by Gilbert King
66 “Boy, if you don’t know it”: Ibid.
66 “hurry up and take”: MM 44-156, FBI.
67 “might cause some trouble”: Ibid.
67 “two colored boys who were”: Ibid.
67 “had a big hole”: MM 44-127, FBI.
67 “Go ahead and try”: Corsair, The Groveland Four, p. 2.
67 “That’s the boy”: Ibid., p. 32.
67 “stout white man”: MM 44-156, FBI.
68 “You’ve got families”: Flores, Justice Gone Wrong, p. 16.
68 “Lake County Bride”: Orlando Sunday Sentinel, July 17, 1949.
68 “Sheriff Staves Off”: Flores, Justice Gone Wrong, p. 17.
68 “fast talking” sheriff: New York Times, July 18, 1949.
68 The Miami Herald praised: Miami Herald, July 18, 1949.
69 “all hell broke loose”: Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, p. 372.
69 “dressed like a tweedy”: Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts, p. 16.
69 “Has Science Conquered”: Look, August, 1949.
69 “whomever he wished”: Janken, Walter White, p. 371.
69 “within the rail”: Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts, p. 21.
69 “Now look,” Marshall told him: COHP, Marshall.
69 “See that fellow”: Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts, p. 21.
70 “So he won”: COHP, Marshall.
70 “a sentence that had”: Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts, p. 9.
70 “crowd out other”: Ibid., p. 102.
70 “people of the Negro”: Shelley et ux. v. Kraemer et ux., 334 U.S. 1, May 3, 1948.
70 “the Joe Louis of the courtroom”: Williams, Thurgood Marshall, p. 151.
70 “wanted to lynch Walter”: Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts, p. 18.
Chapter 6: A Little Bolita
73 “four niggers”: FOHP, Williams.
73 “sullen, glint-eyed”: “Murmur in the Streets,” Time, August 1, 1949.
73 “15 loads of buckshot”: Ibid.
73 “Boy,” Leroy Campbell said: MM 44-127, FBI.
74 “Were you one”: MM 44-156, FBI. Dialogue and details from Greenlee’s interrogation are mostly derived from the interview he gave to Franklin Williams, which appears in this report.
75 “directing the traffic”: Corsair, The Groveland Four, p. 37.
75 “Did you rape”: MM 44-156, FBI.
75 “Better start saying”: Ibid.
75 “Shoot him in the stomach”: Ibid.
75 “in the privates”: Ibid.
76 “heart yellow pine house”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 11.
76 “scratch hard childhood”: Life, November 17, 1972.
76 plowing, and chopping: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 12.
77 “This Is a Minute Maid Grove”: New York Daily Compass, March 1, 1952.
77 “tough reputation in the groves”: Robinson, Law and Order, by Any Means Necessary, p. 16.
77 “No white people”: Journal of Forest History, Vol. 25, 1981, p. 16. (Forest History Society.)
78 “charm a snake”: Life, November 17, 1972.
78 “the People’s Candidate”: Ibid.
78 “People have confidence”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 14.
78 “sell-out in politics”: Leesberg Commercial, July 2, 1945.
78 “King of Slots”: Ibid.
78 “It looks very much”: Ibid.
78 “Just as long as you”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 14.
78 “cracker mob of Central Florida”: Dickerson, Remembering Orlando, p. 38.
79 “from the back door”: Robinson, Law and Order, by Any Means Necessary, p. 21.
79 “use their good offices”: Kennedy, Southern Exposure, p. 58.
79 “work or fight” laws: “Unfit Draftees May Be Uniformed Plant Workers,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, February 17, 1945.
79 “prevent loitering”: Gary M. Mormino, “Midas Returns: Miami Goes to War, 1941–1945,” Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, Vol. 1, No. 57, 1997.
79 “a ready pool of”: Nieman, “Black Southerners and the Law,” p. 53.
79 “None of your damn jaw”: Jerrell H. Shofner, “The Legacy of Racial Slavery: Free Enterprise and Forced Laobr in Florida in the 1940s,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 47, No. 3, August 1981.
80 “Florida Bail Bond Racket”: Report on Groveland, WDL.
80 “secured from the stockades”: Ibid.
80 “without the formality”: Ibid.
80 “appears to have been to dragoon”: New Leader, Augyst 13, 1949.
80 “a pattern of beating”: FOHP, Williams.
81 “the return to eight”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 63.
81 “Look at his wrists!”: St. Petersburg Times, November 28, 1999.
81 “communist infiltrated groups”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 15.
81 “I’m Willis McCall”: Transcript of interview with Mabel Norris Chesley, Franklin Hall Williams Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (hereafter cited as FHW Papers, Chesley).
81 “this great big hulk”: Ibid.
81 “political shenanigans”“: Ibid.
82 “Hitler’s gestapo technique”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 63.
82 “Now let that be a lesson”: Green, Before His Time, p. 80.
82 “big ‘red scare’ trying”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 18.
82 “a giant milestone”: “Landmark: Smith v. Allwright,” NAACPLDF.org, http://naacpldf.org/case/smith-v-allwright.
82 “the greatest one”: COHP, Marshall.
82 “a guy had the right”: Williams, Thurgood Marshall, p. 112.
83 “told the other states”: COHP, Marshall.
83 “warning blacks not to vote”: Newton, The Ku Klux Klan, p. 384.
83 “making no attempt”: Newton, The Invisible Empire, p. 117.
Chapter 7: Wipe This Place Clean
84 “Everything was silent”: FHW Papers, Chesley.
85 “People would rush inside”: Ibid.
85 “Knots of men”: “Mobile Violence: Motorized Mobs in a Florida County,” New South, Vol. 4, No. 6, August 1949.
86 “leaps and bounds”: “The Carter-Klan Documentary Project: Thomas Hamilton,” 2006–2007, Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-CH, http://www.carter-klan.org/Hamilton.html.
86 “a beachhead in Florida”: Newton, The Invisible Empire, p. 114.
86 “see blood flow”: Time, March 15, 1948.
86 “If you come in here”: Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932).
87 With more than five hundred: South Lake Press, June 5, 2009, http://www.southlakepress.com/060509land.
87 “colored people their homes”: MM 44-156, FBI.
87 “protecting lives”: Ibid.
87 “situation was getting out of hand”: Ibid.
87 “psychological effect”: Ibid.
88 “as if he was a trusty”: Ibid.
89 “Three Negroes Confess”: Ocala Star-Banner, July 19, 1949.
89 “There’ll be no lynching”: Corsair, The Groveland Four, p. 38.
89 “We’re not going to”: Ibid.
89 “I told her we”: Ibid.
89 “Ku Klux Klan was”: “Mobile Violence: Motorized Mobs in a Florida County,” New South, Vol. 4, No. 6, August 1949.
90 “That’s old Joe Maxwell’s house”: Sally Watt, Free Speech Radio News, January 1, 2002, http://www.archive.org/details/fsrn_20020101.
90 “heard a window break”: Ibid.
90 “You better not go down there”: Flores, Justice Gone Wrong, p. 20.
90“Sons of bitches”: Ibid.
91 “You fellas don’t”: Ibid., p. 21.
91 “We wanna wipe this place clean”: Ibid.
91 “Don’t go out there”: Ibid.
91
As McCall surveyed the crowd: MM 44-156, FBI.
91 Groveland’s Curtis Merritt: Ibid.
91 McCall also recognized: Ibid.
91 “was the chief of”: Harry T. Moore Murder Investigation, Florida Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights/Florida Department of Law Enforcement (Moore Report), Exhibit 53. (Hereafter cited as Moore Report.)
91 “to tell where”: “Mobile Violence: Motorized Mobs in a Florida County.”
91 “Why don’t you take that peashooter”: Flores, Justice Gone Wrong, p. 22.
92 “I don’t know the names”: Ibid., p. 23.
92 “Where is that son of a bitch”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 21.
92 “I’ll tell him”: Flores, Justice Gone Wrong, p. 23.
92 “down the road”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 21.
92 “Go and get more ammunition”: New Leader, telegram to Governor Fuller Warren, NAACP, September 14, 1949.
92 “miles of clay roads”: New Leader, August 13, 1949.
92 “Little” Mary Hunter Valree: Miami Daily News, July 19, 1949. Also undated clipping, FHW Papers. (Franklin Williams kept a Groveland scrapbook that included many undated clippings from the Mount Dora Topic, as well as other newspapers.)
93 “he knew all of the ringleaders”: MM 44-156, FBI.
93 “terrorizing the negroes”: Ibid.
93 “The next time”: “Murmur in the Streets,” Time, August 1, 1949.
94 “had all of his life savings”: MM 44-156, FBI.
95 “They tell me my chickens and ducks”: MM 44-127, FBI.
95 “ravaged ghost”: New York Post, September 2, 1949..
95 “Negro self-emancipation”: WDL, Report on Groveland.
95 “the best preserve cellar”: New York Post, September 2, 1949.
96 “No nigger has any right”: FOHP, Williams.
96 “too damned independent”: New Leader, August 13, 1949.
96 “uppity nigger”: Steven F. Lawson, David R. Colburn, and Darryl Paulson, “Groveland: Florida’s Little Scottsboro,” Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 1, July 1986, p. 3.
96 “smart nigger”: FOHP, Williams.
96 “that somebody put”: “Groveland: Florida’s Little Scottsboro,” p. 4.
96 “three twisted bed frames”: New Leader, August 2, 1949.
96 “They should never let”: Ibid.
97 He arrived at his property: J. P. Ellis to Franklin Williams, NAACP-LDF, undated, August 1949.
97 “I keep getting orders”: MM 44-127, FBI.
97 “My family is all scattered”: Ibid.
97 “They’ll get out”: New Leader, August 13, 1949.
97 “We’ll wait and see”: Orlando Sentinel, July 17, 1949.
98 “If smart lawyers”: New Leader, August 13, 1949.
98 “offered up as a”: Ibid.
98 “Honor Will Be Avenged”: Mount Dora Topic, July 2, 1949.
98 “any persons bearing arms”: MM 44-156, FBI.
99 “too busy trying”: Ibid.
99 “would result in”: Ibid.
99 “positive action”: Ibid.
99 “had agreed to stop”: Ibid.
Chapter 8: A Christmas Card
100 “You can either jump”: Hobbs, “Hitler Is Here,” p. 150.
101 “Dear Fried”: Willie James Howard to Cynthia Goff, NAACP, January 1, 1943 [actually 1944].
102 “the penalty of his crime”: Hobbs, “Hitler Is Here,” p. 150.
102 “Willie, I cannot do”: Ibid.
102 “terribly afraid of something”: Lula Howard affadavit, NAACP, March 19, 1944.
103 “rather die”: Hobbs, “Hitler Is Here,” p. 149.
103 “I am sure you realize”: Spessard L. Holland to Marshall, NAACP, February 14, 1944.
103 “the type of material”: Green, Before His Time, p. 49.
104 “a waste of time”: Ibid.
104 “We are forced to wonder”: Moore to Marshall, NAACP, June 30, 1944.
104 “The life of a Negro”: Green, Before His Time, p. 50.
104 It was a lesson: Ibid., p. 71.
104 “Thus a man gets off”: Ibid.
104 “Your letters on lynching”: Current to Moore, NAACP, July 3, 1947.
105 “south of the South”: Raymond A. Mohl, “ ‘South of the South?’ Jews, Blacks, and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945–1960, ” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter 1999.
105 “troublemaker and Negro organizer”: Green, Before His Time, p. 61.
105 Moore, however, was not: Author interview with Evangeline Moore, February 8, 2011.
105 Recruiting his teenage daughter: Green, Before His Time, p. 65.
106 “that rich Professor Moore”: Ibid., p. 246.
107 “boldy challenge the”: “A Century of Racial Segregation, 1849–1950,” Library of Congress exhibition, “With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty,” http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-segregation.html.
107 “the law functioned”: Martin, Brown v. Board of Education, p. 14.
107 “He seems to be a fine sort”: Green, Before His Time, p. 41.
107 “Thurgood was the savior”: Ibid., p. 42.
108 “From 1882 to 1930”: Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, p. 320.
108 “a black man had more risk”: Gainesville Sun, September 3, 2005.
108 “prosecution of mob leaders”: Green, Before His Time, p. 87.
108 “[l]ynching of negroes”: Ibid., p. 69.
109 “hooded hoodlums”: Newton, The Invisible Empire, p. 117.
109 “as a favor to a friend”: Ibid.
109 “Since mob leaders are known”: Green, Before His Time, p. 87.
109 “Have written him enough”: Ibid., p. 90.
109 “sage and trial-trained Jesse Hunter”: Mount Dora Topic, July 2, 1949.
110 “You don’t investigate”: Wexler, Fire in a Canebrake, p. 130.
111 “The FBI has established”: Marshall to Clark, NAACP, December 27, 1946.
111 “I have found from”: Williams, Thurgood Marshall, p. 159.
111 “rushing pell-mell”: Fairclough: Race & Democracy, p. 116.
111 “clear-cut, uncontroverted evidence”: Ibid., p. 117.
111 “I . . . have no faith”: Wexler, Fire in a Canebrake, p. 191.
112 In April 1947: Crisis, December 1955.
112 “with his charming”: Williams, Thurgood Marshall, p. 161.
112 “Give this matter”: MM 44-156, FBI.
112 “Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP”: Ibid.
112 “The Association and Hoover”: Greenberg, Crusaders in the Courts, p. 105.
Chapter 9: Don’t Shoot, White Man
114 “like you see in a western”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 23.
114 “peddling bolita”: New York Daily Compass, March 1, 1952.
114 “a bearded, fantastic Negro”: Mount Dora Topic, FHW Papers, undated clipping.
115 “had recently bought”: Ibid.
115 “cozy arrangement”: New York Daily Compass, March 1, 1952.
115 “well-entrenched”: Ibid.
115 “the law enforcement officers”: Ibid.
115 “Things were coming to a head”: Ibid.
115 “Thomas was feeling his oats”: Ibid.
115 “It was obvious”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 22.
115 “only time in the whole investigation”: Ibid.
116 “with some kin folks”: Coroner’s Inquest, MM 44-156, FBI.
116 “settled down for the night”: McCall, Willis V. McCall, Sheriff of Lake County, p. 22.
116 “we had not cased”: Ibid.
116 “cotton patch and”: Coroner’s Inquest, MM 44-156, FBI.
116 “cut his breechesb legs off”: Ibid.
117 “That is him”: Ibid.
118 “so much excitement”: Ibid.
118 “Don’t sh
oot, white man”: Ibid.
118 “belligerent as the devil”: Ocala Star Banner, July 27, 1949.
118 “I was across on”: Coroner’s Inquest, MM 44-156, FBI.
118 “but it was a bunch”: Ocala Star Banner, July 27, 1949.
118 “above the eyes”: Ibid.
118 “nearly 400 slugs”: Corsair, The Groveland Four, p. 64.
118 “there were other holes”: Coroner’s Inquest, MM 44-156, FBI.
118 “when this negro”: Ibid.
118 “Sheriff McCall of Lake County”: Ibid.
118 “glaring flaws”: C.M.T. to Rowland Watts, WDL, May 8, 1951.
119 “being told just the things”: Ibid.
119 “have never been answered”: Ibid.
119 “desperate to seal”: Ibid.
119 “definite threat to”: Ibid.
119 “broadly hinted”: New York Daily Compass, March 1, 1952.
119 “Thomas was an bright”: Ibid.
119 After the inquest: Flores, Justice Gone Wrong, p. 34.
120 “learning to try cases”: Motley, Equal Justice Under Law, p. 70.
121 “that terrible summer”: White, A Man Called White, p. 325.
121 Truman “exploded”: Michael R. Gardner, “Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks,” speech at University of Virginia, September 26, 2003, http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/gardner.html.
122 “a good platform person”: FOHP, Williams.
122 “antimob violence fund”: Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, p. 320.
122 he declared it “disgraceful”: Kluger, Simple Justice, p. 298.
122 “make your hair stand on end”: FOHP, Williams.
Chapter 10: Quite a Hose Wielder
124 “Don’t worry, Mama”: Corsair, The Groveland Four, p. 16.
124 “You little son of a bitch”: MM 44-156, FBI.
125 “Get out of the car”: MM 44-127, FBI.
125 “Why did you rape”: MM 44-156, FBI.
125 “Better talk”: Ibid.
125 “Nigger, you the one”: Ibid.
125 “the right ones”: Ibid.
126 “solve your problems”: Green, The Negro Motorist Green Book, p. 3.
126 “Now We Can Travel Without Embarrassment”: Ibid., p. 81.
126 “This wanton killing”: Marshall to Clark, NAACP, July 27, 1949.
126 “There is serious doubt”: Marshall to Warren, NAACP, July 27, 1949.
127 “My aunt wanted to know”: Corsair, The Groveland Four, p. 72.
127 “Their heads were a mess”: FOHP, Williams.
127 “Where is the guy”: MM 44-156, FBI.
