Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

by Gilbert King

“You know,” Marshall said to him, “sometimes I get awfully tired of trying to save the white man’s soul.”

Marshall would later say, “There is very little truth in the old refrain that one cannot legislate equality. Laws not only provide concrete benefits, they can even change the hearts of men—some men, anyhow—for good or evil.”

Supreme Court ruling that capital punishment was unconstitutional

(The NAACP defined “lynching” as an illegal killing by three or more persons claiming to be serving justice or tradition.)

There are enough staid people in the world holding things as they are. We need no more of them. What we need is people caught by the truth that no one is free when anyone is bound.

It has to be applied person by person, not just in the pious generalities of the resolutions good people pass when they gather for a moment and separate without effective action.

For a while, I was mad at you; your book changed what I thought of my childhood milieu. I am not mad at you anymore; you have opened my eyes in a way that a man needs his eyes opened.