Before the days of the Civil War, mass trials involving black men were hardly ever heard of. Mostly because black men never got to trial. They were usually summarily hung from the tallest tree they could find right on the spot of the violation. After the Civil War and with the passage of the 14th Amendment giving African Americans equal protection under the law, the era of mass trials for black men came to be as common as red beans on rice. Just off the top of my head, I can name the Scottsboro Boys, the Martinsville 7, and the Central Park 5. That’s 20 black men right there who were thrown into jail for nothing and later exonerated after spending decades behind bars.
Court: “Okay nigras, we would like to extend the court’s deepest apology for locking y’all’ ass up and throwing away the key. We made a mistake and y’all are free to go. Now the court knows how hard this has been on you and as a gesture of goodwill, we will provide free dentures, hearing aids, and wheelchairs as a token of our sincere remorse.”
City: (Whispering) “All that stuff costs…”
Court: “Boys.. I’ve just been informed that we don’t have any wheelchairs, dentures, or hearing aids available… but instead, we will provide you with a private escort to the lobby… Bailiff, escort these nigras out…”
Them: Well, thank you for that…
Samuel Shepherd
This week’s article is about another group of young black men who were known as the Groveland 4. Their names were Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. They were charged with beating a white man and raping his wife in Groveland, Florida in 1949. That’s par for the course in 1949. If you whooped some white racist backside in the Jim Crow south… you knew you were going to be charged with raping his wife too… even if she was away visiting her sister in Georgia… ain’t no two ways about it.
Police: Hello? Is this Mrs. LIlly?
Mrs. Lilly: Yes, this is Mrs. Lilly… how can I help you?
Police: Mrs. Lilly, this is Officer Rednek and we have a little nigra problem here… Yo’ husband just got it whooped by four nigra’s about an hour ago and he said they raped you too. We gonna need yo’ statement.
Mrs. Lilly: Absolutely Officer Rednek!! I’ll be on the next flight out…
Anywho, so yeah, those were the charges.
In the summer of 1949, a white 17-year-old teenager by the name of Norma Padgett accused four black men of whooping and stomping her husband into the dirt with size 12X Wide muddy Timberlain boots after he used the “N” word and then they kidnapped and raped her. Okay, she didn’t say it exactly like that, but knowing how it was in 1949 in Florida, you can bet somebody used the “N” word and got smacked in the mouth in front of their girlfriend right in the bosom of the Confederacy and now he can’t live with himself unless those nigras pay the price…
BF: “Tell the sheriff they defiled you and I defened yo’ honor…”
Anywho, she said they were driving back from a dance when it happened.
Irvin and Shepherd were arrested shortly after Padgett filed the report. They were taken to a secluded area and subjected to a Level 1 Official Police Azz Ripping and Tearing Whooping. I’m talking about the kind with billy jacks, stomping, and name-calling. They were repeatedly asked had they had kidnapped and raped a gawd-fearing white girl… nothing about the azz whooping mind you.
Police: “Bring me one of those nigra’s over here!! Throw that rope up in the tree!! Now boy… you can talk to me… or you can talk to Jesus!!”
The men didn’t break under the pressure. They were then taken back to the alleged scene of the crime. Both men’s shoes were inspected to see if they matched the prints on the ground. Shepherds’ shoe prints didn’t match… but Irvins did!
Police: “AWWWW NIGRA!!!”
Irvin told them he had been wearing different shoes the night of the alleged crime. They were then taken back to jail, handcuffed to ceiling pipes, and whooped some more. Meanwhile, Greenlee was waiting at the train station for his friend Thomas. Thomas had convinced Greenlee that there were jobs in Groveland. Greenlee was arrested at the train station on suspicion. He was taken to the police station and also subjected to a Level 1. So Ima tells you right now… Greenlee and Shepherd gave it up…
Police: Now nigra’s… those are yo’ kidney’s on the floor… if you don’t want to see the other ones down there… then you better to tell us you defiled a gawd fearing white woman!!
They confessed.
Greenlee also told them where Thomas was staying. I guess Thomas heard they were looking for him and he took off. Unfortunately, they found a letter addressed to his wife and knew where he was. A posse of hundreds was organized. They cornered Thomas in a swamp some 200 miles away. The coroner who inspected his body said Thomas had been shot more than 400 times. The official police report said that Thomas had been armed and had reached for his weapon… I ain’t even going to say nothing… 400 times huh… anyway, the death was ruled as a justifiable homicide.
So while Greenlee and Shepherd gave it up, Irvin knew better not confess to raping a gawd-fearing white woman in “Naw Nigra,” Florida. After the confessions, a mob burned down Shepherd’s house along with two others. They were getting ready to make it happen in the black neighborhood but were stopped by the National Guard. According to a statement made by a man named Croffett to a reporter, their intentions were to… “clean out every Negro section in south Lake County.” (Chasing black people from their homes when someone was accused of committing a crime on a white person wasn’t anything new. It was a reason for taking their land from them for free.)
See Ya”ll Later…
Thurgood Marshall
A grand jury indicted the remaining three defendants.
Judge: Now that I have given you your instructions… you may retire to deliberate.
Grand Jury: “Naw we don’t need to deliberate Billy… let’s just hang the nigra’s and then go over to the Confederate Slipper and have a few rounds…”
The case was ready for trial. The story made national news and the NAACP and FBI got involved. Shepherd and Greenlee told the FBI about the beatings and the coerced confessions. An FBI investigation concluded that Lake County Sheriff’s Department deputies James Yates and Leroy Campbell were responsible for the beatings. FBI agents had documented the physical abuse with photographs and evidence of missing kidneys. Okay… they didn’t have evidence of missing kidneys, but they sure had a lot of pictures of folks with boot marks on them. Anyway, the FBI approached the Justice Department with the evidence. Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Associate Justice, at the time, worked as an attorney for the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. He wanted Yates and Campbell prosecuted for violating Greenlee, Irvin, and Shepherd’s civil rights. The case went to a grand jury, but they failed to bring an indictment against the men. I’m like… “Say What!! Ya’ll got pictures of boot marks and missing kidneys and shat and ya’ll didn’t indict!!” Nope, they didn’t indict… because the Florida U.S. Attorney representing the Justice Department never said anything about the beatings to the grand jury. Now I see omitting that evidence in either one of two ways…
(1.) Attorney: “Hey fellows… see ya’ll at the meeting tonight.” or (2.) Attorney: “Now ya’ll promise not to burn it all the way down to the mofo ground if I do this…” Either way, the outcome was the same, the deputies walked.
Getting It Good
So, without going into the particulars… there was no physical evidence that Padgett had been raped. I’d like to say some people thought she was a virgin, but I ain’t going there. The prosecution did not question the doctor who examined her and the defense was not permitted to call him as a witness. The doctor later said he could not tell if Padgett had been raped as there were no physical signs… none. Shepherd and Irvin said that they had been drinking together in Eatonville, Florida, the night of the alleged attack. Eatonsville is about 40 miles from Groveland. Greenlee said he was nowhere near the other defendants on that night and that he had never even met Shepherd and Irvin before. Despite all this evidence, the three men were convicted by the all-white jury. Shepherd and Irvin were sentenced to an azz whipping and death, and Greenlee was sentenced to one azz whipping a week and life. He was spared the death penalty as he was a minor. I just threw that azz-whooping stuff in there because after all this was 1949 and if you are a black man that’s has been convicted of defiling a gawd-fearing white woman in “Aww Hell No Nigra,” Florida… well you can just about bet those chain gang deputies are gonna get it good…
Warden: Okay… and let’s see here prisoner … OMG!! It says here you are to be put to death for defiling a gawd-fearing white woman!!
Deputy: So Warden… all we need to do is issue him a prison shirt… he don’t need no pants…
Warden: Naw… he ain’t gonna need no pants… he gonna learn today…
Ernest Thomas
By 1951, Thurgood Marshall had the case in front of the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, and he led the defense for the men’s appeal. Now I have some good news and I have some bad news, but first I need to tell you that only two of the men went before the Supreme Court, as Greenlee did not appeal his life sentence.
Chain Gang Deputy: So boy you getting ready to talk to that uppity Washinton DC nigra about an appeal huh? Well after ya’ll finish jawing, I want you to meet me out by the fence tonight, because I have a job for you…
Greenlee: Boss Man suh, is that the fence where Coon was shot trying to escape…?
Chain Gang Deputy: That’s the one boy… I want you to get a shovel and dig a hole by that fence after bedtime tonight…
Greenlee: Boss Man suh… you know something… Yak.. yee dok… tu… me lay… nah ha
Chain Gang Deputy: And it better stay that way…
Greenlee: Ya.. yee dop.. le… tu… me nah…
Chain Gang Deputy: Warden I don’t think we will have to worry about Greenlee talking to that DC nigra… He doesn’t speak English no more…
So yeah, Greenlee was probably coerced. Anyway, I said I had some good news and some bad news about Irvin and Shepherd. First the good news… The Supreme Court overturned the conviction and sent the case back down to the lower court citing adverse pre-trial publicity. Now for the bad news.
Remember when I said Thomas had been shot 400 times by a posse of hundreds of men? Well, that posse was led by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall. Guess who took Irvin and Shepherd back to the state prison after their appearance at the Supreme Court? Yep… McCall. On the way back, he claimed to have had a flat tire. Alone with the two handcuffed men, he pulled down a “lonely dark road” to inspect the tire. Once there he said Shepherd asked to relieve himself. When the two men, who were cuffed together got out of the car, he said they tried to attack him. He had no choice but to draw his pistol and shoot them. Each man was shot three times. Shepherd was killed instantly and Irvin survived by playing dead. Now here comes the BS… Yates had joined McCall on the dark country road. Yates was one of the defendants who was acquitted of violating Irvin, Shepherds, and Greenlee’s civil rights earlier. When Yates got there, he noticed Irvin was still breathing and shot him through the neck. The law officers then loaded up the supposedly dead men and took them to the hospital. Irvin was barely alive, but he was alive. The next day he told the FBI it was a setup. The FBI later found a bullet buried in the ground beneath Irvin’s blood spot that appeared to support his account of the shooting. They also figured that the nail that McCall said had caused the tire problem had been placed in the tire intentionally. McCall said he didn’t know how the nail got there. To make a long story short, an all-white coroner’s jury in McCall’s hometown determined that Shepherd’s killing was justified. It took just half an hour to clear McCall of any wrongdoing.
Harry T. Moore
Now normally this is the part where I usually say, blacks all over the country started feeling some kinda of way and started lighting matches and playing with gasoline and shat, but that’s not what happened here. McCall was taken to task by a NAACP lawyer named Harry T. Moore. He wanted McCall suspended from office and arrested for murder. Six weeks after calling for McCall’s removal, Moore and his wife were killed by a bomb that exploded under their bedroom floor on December 25, 1951. The FBI investigated the bombing in 1951, 1978, 1991, and 2005… they never could find a link between McCall and the killings. In 2006 after a 20-month forensic investigation by the Florida Attorney General’s Office, four suspects were named. They were Earl Brooklyn, Tillman Belvin, Joseph Cox, and Edward Spivey. All four men were members of a local Klan Klavern. Unfortunately, all of the men were deceased. Although everyone knew the Klan was probably behind the bombing at the time, no one was ever held responsible and the crime is officially unsolved.
Walter Irvin
Walter Irvin got his second trial. Represented by Thurgood Marshall, they asked for a venue change, meaning ain’t no way they were going to try the case again in the same town. It was moved to Marion County, Florida, where they promptly found that nigra guilty again after he refused a plea deal that would have spared him the death penalty. The same judge who presided over the first case was presiding over this case too. He sentenced him to death again. Irvin’s luck changed when a moderate governor named Leroy Collins was elected in 1955. He looked over Irvin’s case and decided that neither trial proved conclusively that Irvin was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He commuted his sentence to life. In 1968 Irvin was paroled and this would be a happy ending considering the circumstances, but for one thing. In 1969 Irvin went back for a visit to Lake County, and one day was found dead in his car. Officially it was ruled he died of natural causes. If it was me, the last place on Earth I would have died of “natural causes” would have been Lake County ” I Told You We Would Get Yo’ Ass Nigra,” Florida.
Charles Greenlee
Greenlee was paroled from prison in 1962. He was the youngest of the accused men having been just 17 years at the time of the trial. He was 30 years old when he was released. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and daughter. His wife was pregnant when he went to jail. They had another child in 1965. Greenlee died in 2012 at the age of 80.
Memorial
Beginning in 2016, the move to exonerate the men began to take shape. In 2016 the the Lake County Commission issued an apology to the surviving family members of the Groveland Four. That same year they began to lobby state lawmakers to do the same. State Senator Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, filed resolution SCR 136 for consideration to clear the names of Greenlee, Irvin, Shepherd, and Thomas, noting the “egregious wrongs” the criminal justice system perpetrated against them. They say Senator Thompson is doing well now and that you hardly notice the rope burns… okay… you know I’m kidding, right? As a matter of fact, in 2017, the Florida House of Representatives passed a resolution requesting exoneration for the four men and apologizing to their families for the injustice of the case. Not only that, the Florida State Senate passed an identical resolution just 2 weeks later! It took two years, but on January 11, 2019, the Florida Board of Executive Clemency, unanimously agreed to pardon the Groveland Four.
Norma Padgett was also there to oppose the pardons saying;
“I’m beggin’ y’all not to give them pardon because they done it. Your minds might be made up. I don’t know. If you do, y’all going to be just like them, and that’s all I got to say, ’cause I know I’m telling the truth. I went to court twice.”
Padgett was the gawd-fearing woman who said the four men raped her. She was 86 years old and it was the first time she had publicly talked about the case since 1952. Although the men were granted full posthumous pardons in 2019, they were not exonerated by the state until 2021. Judge Heidi Davis granted the state’s motion on November 22, 2021, to posthumously dismiss the indictments of Thomas and Shepherd and vacate the convictions of Greenlee and Irvin.
Silver Lining
So that’s the story of the Groveland Four. It pretty much went the way I thought it would go… black men getting exonerated after all of them are dead… and racists escaping justice and living long comfortable lives. The only bright spot I can see is that somebody’s racist boyfriend got an azz whooping from some black men in 1949 down in Lake County, Florida… and that azz whooping is gonna be on the record for all time to come…
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News.
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