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

Maurice Weaver,

“A lawyer’s either a social engineer or he’s a parasite on society.”

Marian Wynn Perry,

Fathers of black soldiers warned their sons not to come home in their uniforms because police had made a practice of searching and beating black military men.

Judge Julius Waties

Waring of South Carolina,

“I’m going to keep doing it,” Moore replied in his understated way, “even if it costs me my life. Jesus Christ lost his life doing what he thought was right. And I believe the Lord intended for me to do this work for the colored race. I may live to be a ripe old age or I may be killed tomorrow, or next month, or perhaps never, but I intend to do this until the day I die.”

Marshall’s civil cases, the long battles for voting rights and school desegregation, unquestionably effected lasting social changes, but the criminal cases more immediately brought justice.