Book club selection (via CPG; session held 21 October 2018).
This was useful, timely. Author builds the story around the efforts of Thurgood Marshall (and other NAACP members and supporters) to assist the "Groveland boys" - four blacks wrongfully accused in Florida. With useful background about Marshall, the NAACP, its legal strategies, the environment in the South. Florida as a dangerous, volatile state; the local sheriff here was a rather awful character.
It's amazing how recently all this happened; how much progress has been made; I think sometimes we lose sight of this given that plenty of stupid stuff continues. Something about groups, or tribes, or however it's best described - seems unlikely that humans will ever entirely rise above these divisions. But hopefully progress can continue.
Some of the details help someone like me, in some tiny way, imagine how it may have felt to be treated this way. At one of the trials - black visitors at the courthouse eat lunch out on the lawn - guess what, every one of them had brought a paper bag lunch in the certainty that no restaurant would serve them. This was "normal."
Florida not a cotton state; but once they master frozen orange concentrate there is a big need for workers - guess who was recruited, guess how they were treated.
Also - the risk to whites not toeing the line - including abusive behavior to someone named Mabel Norris Reese (initially a mostly unquestioning supporter of the local authorities but she changed over the years). Your family, your business, your personal safety. Examples in wartime, in religious settings, etc.
The extreme danger of sheriffs, police, the prosecutors, the judicial system - so much depends on integrity here. Post 9/11 adulation isn't helping accountability.
The incredible courage of folks like Marshall (and other then-NAACP staffers and their supporters) - regularly encountering genuine physical danger - difficult to imagine.
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