Devil in the Grove: Racism Prompted by Greed Sarthak Saxena 11th Grade

Brutality and racism have been a constant problem since the dawn of America. The motif of white powerful men framing innocent blacks has been a reoccurring tragedy. However, these stories are kept in the shadows of powerful racist brutes who cover their tracks with planted evidence. Gilbert King’s non-fictional book, Devil in the Grove, tells the reader about the life of Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights activist, and details the proceedings of the Groveland Boys; four innocent black youths who were tortured and framed for rape. Though this book identifies and shows the racism in a post-Civil War South during the mid-1950s, the book really delves into how competition and greed for money between white and black men spurred an entire section of the country into committing gross crimes and misconduct, and how empowered whites persistently broke the will of the blacks to win in the competition of society and make money in the process.

Though Gilbert King’s book seems to only describe how Florida’s citrus business was thriving in 1949 and how the barons got rich by using cheap labor; it actually dissects how racism and cruel working conditions for the blacks instigated from the barons’ greed for money and social power. Their need...