Column
President's Message:
The Power of the Written Word
A
s lawyers we use the written word every day to advance the causes of our clients and to advance our own interests and beliefs. The written word is an important part of our lives. For me, it is also an important part of the mantra for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation for which I have been a trustee for the past fifteen years. That Foundation advocates advancing peace through the written word. In this column I am focusing on Gilbert King, one of the winners of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, because King has not only advanced peace through the written word, King has advanced justice through the written word. King was honored by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation in 2012 for his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Devil in the Grove, the story of the Groveland Boys, Thurgood Marshall, and, as it says on its cover, the dawn of a new America. The underlying facts are these: On April 16, 1949, Normal Padgett, a seventeen-year-old white girl was with her estranged husband in their broken-down jalopy when they had car trouble as they drove down a country road outside of Groveland, Florida. They were approached by two black men who tried to help start them their car. But the battery was completely dead, and they could not push it out of the weeds on the side of the road. The two black men moved on. Inexplicably Norma Padgett reported to the police that she had been abducted and raped by four black men. Based on that allegation, the sheriff and his posse arrested Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd; those same authorities then beat them and coerced confessions out of them. The fourth person, Ernest Thomas ran and tried to escape into the woods where he was killed by a hail of some 400 bullets from the posse. After a trial by an all-white jury, Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd, the two individuals who 4
DAYTON Bar Briefs |
JANUARY 2022
By Merle Wilberding Esq. Coolidge Wall Co., LPA Wilberding@coollaw.com
had actually tried to help her, were sentenced to death. Charles Greenlee was sentenced to life in prison. They were defended by Thurgood Marshall, then the counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. On appeal Marshall successfully got the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn their convictions and order retrials. Lake County Sheriff Willis V. McCall, portrayed as a villain throughout the story, decided to personally go to the state prison and bring them back for their retrials. Enroute he stopped on a side road and shot Shepherd and Irvin, killing Shepherd and leaving Irvin for dead. Even though the prisoners were hand-cuffed, McCall claimed self-defense. Irvin was then retried and was again sentenced to death, although his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. In some ways, the Groveland Four case was no different than many other cases languishing in the Jim Crow South during that era. This case became notorious because, sixty years later, Gilbert King carefully and meticulously researched the case, interviewed all the underlying witnesses, and wrote his book that in 2012 won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Dayton Literary Peace Prize. After his Dayton Literary Peace Prize Award, King became a continuing part of the Foundation and, because of that, he has enhanced the Dayton prize itself. I have been fortunate to work closely with Gilbert King over the years. He is a big booster of the Dayton community, even though his primary residence remains in New York City. More importantly, King became a continuing part of the efforts to get justice for the Groveland Four through the written word. The power of his written word was the major force behind a series of apologies, pardons, and reparations for the Groveland Four.
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