Groveland Four

The Groveland Four (or the Groveland Boys) were four young African-American men, Earnest Thomas, Charles Greenlee (then a minor at age 16), Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, who in 1949 were accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman and assaulting her husband in Lake County, Florida.

Thomas fled and was killed by a posse several days later and 200 miles away; Greenlee, Shepherd and Irvin were arrested. They were beaten in jail to coerce confessions, but Irvin did not confess. The three survivors were convicted at trial by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the crime; the other two were sentenced to death. In 1951 the United States Supreme Court ordered a retrial after hearing appeals by the latter two men, led by Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. It ruled they had not received a fair trial because of excessive adverse publicity and because blacks had been excluded from the jury.

In November 1951, Sheriff Willis McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody, saying they had tried to escape while he was transporting them from the state jail at Railford back to the county seat of Tavares, Florida, for the new trial. Shepherd died on the spot; Irvin survived his wounds and later told FBI investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood and that his deputy Yates had also shot him in an attempt to finish him off.

At the second trial, Irvin was again convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. In 1955 his sentence was commuted to life by recently elected Governor Leroy Collins. In 1968 Irvin was paroled. He died in February 1969 in Lake County.

In 2016 the City of Groveland and Lake County each apologized to survivors of the four men for the injustice against them. The four were posthumously exonerated on April 18, 2017, by a resolution of the Florida House of Representatives.[1] The state senate quickly passed a similar resolution, and lawmakers called on Florida Governor Rick Scott to officially pardon the men.

Background

  • Charles L. Greenlee (b. 4 June 1933, Florida),[2] was the son of Thomas H. and Emma Greenlee, who were born in Georgia and Alabama, respectively.[3] His family was living in Columbia County when he was 2,[4] but they had moved to Baker County by the time Charles was 12.[3] His father worked in turpentine manufacturing in 1935[4] and later as a laborer, likely also in the timber industry. In 1945 Charles and four of his siblings were all in school.[3] Greenlee had come to Groveland in July 1949 looking for work, as he was already married and his wife was pregnant.[5]
  • Walter Lee Irvin (b. 8 May 1927, Gainesville, Florida), was living in Groveland when he registered for the draft in May 1945. He listed his mother Ellia Irvin as next of kin. He was working at the time for Apshawa Groves. He was recorded as 5'3" and weighing 105 pounds, and was described in his registration as "light brown", with brown eyes and black hair.[6] He served in the Army, leaving with the rank of private.
  • Samuel Shepherd (b. 7 April 1927) was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia[7] to Henry Shepherd and his wife Charlie M (Robinson) Shepherd, both of Georgia. His father was working in the lumber industry.[8] The Shepherd family moved to Groveland, Florida, where his father achieved ownership of his own farm by clearing and developing former swamp land.[9] When Samuel Shepherd registered for the draft in 1945, he was described as 5'8", 149 pounds, with a light brown complexion, brown eyes and black hair.[7] He gave his father Henry Shepherd as next of kin.[7] Shepherd and Irvin were friends and fellow veterans after World War II.[9]
  • Earnest (also spelled as Ernest) Thomas (b. Florida), was married by July 1949 and living and working near Groveland. He had encouraged Greenlee to come there because of jobs related to the citrus groves.[9]

After returning to Groveland following their military service, Shepherd and Irvin both continued to wear their uniforms. They were proud of their service, which some of the local whites resented. Sheriff Willis McCall was known for supporting segregation, and keeping a strong hold on workers and against union organizing. He was part of ensuring there was a ready supply of low-wage workers to man the orange groves. Shepherd could work with his father, and Irvin was determined to find an alternative to the orange groves.[9]

Events

Norma Padgett, a 17-year-old white woman, and her husband Willie, said that on July 16, 1949, they had been attacked by four young black men in Groveland, Florida, who stopped where the couple's car had stalled. Norma said she was taken away and raped, and Willie said he had been assaulted. Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, age 16; Samuel Shepherd, age 22, and Walter Irvin, age 22, were identified by the police as suspects. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of service in the Army; and both Thomas and Greenlee were married.

Irvin and Shepherd were arrested shortly after Padgett complained of the attack. The police took the men in their patrol car to a secluded spot and ordered them out of the car. Both men were beaten by police with blackjacks and fists and kicked as they lay crumpled on the ground, while being asked if they had picked up a white girl. Afterward, they were taken to the spot where the crime happened. Deputy Yates inspected Shepherd’s shoes, which he had worn the night before. Yates was frustrated to see that the soles did not match footprints in the ground at the scene. Irvin’s were the same, but Irvin admitted that he was wearing a different pair of shoes. The two men were taken to Tavares jail, where they were interrogated in the basement while cuffed to overhead pipes and severely beaten.[10]

Charles Greenlee was a 16-year-old who had come from Gainesville and was trying to find work with his friend Ernest Thomas. Thomas had convinced Greenlee that there were plenty of jobs in Groveland. Greenlee was waiting at a rail depot to meet Thomas when he was arrested and brought to the police station under suspicion.

Greenlee was interrogated and beaten in a cell that night until he admitted to the rape of Norma Padgett. Thomas escaped capture and fled Lake County the following morning. Greenlee admitted to having been with Thomas.

Police learned where the latter lived and where he was hiding, as they found a letter in his letterbox addressed to his wife. Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall appointed a posse that tracked Thomas down days later, 200 miles (320 km) away in Madison County, Florida. He was shot and killed; officers reported that Thomas was armed and reached for his weapon.

The NAACP later said that the posse had never intended to arrest Thomas, but to kill him. According to the coroner's inquest, Lake County Sheriff McCall was at the scene when Thomas was shot. The coroner’s jury determined that Thomas had been lawfully killed and ruled his death a justifiable homicide.[11]

Trial

The NAACP helped with the men's defense, hiring Orlando attorney Franklin Williams. After interviewing the three surviving suspects, Williams said each had independently stated that he was beaten by Lake County deputies. Shepherd and Greenlee both told FBI agents that they confessed to raping Padgett in order to stop the beatings. Irvin never confessed and maintained his innocence.

Williams documented the visible evidence of their injuries.Shepherd’s injuries included scars on head, broken teeth, tooth puncture of upper lip, lash scars across back and chest, and scars on the wrist, which supported Shepherd’s claim that he had been cuffed to a metal pipe. Irvin had similar injuries: body scars, wide bruises, lash marks, scars across wrists, and an apparently fractured jaw. Greenlee’s injuries included a red and bruised left eye, scars on the right cheekbone and around the neck and groin, swollen testicles, and numerous cuts on his feet.

Thurgood Marshall, the lead lawyer of the NAACP, pressed the Justice Department and the FBI to initiate a civil rights and domestic violence investigation into the beatings. Marshall convinced the Justice Department that the beatings violated the men's rights, and the FBI dispatched agents to investigate. The FBI later concluded that Lake County deputies James Yates and Leroy Campbell had violated the Groveland men's civil rights and urged U.S. Attorney Herbert Phillips of Florida to prosecute, but a grand jury did not return indictments of the deputies.[11]

Likely fearing that a higher court would reverse any guilty verdicts, the prosecution never introduced the coerced confessions as evidence into the trial.

There is much uncertainty about whether Padgett was raped. The prosecution did not question Dr. Geoffrey, the physician who examined her, on the stand. Judge Truman Futch did not permit the defense to call the doctor as a witness. According to his records, Geoffrey could not tell whether she had been raped. He found no evidence of tears or wounds in the vagina other than the lacerations mentioned above.Laboratory analysis of a vaginal smear revealed no spermatozoa present in the vagina, nor any organisms resembling gonococci, which could have been other evidence of sex. There were no other gross signs of bruises, breaks in the skin or other signs of violence.[11]

Shepherd and Irvin said that they had been together drinking in Eatonville, Florida, the night of the alleged attack. Greenlee said he was nowhere near the other defendants on that night and that he had never met Shepherd and Irvin before.

The defense accused Sheriff McCall's deputies of manufacturing evidence to win a conviction. All three men were convicted by the all-white jury. Shepherd and Irvin were sentenced to death, and Greenlee was sentenced to life, as he was a minor.

Appeals and shootings

The NAACP took on assisting the defense in appeals. In 1951 Marshall led the defense in an appeals hearing for Irvin and Shepherd at the U.S. Supreme Court. It overturned the convictions of both men based on adverse pre-trial publicity, and remanded the case to the lower court for a new trial. (Greenlee had not appealed his sentence of life imprisonment.)

McCall was transporting Shepherd and Irvin from Raiford State Prison back to the Lake County jail in Tavares when he claimed to have a flat tire. Alone with the two handcuffed prisoners, McCall pulled down a dirt road to inspect the tire, outside Umatilla, Florida, north of Tavares. He claimed that Shepherd asked to relieve himself, and when the two prisoners, cuffed together, got out of the car, they attacked McCall. He drew his pistol and shot at them. The shooting took place on a dark country road outside the town. He shot each prisoner three times. Shepherd was killed instantly, and Irvin survived by playing dead.[11]

The following morning, Irvin told FBI agents and reporters at the hospital where he was taken for treatment that the shooting was unprovoked. He said McCall had shot him and Shepherd in cold blood, staging the scene to make it look like an escape attempt. Irvin shocked reporters by saying that Lake County Deputy James Yates had joined McCall at the scene, saw that Irvin was still breathing, and fired one last shot through Irvin's neck. Irvin survived. The FBI later found a bullet buried in the ground beneath Irvin's blood spot that appeared to support his account of the shooting.[11] A nail found in the front wheel of McCall’s car appeared to have caused his claimed "tire trouble" that night. McCall said that he had no idea how the nail got there, but the FBI believed that it had been placed there.[11]

An all-white coroner's jury, made up of many of McCall's friends, took half an hour to find Shepherd’s death justified. They concluded that McCall had been acting in line of duty and in self-defense. McCall was cleared of any wrongdoing.[11] (At this time, most blacks had been disenfranchised by state laws since the turn of the 20th century. They therefore were excluded from any juries in the state, as they were not on any voter rolls).

Irvin's second trial

After recovering from his shooting wounds, Irvin was tried again after refusing a deal from the prosecutor and Governor Fuller Warren that would have spared him from a death sentence if he pleaded guilty. His defense counsel, Thurgood Marshall, gained a change of venue to Marion County, Florida, because of the extensive and adverse publicity around the case in Lake County. Marshall led the defense team from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Irvin was found guilty. Judge Futch, who was again presiding, sentenced him to death.[11]

After LeRoy Collins was elected governor in 1954, questions were raised to him about Irvin's case, because he was considered moderate. He reviewed it and in 1955 commuted Irvin's sentence to life in prison, stating that neither trial proved conclusively that Irvin was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.[11] Irvin was paroled in 1968; he died in February 1969 in Lake County.[12][11]

Greenlee was paroled from prison in 1962. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and their daughter Carole, born in 1950. (His wife was pregnant when he was arrested.) They had a son, Thomas, in 1965.[5] Greenlee died on April 18, 2012.[2]

Apologies and exoneration

In 2016, both the city of Groveland and government of Lake County offered posthumous apologies to each of the Groveland Four and their families, and began lobbying state lawmakers to do the same. On Tuesday, April 18, 2017, the Florida House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution sponsored by State Representative Bobby DuBose apologizing to the families of the Groveland Four, some of whose members were in attendance, and exonerating the men. The Florida State Senate passed an identical resolution sponsored by Senator Gary Farmer on April 27, 2017. The resolutions also called on Governor Rick Scott to expedite the process for granting posthumous pardons.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Mettler, Katie (April 19, 2017). "'We're truly sorry': Fla. apologizes for racial injustice of 1949 'Groveland Four' rape case". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 19, 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Charles L Greenlee", in U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014, Ancestry.com; accessed 13 October 2018
  3. 1 2 3 [Ancestry.com. Florida, State Census, 1867-1945 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. "Charles L. Greenlee", in Florida, State Census, 1867-1945], Ancestry.com; accessed 13 October 2018
  4. 1 2 "Tom Greenlee", in Florida, State Census, 1867-1945], Ancestry.com. Florida, State Census, 1867-1945 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.
  5. 1 2 Katie Mettler, "‘We’re truly sorry’: Fla. apologizes for racial injustice of 1949 ‘Groveland Four’ rape case", Washington Post, 19 April 2017; accessed 13 October 2018
  6. ↑ "Walter Lee Irvin", in U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947, Ancestry.com
  7. 1 2 3 "Samuel Shepherd, in U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947", Ancestry.com; accessed 13 October 2018
  8. ↑ "Henry Shepherd, 1930 Census, Ben Hill, GA, Ancestry.com
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Florida Terror: Groveland", PBS, The Legacy of Harry T. Moore, 2000; accessed 13 October 2018
  10. ↑ "PBS - Freedom Never Dies: The Story of Harry T. Moore - Florida Terror - Groveland - Irvin's Statement Page 1". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2016-11-28.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Gilbert King (6 March 2012). Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-209771-2.
  12. ↑ "Walter Lee Irvin", Ancestry.com. Florida Death Index, 1877-1998, [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

Further reading

  • Gary Corsair (1 March 2004). The Groveland Four: The Sad Saga of a Legal Lynching. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1-4140-7243-2. - This is a self-published book, which does not qualify as RS per Wikipedia guidelines. Moved it to this section for reader's interest.
  • Gilbert King (6 March 2012). Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. Harper. ISBN 978-0-0617-9228-1.
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