Last week, Florida’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, accepted the unanimous recommendation of the state’s clemency board and issued pardons to the “Groveland Boys”—four African Americans—Earnest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin—who were wrongly accused of raping a white women seventy years ago. Back then, they became victims of Jim Crow injustice and, in particular, of a Southern sheriff, Willis McCall, who made “Bull Connor look like Barney Fife.” To quote Gilbert King who uncovered quashed evidence collected by the FBI of McCall’s crimes against the Groveland Four, including the extra-judicial killing of Samuel Shepherd and attempted murder of Walter Irwin. King’s book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012) informed a citizens’ movement that pressed Florida’s officials to act. King was in the room last Friday, along with descendants of the Groveland Four, and briefly testified at the hearing that led to the pardons. The woman who claimed she’d been raped, Norma Padgett, was there too, stuck on the mendacious side of history.
My name is Norma Tyson Padgett Upshaw, and I am the victim of that night. And I’ll tell you now that it’s on my mind; it’s been on my mind for about 70 years. I was 17 years old, and this never left my mind. And I can tell you, from the—from the time it started until today—if it was last night, I could carry you on that route that I went that night. And I’ll tell you this: If you had a gun held to your head and told you if you scream and didn’t do what they said, that they’d blow your brains out, so what would you do? And if you had a daughter, and if you—and a mother and a wife and a sister or a niece, would you give them pardon? No, I don’t think you would. I really don’t. And every time it comes up, I just quiver on the inside.
No doubt. To anyone who’s read Devil in the Grove, though, her quivers hint at how she’s lived a lie for seventy years. In a conversation on Democracy Now, Gilbert King clarified the meaning of the clemency board’s refusal to believe this woman:
I think one of the things that was most striking to me, and it really started in the beginning of the trial, seventy years ago, when Norma Padgett showed up in courtroom, and she stood up in the witness box, and she identified three of the Groveland boys as her attackers. And the lawyers and the press that were watching this, they basically said, “This trial is now over.” That was enough. You didn’t need any more evidence…
Seventy years later, Norma Padgett came into the hearing room in Tallahassee to testify before the clemency board. She had not spoken to anyone publicly in seventy years. And I think it was interesting to see what had happened since. Her words were no longer enough…
The clemency board now had their hands on all of this evidence, evidence that was hidden from the defense at the time, the medical report in this particular case. A doctor examined Norma Padgett hours after this alleged attack and found no evidence of any kind of attack. What did the defense—what did the prosecutor do in this case? They hid that witness. When Thurgood Marshall and his lawyers tried to subpoena that medical report, it was quashed. And the U.S. attorney said, “That’s a private matter between a woman and her doctor.”…The amount of perjury that existed and prosecutorial misconduct, it was a different criminal justice world.
King isn’t a beamish sort but his thoughts on progress and revanchism might give a lift to optimists of the will:
…[W]hat a lot of people don’t realize is, after Brown v. Board, which was the, you know, landmark civil rights decision in the 20th century, the country took a step backwards, and you started to see more racial violence and tension. You saw the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. You saw the White Citizens’ Councils popping up—300,000 members in 11 states. Race relations went backwards after Brown.
And I think that’s a pattern that you see in history. You could look at it and say, you know, African-American President Barack Obama serves eight years, wins those elections quite comfortably, and there is something of a backlash that you see, a reaction to that. But I like to think it’s two steps forward, one step back, and it’s a cycle that will always repeat itself in history.
Charles Greenlee’s daughter, Carol, looked forward like King after last week’s win. But first, she gave her (Democracy Now) audience something they could feel, detailing how she and her daddy suffered together:
He was in prison in Rayford, Florida, for 10 years. I can remember the first time seeing him. I was about 3 years old when my mother would take me to the prison, on a Sunday, for visits. And the time—the last time that I saw my father in prison, I was about 3. And he said to my mother not to bring me back anymore, because it was just too hard.
As a 3-year-old child, I can remember thinking, you know, “What did I do wrong? And am I the reason for my father to be here?” The guilt that plagued me for years throughout my young life, it was hard. It was the shame in—when conversations with your peers centered around activities that they’ve done with their families, including their fathers, I found myself politely leaving the area, leaving the room, so that I wouldn’t have to talk about it. So, it was a time of hard, hard, painful excuses for me and trying to understand why this happened.
But all during this time, my father would send me gifts wrapped in brown paper bags, if you will, a card on birthdays, a card on a holiday, he seems to have gathered them in the prison. I remember one of the last things he sent me was a jewelry box made of match stems—burnt match stems, that I have today. It was a time that I felt that I had been doing time with my father…So, I spent those 10 years also locked up in prison within myself, a sense of shame, guilt, that I was responsible, because I was the one that caused him to actually go to Groveland seeking a job. I was the unborn child at that time that he was trying to find a job to take care of. [Charles Greenlee was sixteen at the time of his arrest.] So I carried that as my burden of guilt.
King helpfully explained on Democracy Now the pardons weren’t the end game when it came to absolving the Groveland Four:
They will be [fully exonerated]. And the reason—a pardon sort of encompasses all of it. It’s a recognition that there was a miscarriage of justice. And the reason it was done was because two of the men of the Groveland Four were never convicted in a court. Ernest Thomas never stood trial; he was gunned down by the posse. And Sam Shepherd was gunned down on the evening of the retrial, so, technically, his conviction was thrown out. This was a way for the clemency board to acknowledge all four Groveland boys, pardon them.
Right now the FDLE, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, is working with the Attorney General’s Office. I’m working with them, too, getting together all these files and reports. And the very next step is going to be a complete exoneration. And that just takes a little bit longer to write that report.
Carol Greenlee will take the victory when it comes:
It would mean—it would mean everything, in terms of how our family view Florida, how our family really view the criminal justice system in this United States. It restores faith and hope, that even though it took seventy years, it’s here. It’s finally happened. And the same system that tortured him, that put him in prison for what he did not do, is the same system that will exonerate him. So, yes, you have to maintain hope. And this is the greatest country in the world.
Ms. Greenlee’s black and going on patriotism is miles away from MAGA whining. Forgive your editor for noting it’s also pretty far gone from anti-American exceptionalists who tend to rule on Democracy Now.
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What follows is an excerpt from Gilbert King’s post-pardon Q&A with journalist Colette Bancroft of the Tampa Bay Times:
What first got you interested in the Groveland Four?
I was writing this book called The Execution of Willie Francis. I was going through records from two white lawyers in Louisiana who were working on a death penalty case, and there were all these letters from Thurgood Marshall giving them advice. I knew Marshall was involved in civil rights and voting rights and housing cases, but I didn’t know he was involved in death penalty cases. So when I was back in Washington I was going through files there and found one file on Groveland.
I found very little in the files about the case, but enough to see it was like the Scottsboro Boys on steroids. There were false accusations and arrests of these young black men, but then the sheriff starts killing the defendants, and the Klan kills Harry T. Moore.
What was Moore’s connection to the Groveland case?
He was one of those people who was so important to civil rights and Florida history, but a lot of people don’t know about him. He was the executive secretary of the NAACP in Florida. He had worked with Marshall before on schools and on a lynching case. When Marshall got involved in Groveland, he knew exactly who he needed. Moore’s role was basically to keep McCall’s actions in the news. Marshall was using him as a kind of PR person.
So the assassination of Moore and his wife, Harriette — killed when a bomb exploded under their home in Mims on Christmas night of 1951 — was related to Groveland?
The Klan had several reasons, but the FBI was convinced the Groveland case was the final straw. They never solved (the murders). They had suspects, but the attorney general pulled the plug.
Devil in the Grove revealed information from FBI files and other sources that had not been made public before. How did you get those documents?
The FBI files on this case were heavily redacted, just this sea of black ink. When I put in my Freedom of Information Act request, I’d been waiting and waiting, and then they said, well, 60 years have passed since this happened, so the files aren’t secret anymore. They released all the files without redaction. It was just amazing. The timing was really lucky for me.
In April of 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Irvin and Shepherd. In November of that year, while driving them to their retrial, Sheriff Willis McCall pulled over and shot both prisoners, Shepherd fatally, claiming they tried to escape. What did you find about that in the FBI files?
For the McCall shooting, they had the pure forensic evidence — proof that it was murder and attempted murder — but that had been quashed.
Devil in the Grove is making news now, but what did it take for that to happen?
This book was rejected 38 times by various publishers. My book on Willie Francis didn’t cause much of a stir, and this was another civil rights book, kind of dark. Publishers weren’t interested.
It took a lot of effort to get it published. Then, one year later, I got a letter from my publisher that it hadn’t done so well, so they were going to remainder it. But they said I could buy copies at a greatly reduced price.
The very next day, I was playing golf with an old friend. We were lamenting our life choices. I said, I think I’m done. I might not get to write another book. We were just a couple of sad sacks walking along the golf course.
Then I got a two-word text: “Dude, Pulitzer.”
The Pulitzer Prize brought the book, and the case, a lot more attention, leading to a petition to pardon the men. Who started that effort?
Josh Venkataranan was a student at the University of Florida who was studying Devil in the Grove in his history class. He became motivated to do something, so he visited the families and started this petition. It had like 8,000 names at one point, I don’t know how many eventually. He kept calling his representative and his senator. The momentum kept building.