The defense dared not to question in any way either the purity of the Flower of Southern Womanhood, however indelicately she might be represented by Norma Lee Padgett, or her probity in the “contention that she [had] been ravished” by four savage blacks. Should the defense dare to tread upon a white Southern woman’s honor, not only would the jury fail to acquit a black man of a rape charge, but they would also most surely deliver him a death sentence. So the only practicable strategy for the defense in the Groveland Boys case was to raise reasonable doubt by showing that the state of Florida
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