Thread by @DrRJKavanagh

A group of young Black men known as "Groveland Four" were posthumously exonerated for the rape of a White woman in 1949 this week.

But this is mot just the story of a wrongful conviction, but a lynching and a White mob destroying a Black community.

nytimes.com/2021/11/22/us/…

Ernest Thomas, Samuel Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin were aged between 16 and 26 when Norma Padgett, a 17-year-old White woman, accused them of rape.

Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin were veterans of WW2 and had continued to wear their uniforms when they returned to the US.

(African American veterans were frequent targets for lynchings - a reminder their service did not affect their status at home.)
npr.org/2018/09/20/649…

After Padgett made her false accusation, the local sheriff, Willis McCall, led a mob of 1,000 men to hunt down and find the men.

The men (with the assistance of the KKK) lynched Erwin Thomas, shooting him 400 times, and then arrested the other three men.

The mob then went on a rampage throughout the town, looting and burning Black homes.

Meanwhile, Samuel Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin were being held in the local county jail.

The sheriff then claimed that the three men tried to escape. He shot and killed Mr. Shepherd. He shot and seriously injured Walter Irvin. He never faced any consequences.

Samuel Shepherd and Charles Greenlee were eventually tried and convicted of rape by all-White juries. Thurgood Marshall led their defense teams.

After being sentenced to death, Mr. Shepherd's sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was released in 1968 and died a year later.

Mr. Greenlee was sentenced to life in prison and released in 1962. He died in 2012.

His daughter, Carol Greenlee, attended the exoneration this week.

If you haven't already, you should absolutely read Devil in the Grove, by Gilbert King, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Part of the reason the four young men were exonerated is due to information he uncovered. pulitzer.org/winners/gilber…