August 17, 2017
In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as "the Groveland Boys."
https://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/black-history-month-review-of-devil-in-the-grove-by-gilbert-king/
http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/gilbert-king
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/books/gilbert-king-on-his-pulitzer-winning-devil-in-the-grove.html