“Mr. Civil Rights”
Mr. Civil Rights is the metaphorical nickname applied to Thurgood Marshall. He had earned this distinctive and unique figurative appellation on a foundation of having covered tends of thousands of miles a year across the country—including deep into the Jim Crow south of the 1940’s—arguing and winning civil rights cases for disenfranchised and persecuted blacks.
The Sword of a Gentleman
When Marshall arrived in each new town to head to each new courtroom to plead his case for civil rights, he brought with him a metaphorical weapon equal to his name. A weapon of figurative medieval power belying the gentlemanly nature of his nickname. Marshall “was acutely aware that when he stepped off the train, his only sword was `a piece of paper called ‘The Constitution.’”
Terror in Florida
The very first civil rights leader to be assassinated in America was not Martin Luther King, Jr., but Harry T. Moore. He was killed when a bomb exploded beneath his home on Christmas, 1951. Marshall and the rest of the movement became as inflamed by the investigation as by the murder itself since it seemed to be proceeding incredibly slowly. Not all of that can be attributed to FBI incompetence, however. The state of Florida hardly made it easier to track down where psychopathic bombers found their supplies
“Getting dynamite all over central Florida was like buying chewing gum.”
Ernest Thomas
Ernest Thomas was one of the “Groveland boys” accused of rape and murder. He was later shot and killed by a sheriff’s posse. The sheriff met with reporters and provided a simile to describe Thomas which resonates throughout the book:
“belligerent as the devil. He had a loaded pistol in his hand and he had his finger around the trigger”
On the stand, under oath, however, the very same sheriff was forced to admit that he couldn’t possibly know how Thomas acted under the circumstances he was describing above since he was not actually present.
The Real Victim Here
The real victim of the rape that fateful night depended on whom you asked. Clearly, the woman who was attacked had to be the real victim. On the other hand, if those accused were actually innocent, weren’t they even greater victims since they paid the price? Of course, if the one you were to ask happened to be State Attorney Jesse Hunter, the identification of the real victim in this case would diverge into an entirely unexpected direction. And so it was that the defense of the Groveland boys:
“dared not to question in any way the purity of the Flower of Southern Womanhood, however indelicately she might be represented by Norma Lee Padgett”
