Groveland Interviews Collection

In 1971, Kristine Jensch was a graduate student and worked for the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Franklin H. Williams, who served as the organization’s president, asked Jensch to travel to Florida to find information on the Groveland case. He maintained an interest in the subject from his time working as for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s Legal Defense Fund, where he served as assistant special counsel to Thurgood Marshall. Marshall and Williams agreed to represent four African American men, Samuel Shepherd, Walter Irvin, Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas of Groveland, Florida, who were falsely accusing of abducting and sexually assaulting a white woman, 17-year-old Norma Padgett, in 1949. Thomas died at the hands of a white mob before the trial started, while the other three men were convicted of the crime. Greenlee was sentenced to life in prison. Irvin and Shepherd were given death sentences, which were overturned by the United States Supreme Court. In 1951, Lake County sheriff Willis McCall shot the two men while transporting them from the state prison at Raiford to a local jail for a hearing. McCall claimed that he was acting in self-defense. Only Irvin survived the shooting, and he was convicted for a second time after a retrial. Greenlee and Irvin were eventually paroled, with Greenlee leaving jail in 1962 and Irvin being released in 1968. In July 2019, Governor Ron Desantis pardoned the Groveland Four, and in 2021, a judge in Lake County dismissed the charges against them.