like Miami or Jacksonville, and thereby remove himself from any further proceedings in the Groveland Boys case. Instead Futch chose a venue within the Fifth Judicial District, where he could preside in the retrial. He postponed hearings until mid-January. That done, he “took the first step toward a legal lynching of Walter Lee Irvin,” as one newspaper reported: the judge barred Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg from defending Walter Irvin, on the grounds that they “stirred up trouble in the community.” The decision was made, Futch said, and as Hunter had earlier argued, “because they represent the NAACP” and not the client.

  HARRY T. MOORE drove his blue Ford down “the Great Black Way” of Second Avenue, past the Lyric Theater and the brightly lit nightclubs and dance halls, into the heart of Overtown—or “Colored Town,” or the “Harlem of the South,” as the bustling, self-sustaining neighborhood on the other side of the tracks from downtown Miami was more commonly known. It was a world away from the rural communities of North Florida with their whitewashed community centers and tidy churches where Harry would try to raise a few more dollars for the NAACP. In Overtown, the churches were the centers of the community, vibrant, essential to the social and spiritual life of Miami’s black population. Moore parked his sedan not far from the Mount Zion Baptist Church. He relished the energy in the early evening air as he walked toward the imposing Mediterranean Revival building. He had expected the scores of stylishly dressed blacks who were filing into the church; he had not expected the police.

  Heavily armed, watchful, up and down the sidewalk, policemen were patrolling the streets outside the church. While Miami had seen a rash of violence over the past year, for the most part the bombings had been hit-and-run, the intention being to destroy property, usually unoccupied churches and synagogues, not to assault people. No doubt, though, the mass meeting of December 13 at Mount Zion Baptist Church—its topic widely advertised as “The Truth About Groveland,” its purpose to raise money for the Groveland Boys defense—was proving to be provocative: anonymous telephone threats stated the church would be bombed that night when the featured speaker, Thurgood Marshall, took the pulpit. Immediately upon learning of the threat, Mount Zion’s pastor, the Reverend Edward T. Graham, had notified a member of the City Commission, and shortly thereafter Miami’s chief of police—who “believed that the threat came from someone interested in the Groveland case since it was on that case that Mr. Marshall was to speak”—had promised the church, and Marshall, protection. Two weeks earlier, on a similar NAACP fund-raising occasion, Thurgood Marshall had spoken about Groveland at the Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York; he had not needed a band of police guards to shield him and sweep him safely into the church.

  At Mount Zion, armed guards surrounded the pulpit. Several white citizens were seated on the speakers’ platform with Marshall, and whites also
filled the first few rows in the church. Thunderous applause greeted Marshall when he rose to speak; the police inside the church shuffled nervously. Moore had never heard Marshall argue a case before the Supreme Court, where, as Jack Greenberg observed, he assumed a courtroom style that was “ordinary, conversational, and undramatic.” Mount Zion Baptist Church was not a courtroom, and Moore watched mostly in awe as Marshall—fiery, impassioned, defiant—abandoned his lawyerly measures for preacher-like stylings in a slightly exaggerated Southern drawl. “In a mass meeting,” Greenberg said, “he could bring an audience to its feet, clapping and stomping.” And that night in Overtown he did.

  Moore marveled at Marshall’s power in the pulpit. Riveting his audience, eliciting gasps of horror and murmurs of sorrow, he unfolded the story of the Groveland Boys and summoned plaints of outrage in response to the questions that punctuated his tale: the same questions that Moore had been posing in his letters to Governor Warren over the past two and a half years.

  “Why did McCall have to remove the prisoners at night?” Marshall’s voice boomed, and when the rumble of discontent in the pews began to subside, he roused the audience again: “Why did he have to travel on an isolated road instead of the main highway?” And again: “And why didn’t he have a deputy sheriff with him in the car with the prisoners?”

  It was murder, Marshall was telling them, a lynching by law enforcement that had been subsequently whitewashed by Lake County officials and the court into an act of self-defense. But he was telling them, too, that the Miami NAACP was standing proud and firm against this travesty of justice, and with their financial support, their contributions tonight, they—the good people of Miami, undeterred by threats and violence—would help Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund fight Lake County.

  Over the crescendo of noise and enthusiasm, Marshall’s voice rose. He had a threat of his own to deliver: a message for Judge Truman Futch and anyone else who thought Thurgood Marshall was going to decamp or desert the Groveland case simply because a judge in Lake County had decided to bar him from defending Walter Irvin. “They can keep me from the courts of Florida,” Marshall shouted. “But there is no man alive or to be born who can prevent me from arguing the Groveland case before the U.S. Supreme Court!”

  The crowd roared its approval. For Harry T. Moore, it had been a remarkable event to witness. In his two decades of NAACP travels, he had heard his share of inspirational civil rights sermons with their biblical analogues of long desert journeys and parting seas, but Marshall’s vision was grounded in constitutional law and he drew the lineaments of his hope from his personal experience, from battles won and strategies mastered, from the efforts he shared with like-minded men and women determined not to see the future repeat the past. The Mount Zion Baptist parishioners reached deep into their pockets that night—their contributions exceeded a thousand dollars—with the highest single donations coming “from some of these white people in the audience.” One of the white men in attendance was Caxton Doggett, a minister from Rader Memorial Methodist Church in Miami, who later wrote to Marshall, “I was glad of the chance to hear you the other night in Miami. You are a very fine speaker. If you weren’t a lawyer, you would make a good preacher. . . . After hearing you, I decided to join the NAACP. . . . You are doing great work, and I want you to know that I am one of an increasing number of southern white men who have the highest respect for your professional ability and your integrity of character.”

  In common cause they found community and communion: this was why Moore had dedicated two decades of his life to the NAACP. He didn’t have Thurgood Marshall’s background in law, or Dan Byrd’s charisma, or Franklin Williams’s eloquence. He hadn’t the stomach for Gloster Current’s cold-eyed practicality. What he lacked in magnetism, though, he made up for in persistence and determination, and his commitment to his people in their struggle for justice and equality he would match with anyone’s. By the end of the hour in Mount Zion Baptist Church, with the clapping and stomping resounding in his head, and his heart stirred by Marshall’s words, Moore had reaffirmed his commitment to the cause. He remembered other words, too: ten years ago, when he’d fought at Marshall’s side in the Florida salary equalization lawsuits on behalf of black teachers, Marshall had said, “This is not a single battle, but rather a real war in which we will lose some battles and win others.” In the war for the Groveland Boys, Moore was ready for the next battle.

  He was driving north on U.S. 1. In two hours, he’d be back in Riviera Beach, where he and Harriette rented rooms during the school year. Classes would soon be ending for the holidays at Lake Park Colored School, and they would be returning to their house in Mims. Harriette’s brother, George Simms, a master sergeant in the army, would be home on leave from Korea, and with him and their daughters, Peaches and Evangeline, they would be celebrating not only Christmas but also their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He was looking forward to Mims, his family, the celebrations, the new year. He stopped, as he usually did on his drives up the coast, at a small grocery store in Melbourne; he’d gotten to know the owner over the years. They got to talking about the Groveland Boys case, and the man expressed concern for his friend’s safety. He wondered if maybe Harry wasn’t “going too far” in his work for the NAACP. “I’m going to keep doing it,” Moore replied in his understated way, “even if it costs me my life. Jesus Christ lost his life doing what he thought was right. And I believe the Lord intended for me to do this work for the colored race. I may live to be a ripe old age or I may be killed tomorrow, or next month, or perhaps never, but I intend to do this until the day I die.”

  CHAPTER 18: ALL OVER THE PLACE, LIKE RATS

  (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

  AT NINE O’CLOCK on Christmas night of 1951, a dense ground fog had begun to settle in the orange groves of Mims. Harry T. Moore cranked the engine of his sedan. The Moores—Harry; his mother, Rosa; his wife, Harriette; and their daughter Peaches—had enjoyed a quiet holiday dinner with family and friends at the house of Harriette’s brother, Arnold Simms. Moore edged his car slowly onto Old Dixie Highway, the headlights no help in the fog. Still, in a few minutes, he’d driven the short distance, several hundred yards, home.

  The Ford parked, Harry helped his seventy-one-year-old mother out of the car and walked her to the house; Harriette and Peaches trailed behind. Harry lingered for a moment, alone, on the porch, in the fog, his thoughts lost in the surreal atmosphere of the night. Across the grove another man stood quiet, too, in the fog, beneath an orange tree, his eyes trained on a vague, diffuse glow.

  The light inside the house seemed all the brighter when Harry joined his family in the living room. The day had tired Harriette, but before she went to bed, her husband insisted, they had more than Christmas to celebrate. It was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, after all; they should at least have some cake.

  Rosa laid a fruitcake on the oak dining table. Harry was about to cut the first slice when Harriette gently placed her hand over his—they shared a smile, as if posing for a wedding portrait—and together they ceremoniously pressed the knife into the cake. After the cake, when Harriette did retire, Harry sat with his mother at the table as he reminisced about his wedding (a modest affair in the home of a doctor in Cocoa, with only a handful of people in attendance), his youth, his wife, their little girls. Shortly after 10 p.m. Rosa, too, retired; as she headed to the guest room at the back of the house, she reminded Harry to send Peaches to bed and turn off the lights.

  Peaches had fallen asleep on the settee in the living room. Harry nudged her awake, and with some comic books in hand, she said good night. Harry turned off the lights behind her.

  Rosa was drifting toward sleep when she heard the footsteps. “Is that you, Harry?” she asked. As he ducked into the bathroom, Harry answered her: “Yes, Mamma, that’s me.”

  The house was nearly dark. Peaches had given up reading for sleeping by the time Harry had lain down beside his wife. He switched off the bedroom ligh
t. No hazy glow hovered any longer in the fog outside. The man waiting beneath the orange tree had a moment to brace himself and steady his hands for the task. It was 10:20 p.m.

  The force of the blast split the house at its seams. It lifted the chimney into the air. It blew out every window; it splintered the front porch. It shredded the floorboards in Harry and Harriette’s bedroom, and propelled the back of a chair through the ceiling into the attic. The explosion roused the town of Titusville four miles away.

  Only the chimney settled back down in place at the Moores’ house in Mims. Jolted by the blast, Peaches had screamed out for her mother, to no response, and then for her grandmother. Groggy, disoriented, Rosa stepped into the room.

  “Grandma, are you hurt?” Peaches asked.

  “No, are you?”

  “No,” Peaches answered.

  Then Rosa heard the groans. She and Peaches made their way to the Moores’ bedroom at the front of the house. Peaches fiddled with the switch of a lamp in the dining room; it worked, and in its light, she and her grandmother could barely make out, in the rubble of the bedroom, on the floor, under the debris, the figures of Harry and Harriette. Their bedspring and mattress had been cast up against the wall.

  “Evangeline . . . Evangeline . . .” Harriette was mumbling repeatedly: Evangeline who in two days was planning to join her family for further celebrations in Mims.

  When Rosa first stepped into the room her foot sank into the floorboard just inside the door. She and Peaches managed between them to pull a bookcase off Harriette, but they lacked the physical strength to deal with the bodies and all the debris. Rosa sent Peaches outside to call to her uncles for help.