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Gilbert King

Author of Devil in the Grove

11 Works 1,224 Members 55 Reviews 2 Favorited

About the Author

Gilbert King was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction for Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, which was also a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A contributor to Smithsonian magazine and The show more Marshall Project, King also writes about justice for The New York Times and The Washington Post. He lives in New York City. show less
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(7) This was an excellent and chilling portrait of Jim Crow Florida. I had read about this case through the J Edgar Hoover biography I read last year which is what prompted me to get this Pulitzer-Prize winning narrative non-fiction. This was an exploration of the Groveland case and Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's role in defending the accused men. It takes place in central Florida, amid the orange groves, in the 1940's when segregation was the law and order. Enforced by extra-judicial threats and lynching by the KKK which often contained many of the citizens that were supposed to protect the community. Four black men, 2 of them veterans, one a teenager are accused of raping a white girl - a capital crime given some creepy fetish of exalting Southern white women's purity.

The book does an excellent job setting the scene and trying to recreate events although he never tries to present anything he doesn't know for sure as fact leading to certain gaps in the story of the night in question. The men are hunted down, confessions are beaten out of them, evidence manufactured, there is an attempted lynching and later in the book certainly a murder by law enforcement that goes unpunished due to the complicity of cracker white supremacy. It is truly sickening.

One of the worst parts of this book are seeing the attitudes reflected in the people of today. I have family that lives in that part of Florida. I hear the things the State's politicians say - "where woke goes to die." It seems a chilling echo of this legacy. As one of the NAACP lawyers says in the book - "They have just taken their hoods off."

The book escapes a higher rating from me only because it felt long. I really enjoyed learning more about Thurgood Marshall and the other cases he tried, but some parts about the NAACP politics etc were a drag. At times the book was not engaging.

Anyway, this book is deserving of its Pulitzer Prize and I think should be required reading in any US History course. The one thing I do know is that I never want to step foot in the State of Florida again. I'll be damned if if ever give them another dime of my vacation budget.
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jhowell | 47 other reviews | Mar 8, 2024 |
A well-researched and well-rounded accounts of one of the most important and overlooked civil rights cases in American history. While Thurgood Marshall's name is on the title King provides a detailed look at the key figures on all sides of this case, from Marshall's fellow lawyers at the Legal Defense Fund, to a sheriff and deputies willing to do what it takes to keep Jim Crow intact, to skeptical journalists to the Klan and their sympathetic politicians. Probably the most important character was the community in Lake County, Florida where many had doubts about a white couple's charges of rape against four young black men --charges whose details did not seem to add up -- and yet supported the prosecution of the men out of both self-interest and a desire to keep the white supremacist structures intact. The description of how the tentacles of bigotry reached every aspect of southern life provides great insight into how some of the worst atrocities in American history could happen and gives insight into injustices that continue to happen.… (more)
 
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DAGray08 | 47 other reviews | Jan 1, 2024 |
An excellent book about a remarkable and courageous man. I now have a much better understanding of why he was appointed to the Supreme Court.
The tales of racism and brutality faced by these men is almost beyond belief. But then I just saw the new movie Selma, and saw it motion.
 
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jjbinkc | 47 other reviews | Aug 27, 2023 |
I'm probably in the minority, but this is a really poorly written book on a fascinating combination of topics (The Groveland Case, Civil Rights, and Thurgood Marshall). The main problem is that the author can't seem to decide which topic to focus on, even within a chapter. There are so many loose threads of information started but never completed that I feel as though I've just unraveled one of the most intricately-woven tapestries of American history just by picking up the book.

Secondly, [mild SPOILER ALERT] the author adopts most of the racist, mysogynist, and exclusionary language of the time period without any distancing language included (example, "The flower of Southern Womanhood" without adding "white" to describe the alleged victim in the case; or calling the four suspects "rapists" throughout instead of "alleged rapists").… (more)
 
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MsMireille | 47 other reviews | Jun 16, 2023 |

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Works
11
Members
1,224
Popularity
#20,980
Rating
4.2
Reviews
55
ISBNs
25
Favorited
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