by Gilbert King
First published 2012
Gilbert King chronicles how Thurgood Marshall confronted one of his most dangerous cases while preparing for Brown v. Board of Education. In 1949, a white teenager in Groveland, Florida accused four young Black men of rape. Sheriff Willis McCall launched a brutal manhunt while the Ku Klux Klan burned Black homes and forced hundreds to flee into swamps. Marshall's colleagues warned him against entering this "Florida Terror," but the future Supreme Court justice refused to abandon the Groveland Boys. The case cost Marshall an NAACP associate, murdered by the Klan, and brought death threats against Marshall himself. King draws from FBI files and NAACP Legal Defense Fund records to reveal how this explosive case nearly derailed the civil rights movement. The book won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and illuminates Marshall's courage during Florida's citrus boom, when growers relied on Jim Crow labor and violent sheriffs to maintain profits.
Genres: biography, history, historical-fiction, 20th-century, african-american, crime, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: based-on-true-events, legal-drama, social-justice
Setting: Groveland, Florida, United States
Period: 1949, 20th-century
434 pages · ebook · Harper
Content warnings: racism, violence