Devil in the Grove

M. ??

King's Devil in the Grove is an entertaining hybrid that mixes the novelist styles of the true crime and court-room procedural with historical and political analysis and biography. While entertaining the historical and political analysis is a bit underdeveloped and shallow. Gilbert would have us blame a racist and violent sheriff, his pathological deputy and their Klan friends for the murders of the Grove four. But Gilbert's own analysis shows the situation was more complex than that. As an elected official the Sheriff was dependant on his corporate funds to underwrite his successful campaigns. His corporate funders required a cowed and submissive black labour force in their orange groves and other industries. But they did not want them so terrified by the Klan as to flee the county. So the sheriff had to control the Klan at times. Meanwhile, the sheriff, a true paragon of corruption, was at the same time involved in profiting from gambling. This was another angle in the set-up of one of the four black victims. The complexities do not lend themselves to simply blaming the Sheriff and the Klan. Rather there was an overdetermination of conflicting forces involved beyond the control of any single evil character. Different forms of racism, fascism, societal sexual dysfunction, and early modern capitalism were all involved in a truly frightening stew of violence and ignorance. Still the book helps us glimpse the American South as a variety of fascist police state that used the brutally violent ISIS-like KKK as a state sponsored terrorist militia.

Gripping and horrifying story of Thurgood Marshall's and the NAACP's efforts to save four falsely accused black men in a rape charge as the white-entrenched communities help incite and participate in violence, death and danger against those who would try to break the accepted way of life.

Great book about Thurgood Marshall and the beginnings of the fight for Civil Rights in this country. The story centers on a murder trial in Central Florida but speaks to the body of work done by Marshall and the NAACP in those early years. Should be read by all and sadly still rings true about our country today.

Excellent account of the trauma suffered by many during the civil rights struggle, and the efforts to address the inequalities of the justice system.