In 1952, Walter Lee Irvin (second from right) was represented in a second trial by NAACP attorneys Jack Greenberg (second from left), Paul C. Perkins (first from left) and Thurgood Marshall (right).  Greenberg complained that during the trial he had very little sleep because of constant threats from the Ku Klux Klan.

The Story Behind the Photo:

In the early morning hours of July 16, 1949, Norma Padgett, a 17 year-old white woman living in central Florida’s Lake County, reported that she had been attacked and raped by four black teenagers. Local white citizens vowed to “wait and see what the law does, and if the law doesn’t do it right, we’ll do it.”

Hours later, the teens, Walter Lee Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Charles Greenlee were arrested for kidnap, assault and rape. A fourth suspect, Ernest Thomas, had managed to elude authorities. Two weeks later, a lynch mob of nearly 1,000 angry white men and boys stumbled across Thomas sleeping in the woods. He was chased through the woods, then shot and killed.

Sheriff Willis McCall with Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin.

As was customary when white women alleged rape by black men, that evening a large mob descended on the county jail and demanded that the suspects be released from jail.  After the local sheriff told the angry whites that the suspect had been turned over to state authorities, the mob unleashed its fury on the black community of Groveland. Though no blacks were injured (they had fled earlier with the help of sympathetic whites), homes were riddled with bullets and set afire until the National Guard was called in to restore peace.

Prior to their first trial, the three defendants were beaten and coerced into confessions.  Shortly after their arrests, the Orlando branch of the NAACP had alerted the organization’s national headquarters and requested assistance, Twenty-four hours later, NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) attorney Franklin Williams made his way to Florida.

At the trial, Norma Padgett testified that she and her husband were driving home from a party when their car stalled. The four black teens drove up to their car and offered to help.  According to Padgett, they attacked her husband and drove off, leaving him on the side of the road. They drove off with her in the back seat and each took turns raping her.

The teens faced an all-white jury that deliberated for less than two hours before finding them guilty. Irvin and Shepherd were sentenced to death and Greenlee, because of his young age, was sentenced to life in prison.

With assistance from LDF, in 1951 the Supreme Court overturned Irvin and Shepherd’s convictions and ordered a new trial.  Sheriff Willis McCall, a notorious racist and corrupt member of the Lake County Police Department, took it upon himself to transport Irvin and Shepherd to a pre-trial hearing.  On the way there, McCall slowed his vehicle and pulled over to the side of the road before handcuffing Irvin and Shepherd together in the back seat.  He told them that he had a flat tire and ordered them out of the car to fix the tire.  McCall shot Shepherd, killing him instantly before shooting Irvin in the chest, neck and head.

“I got rid of them, killed the sons of bitches,” McCall said when another officer arrived.  But he was wrong. Irvin was still alive and able to report his story to newspapers, authorities and LDF attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg, who represented him in his 1952 retrial. When Marshall and Greenberg arrived, the Ku Klux Klan greeted them with a torchlight parade and harassed the attorneys at their hotels each night.

Despite poking holes in the evidence presented by the prosecution, and despite exposing corruption by the local authorities involved in the case, the jury still found Irvin guilty and sentenced him to die in the electric chair. Thurgood Marshall, who was seen choking back tears, promised Irvin’s mother that they would keep on fighting.  But two years later, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

In 1955, a new governor, LeRoy Collins, took office and called for an investigation into the mishandling of the case. Collins recommended clemency on Dec. 15, 1955 and Irvin’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Greenlee was later paroled in 1960.  In 1968, Irvin was finally paroled and nine months after his release he died from a heart attack. No whites, including Sheriff McCall, were ever convicted of the crimes committed throughout this debacle.