Devil in the Grove

At the time of the Groveland incident, Willie is a 23-year-old who works on the family farm a few miles from Groveland. He met and married Norma Lee Tyson, a 16-year-old girl from the area. Norma’s father is suspicious of Willie, especially for his nighttime carousing and rough treatment of Norma. Willie and Norma separate for a time, but her father wants them to reconcile as Norma has a bad reputation around town and needs the steadying hand of a husband.

Willie’s angry nature is shown when he enters into a racially driven brawl with Sam Shepherd and Walter Irvin when they stop to help him with his car—a brawl that leads directly to the disastrous events of July 15, 1949. In a sense, Willie’s anger is the original sin that sets the Groveland tragedy in motion.

Norma is the daughter of Coy Tyson, a local farmer. She is poor, and her early marriage to Willie is to some extent a desire to escape the boredom of home. She is variously described by locals as being a “bad egg” and as having a reputation that is “not good.” One of her offenses has reportedly been “cavorting with Negroes” (35), a rumor that will prove significant in light of her claims in the case. For the defense team, Norma’s questionable character lends credence to the idea that she and Willie fabricated the rape story.

Norma carries out her testimony in the first trial in a flashy and ostentatious manner, wearing fancy clothes and pointing ominously at the defendants one by one. By the Florida retrial, however, she seems broken in body and spirit, with “the bent carriage and the shuffling walk of a woman three times her age” (297). By now she is living on her uncle’s farm, still married to a man who neglects her. Norma and Willie eventually divorce, and Norma remarries, ultimately ending up as a widow. 

Shepherd is a 22-year-old World War II veteran from Groveland, the son of a farmer, who is the friend of and served in the same army unit with 22-year-old Walter Irvin. Samuel’s family is forced to abandon their farm and go into hiding after riots and vandalism break out following the Groveland incident. Local white residents resent both Samuel’s father for his success as an independent farmer and Samuel himself for his military uniform and fine car. 

Irvin is Shepherd’s friend who fatefully helps Willie and Norma Padgett on the night of July 15, 1949. After Ernest Thomas and Samuel Shepherd are killed and Charles Greenlee begins his life prison sentence, Irvin ends up as the sole Groveland Boys defendant, thereby becoming the “face” of the Groveland case for most of the public.

Irvin’s most notable characteristic is his guileless honesty and unwavering profession of innocence. Even after the court offered a deal to spare his life in exchange for pleading guilty, he refuses because it would be untruthful. After the retrial, Irvin still hopes he will be cleared of the charge. When he is finally pardoned by the new governor LeRoy Collins, Irvin writes him an effusive letter of gratitude.

Irvin comes to a tragic end, however, as shortly after going on parole he is found dead in his car under suspicious circumstances. The trajectory of Irvin’s life, like that of his friend Samuel Shepherd—honorable soldiers in World War II, framed for a crime they didn’t commit, and dead before their time—arouses pity, sorrow, and anger. 

Greenlee is a 16-year-old who unwittingly finds himself caught up in the incidents of July 15. Having lost his two younger sisters to tragic railroad accidents, Greenlee left home out of grief and to find orange-picking work with his 25-year-old friend Ernest Thomas. Greenlee defends himself convincingly on the stand (Mabel Norris Reese cynically calls it “good acting”), resulting in his receiving life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.

Greenlee comes to a happier end than his fellow defendants. Assigned to hard labor, he serves his term honorably and after several years is awarded parole. He marries, raises a family, and builds a successful cooling and heating maintenance business in Tennessee (358). Greenlee shares with Walter Irvin a good-natured and guileless personality. 

Thomas is Charles Greenlee’s 25-year-old friend who is traveling with him on the night of July 15 to find work in another area of Florida. Thomas leaves Greenlee in the train station while he goes to get clean clothes. There Greenlee is nabbed by the police, while Thomas flees. He is later pegged as an accomplice of Greenlee in the alleged rape of Norma Padgett; the police hunt him down in the countryside and kill him.

Investigations later uncover the fact that Thomas was involved with selling bolita and that the police may have wanted him dead for that reason. Thomas’s personality and character are less closely delineated than the other characters. Compared with the other three defendants, he comes off as somewhat shadier and less law abiding. 

Known as “the Whittlin’ Judge” because of his favorite pastime while on the bench, Judge Futch is portrayed as ineffectual and uninterested in challenging the racist status quo. His whittling of cedar sticks while hearing the Groveland case is emblematic of his indifference and complacency. He is, moreover, on friendly terms with the prosecuting attorney, Jesse Hunter.

Hunter is the state attorney of Florida, a septuagenarian who, to Franklin Williams, resembles a caricature of the “Southern country boy” with red suspenders, shirtsleeves, and a bottle of Coke (145). Although possessed of comparatively mild racism and on good terms with such figures as Judge Futch and Willis McCall, Hunter becomes highly suspicious of McCall and doubts Walter Irvin’s guilt. Having contracted a fatal disease and sensing the need to clear his conscience, he petitions the new governor of Florida to pardon Walter Irvin. Hunter also comes to admire Marshall by the end of the case, saying of him, “Boy, there’s a great man” (321).

Reese, a northerner who moved to Florida, is a reporter for the Mount Dora Topic. Although at first writing in support of the prosecution (she is particularly derisive about the recommendation for mercy given to Charles Greenlee), she eventually comes to believe in the defendants’ innocence. In her column, she acknowledges that her earlier view was conditioned by prejudice. She visits Walter Irvin in prison and becomes a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a supporter of the civil rights movement.

Earlier, she had also written reports exposing Willis McCall’s political duplicity in the bolita business, angering McCall. After the Brown v. Board decision is passed by the Supreme Court, Reese writes in praise of it and is duly rewarded by the KKK with a cross burning on her front lawn.

McCall is the “High Sheriff” of Lake County. He is obsessed with his public image, crafting a reputation as an “unimpeachable county official, a man ‘duty bound’ to run the sheriff’s office by the rule of law” (135). An unapologetic racist, McCall nevertheless disperses the lynch party that has formed to kill the Groveland suspects after their arrest. To McCall, this is all part of his duty of maintaining law and order in his domain. McCall fights strenuously against negative portrayals of him in the press, obsessively clipping news stories and trying to spin the truth in his favor.

His shooting of Shepherd and Irvin is disastrous for his reputation and lands him in the hospital along with Irvin. McCall maintains that he shot in self-defense as the prisoners were trying to escape. With the help of his strong-arm and violent deputy James Yates, he seeks to maintain this story and to control the activity of press and investigators even while recovering in the hospital.

McCall is a complex enough character that we are often left guessing what his motives are and what he might do next. King’s nuanced portrayal of McCall prevents him from becoming a predictable one-dimensional “villain,” although he does ultimately come off as a vicious and violent human being. McCall’s “reign of terror” as sheriff comes to an end only in 1972 (357), when he is indicted for kicking a mentally handicapped black prisoner to death.

Moore, a schoolteacher and the president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, is a peripheral character who assumes considerable importance as the book progresses. As a Florida resident, he is in a unique position to assist Marshall and his colleagues on the Groveland case, raising awareness and support among Florida residents. Moore’s activism in Florida on behalf of civil rights influences many people, although he is disappointed at the lack of interest and financial support for the NAACP among his fellow blacks. Moore’s assassination, which is most likely carried out by the KKK, becomes a lightning rod in the Groveland case, shocking people around the nation and galvanizing their interest and passions in the case.