Devil In The Grove

Devil in the Grove is a non-fictional book written by Gilbert King. Kings takes an outside, as well as, unbiased perspective on Thurgood Marshall’s life and the story of the Groveland boys. King’s unbiased view caters to the story well, because it doesn’t cause him to bring much emotion from himself into the story, which can be problem from writers especially in a dispiriting story such as this one. The style of this work is uniform throughout. However, the selection of details jumps around a lot. Although they play a key part in developing the story it does take a couple chapters to actually get into the Groveland Boys. In the beginning, he writes a lot about Marshall and establishes his career well. One man called him the, “Founding Father

of the New America” (King 2) and that’s because “Marshall fought countless battles against for human rights in stifling antebellum courthouses where white supremacy ruled” (King 2). King backs this up well by recalling court cases where Marshall was able to acquit about 25 African-Americans and was well known for his winning of the Supreme Court in many cases before his own joining of the Supreme Court.

Marshall was also a member of the NAACP, a group that was and still is continuously involved in court cases where discriminatory issues are involved. The story jumps around a lot because it goes from talking about Marshall’s life, including his other works, feelings of where worked, his wife, life in Harlem, and the continuous harm offered by his line of work, and then jumps to the stories of other African-Americans, like Zora Neale Hurston, then to the beginning of the story of the Groveland Boys, Marshall, Groveland Boys, and then to Sheriff McCall. As written before though, these all do cater to story. It’s really only mentioned because some might not realize the purpose of the jumping around. Its purpose is to give insight to the character’s lives as they are mentioned and bring awareness to the other things that are happening around that time besides just the Groveland Boys. There was the case of an African- American servant John Spell, “‘He was supposed to have raped this [white] woman four times in one night,’ Marshall recalled” (King,

50). This actually connects to the Groveland Boys, although not mentioned that Marshall would be the lawyer for the boys, it does show that the NAACP has been able to acquit a man for a false rape accusation. The author also shows an unbiased tone when talking about McCall’s life after mentioning his presence during Greenlee’s beating. “‘scratch-hard childhood’ working long hours in the field, plowing…” (King, 76). Although McCall didn’t care to help Greenlee in the horrifying situation, he is still able to talk of McCall as one who did struggle and didn’t always have an easy life. Whereas. other writes wouldn’t show remorse and go off of a “he deserved a life” nature. King’s tone and POV on the situations throughout have helped build the story and allow the reader to take up their own view of everything.