Devil in the grove

In 1949 Florida, the booming orange industry relied on Jim Crow labor. When a white girl accused four young Black men of rape, vicious Sheriff McCall quickly pursued them, leading to the Ku Klux Klan terrorizing the Black community. This ignited a chain of events that drew Thurgood Marshall, 'Mr. Civil Rights,' into a dangerous legal battle. Despite the risks to his vital work in the burgeoning civil rights movement, Marshall refused to back down, especially after the Klan murdered one of his NAACP associates. Drawing on previously unpublished FBI and NAACP files, this book illuminates Marshall's courageous fight against injustice during a dark period in American history.