Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
Devil in the Grove, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is a gripping true story of racism, murder, rape, and the law. It brings to light one of the most dramatic court cases in American history, and offers a rare and revealing portrait of Thurgood Marshall that the world has never seen before.
As Isabel Wilkerson s The Warmth of Other Suns did for the story of America s black migration, Gilbert King s Devil in the Grove does for this great untold story of American legal history, a dangerous and uncertain case from the days immediately before Brown v. Board of Education in which the young civil rights attorney Marshall risked his life to defend a boy slated for the electric chair saving him, against all odds, from being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit."
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Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
Devil in the Grove, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is a gripping true story of racism, murder, rape, and the law. It brings to light one of the most dramatic court cases in American history, and offers a rare and revealing portrait of Thurgood Marshall that the world has never seen before.
As Isabel Wilkerson s The Warmth of Other Suns did for the story of America s black migration, Gilbert King s Devil in the Grove does for this great untold story of American legal history, a dangerous and uncertain case from the days immediately before Brown v. Board of Education in which the young civil rights attorney Marshall risked his life to defend a boy slated for the electric chair saving him, against all odds, from being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit."
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Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
Devil in the Grove, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is a gripping true story of racism, murder, rape, and the law. It brings to light one of the most dramatic court cases in American history, and offers a rare and revealing portrait of Thurgood Marshall that the world has never seen before.
As Isabel Wilkerson s The Warmth of Other Suns did for the story of America s black migration, Gilbert King s Devil in the Grove does for this great untold story of American legal history, a dangerous and uncertain case from the days immediately before Brown v. Board of Education in which the young civil rights attorney Marshall risked his life to defend a boy slated for the electric chair saving him, against all odds, from being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit."
Gilbert King has written about U.S. Supreme Court history for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and is a featured contributor to Smithsonian magazine's history blog, Past Imperfect. He is the author of The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.
Table of Contents
Prologue 1
1 Mink Slide 7
2 Sugar Hill 21
3 Get to Pushin' 33
4 Nigger in a Pit 40
5 Trouble Fixin' to Start 58
6 A Little Bolita 72
7 Wipe this Place Clean 84
8 A Christmas Card 100
9 Don't Shoot White Man 113
10 Quite a Hose Wielder 124
11 Bad Egg 150
12 Atom Smasher 178
13 In any Fight Some Fall 193
14 THis is a Rape Case 210
15 You Have Pissed in my Whiskey 219
16 It's Funny Thing 240
17 No Man Alive or to be Born 258
18 All Over The Place, Like Rats 273
19 Private Parts 283
20 A Genius Here Before US 303
21 The Colored Way 321
22 A Place In The Sun 331
Epilogue 353
Acknowledgements 363
A Note On Sources 366
Notes 368
Selected Bibliography 413
Index 417
What People are Saying About This
Kevin Boyle
“In the terrifying story of the Groveland boys Gilbert King recreates an extraordinary moment in America’s long, hard struggle for racial justice. Devil in the Grove is a harrowing, haunting, utterly mesmerizing book.”
Michael G. Long
“Gilbert King’s gut-wrenching, and captivating, narrative is civil rights literature at its bestmeticulously researched, brilliantly written, and singularly focused on equal justice for all.”
Wil Haygood
“The tragic Groveland saga with its Faulknerian echoes of racial injustice spinning around an accusation of rape comes astonishingly alive in Gilbert King’s narrative. It is both heartbreaking and unforgettable.”
Ira Katznelson
“Its rich case history captures the beginning of the end of the most extreme forms of racism. . . . Very few books combine this depth of research and narrative power about a subject of such pivotal significance.”
Phyllis Vine
“This is a haunting and compelling story, one of many in the campaign for racial justice. . . . This book is important because it is disturbing. And in that regard we cannot walk away from the story it tells.”
This year’s Pulitzer Prize winners are an interesting batch, with subject manner running the gamut from North Korean orphanages to the real-life Count of Monte Cristo. Here’s the lowdown on these newly anointed winners—let us know if you’ve read any of them in the comments, or share what book you would have nominated for a […]