Winner
of the Pulitzer Prize
“A must-read, cannot-put-down history.” — Thomas
Friedman,
New York Times
Arguably the most important
American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of
bringing the landmark suit
Brown v. Board of Education
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.
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."
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.
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.