Devil in the Grove

<p><strong>Winner of the Pulitzer Prize</strong></p><p><strong>A must-read cannot-put-down history. -- Thomas Friedman <em>New York Times</em></strong><strong></strong></p><p>Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit <em>Brown v. Board of Education</em> before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.</p><p>In 1949 Florida's orange industry was booming and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old girl cried rape McCall pursued four young black men who dared envision a future for themselves beyond the groves. The Ku Klux Klan joined the hunt hell-bent on lynching the men who came to be known as the Groveland Boys.</p><p>Associates thought it was suicidal for Marshall to wade into the Florida Terror but the young lawyer would not shrink from the fight despite continuous death threats against him.</p> <p>Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material including the FBI's unredacted Groveland case files as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund files Gilbert King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader.</p>