Devil In The Grove

Devil In The Grove

Adult nonfiction
"'Everything was silent,' she observed. The reporter for the
Mount Dora Topic had never seen anything like it. Blacks had simply
vanished. She wasn't there long when she heard the roar of engines in
the distance and experienced a 'scary feeling' when a long line of
cars rolled into town, and it was only as the noise grew louder that
she began to get a glimpse of anyone. 'People would rush inside, pull
their blinds,' she said. Mabel tried to count the cars, there were
more than two hundred vehicles, she observed, many from Polk and
Orange counties. Her instincts told her to get home to Mount Dora to
be with her husband and young daughter, but as a reporter, Mabel
sensed trouble. She couldn't leave."
Mabel's instincts were spot on. The year was 1949, the setting a
small Florida town. A white teenage girl named Norma went out with
her husband, from whom she had been separated, for a night of drinking
and dancing. Things did not go quite as planned. Norma didn't get
home that night. The next day she was talking about being raped by
four Negroes.
That was back in the day when lynching was a routine response to
allegations of black on white sexual molestation which was considered
the violation of the delicate flower of Southern womanhood. That was
when the pressure to integrate schools had many whites feeling
threatened. Wouldn't it inevitably lead to mixed marriages and
mongralization (mixed race children)? That was when many law
enforcement people wore their uniforms to their KKK meetings.
All four subjects were tortured into making confessions. Two
were shot by white law enforcement officers who claimed self defense.
All kinds of legal shenanigans went down. The doctor who could have
testified that rape didn't happen, for example, wasn't a witness.
In his Murder In The Grove Gilbert King conveys the sequence of
events from alleged crime through trial and appeals in precise and
vivid detail. In this thoroughly researched volume he also conveys
much background on brutal racism in post WWII Florida and the primary
actors including...
...a pre Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall taking on the most
dangerous case of his career.
On a personal note, recall that July 10 will be the 8th anniversary
of this blog? July 9 will be the 4th anniversary of the day Joey cat
and I officially opened our beautiful studio with its cat patio,
Christmas trees large and small, and beautiful decorations. For
nearly 4 years it has been our purrrrfect sanctuary.
A great big shout out goes out to the best little cat in the world.
jules hathaway


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