If you are white, under 50 years old and grew up in Florida you should read, Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King. Sure, it won the 2013 Pulitzer for Nonfiction but that’s not why you should read it. You should read it so that you have a better understanding of the world we came from and still live in.
Devil in the Grove tells the story of “The Groveland Four“. In 1949 four young men in Groveland, FL – a small community in Lake County located in Central Florida, were arrested and convicted of raping a white woman. The problem is, the assault never happened.
The Dark Side of the South
You would think this story is something straight out of a Harper Lee novel if it wasn’t so nauseating in parts. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to put it down. Forget about it. Not read any farther. But, I felt compelled to read on.
It is so tempting to think about the Jim Crow South and the racism that dominated the culture as belonging to another time and place. But, of course, that is foolishness. It still exists today. It has become more subtle, more institutionalize but it is there.
Thurgood Marshall and the band of lawyers that make up the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP are the main protagonists of Devil in the Grove. After news of the beatings and arrests of the four young men reach their offices in New York they set out help.
It’s amazing to me to learn that they had no real hope of winning in the case. The crooked sheriff, state’s attorney, and the judge are in it together. Instead, they focus on trying the case to create a reversible error so perhaps they will get a fairer hearing on appeal maybe even to the Supreme Court.
The wild thing about this book, especially if you don’t know how the story ends, is that once they are arrested and the trial begins you assume it is over when the verdict is read. Not even close. So hateful and murderous are the KKK and the law enforcement community that they would stop at nothing to perpetuate their particular version of hate.
Devil in the Grove Is Personal to Me
It is hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this awful, awful injustice happened less than an hour from where I live. That I have family members who were old enough to remember it.
It’s not as if I was blind to the racism that existed around me growing up. I knew it was there. I remember seeing the KKK protest down Broadway and being floored that it could happen here. But it was always something that happened “out there” – to other people. Something is easier to dismiss if it isn’t happening to you.
Simply loving and raising him has made us much more aware of the evil around us. And, unfortunately, we’ve experienced now with him.
I couldn’t read this story and not think of him. Not wrestle with the idea that someone could hate him because he is a different race. But, those are realities that he will have to face. And, we will face them with him as best as we can.
The Groveland Four were guilty of nothing, but it cost them everything. The was a devil in the grove in 1949. But, he didn’t stay put. He has migrated into almost every aspect of society. But, that is why we need books like this one. And, why all people and especially people from privileged social classes need to read them and not look away.
Even if you aren’t trying to figure out how to raise a son in a world that is stacked against him, it is incumbent on all of us not to forget what people who lived before us had to deal with. It’s the only way I know how to try to create a better future.
