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Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News Volume XXII Number 8, August 2014 Next Rights Readers UPCOMING EVENTS meeting: SUMMER BREAK: No Monthly Meeting Sunday, Sep. 21, 6:30 PM Thursday August 28. Vroman’s Bookstore Tuesday, September 9, 7:30 PM. Letter writing meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner 695 E. Colorado, Pasadena of Hill and California in Pasadena. In the summer we meet outdoors at the “Rath al Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Fresco,” on the lawn behind the building. This Marshall, the Groveland Boys, informal gathering is a great way for and the Dawn of a New America newcomers to get acquainted with Amnesty. Book Review Sunday, September 21, 6:30 PM. Rights The news, when it came, was short and sweet. Readers Human Rights Book Discussion Standing on a Florida golf course last week, group. This month we read “Devil in the Gilbert King looked at his phone and saw a two- Grove” by Gilbert King. word text message from an old friend: “Dude. Thursday, September 25, 7:30 PM. Monthly Pulitzer.” meeting. We meet at the Caltech Y, Tyson Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times House, 505 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena. We will be planning our activities for the coming months. Please join us! Refreshments provided. COORDINATOR’S CORNER Hi All School started last week and it has been crazy! Hopefully things will settle down once we have filled the 13 open positions in our area! Group 22 is now tabling regularly at the Pasadena Farmer’s Market in Victory Park on Saturdays. Thanks to Alexi for arranging this. Mr. King, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, with I’d forgotten what a great market this is-much his dog, Louis. better than the one in So Pas! Mr. King, much to his surprise, had just been Our former Western Regional Coordinator, declared the winner in the general nonfiction Kalaya’an Mendoza, was in Ferguson, Missouri, category for “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood with an Amnesty team monitoring the situation. Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a See the AI press release in this newsletter. New America.” The book, about four black men falsely accused of raping Norma Lee Padgett, a Con Cariño, 17-year-old white woman in Groveland, Fla., in Kathy 1949, unearthed a largely forgotten chapter in the long history of racial injustice in the United States, and explored, in painstaking detail, the tactics used by Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice, to chip away at the RIGHTS READERS foundations of Jim Crow law. Human Rights Book Discussion Group Though Mr. King did not know it, his publisher, Keep up with Rights Readers at Harper Collins, had nominated the book, which http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com beat out Katherine Boo’s lavishly praised “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” winner of the 1 National Book Award in the same category in Every good drama needs a villain. The November. The other finalist was David George Groveland case had a memorable one in McCall, Haskell’s “The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in a ruthless, brutal man who conducted a one- Nature,” a sharp-focus examination of a square man reign of terror in Lake County. “He made meter of old-growth forest in Tennessee. Bull Connor look like Barney Fife,” Mr. King “I’m sure people who write the big, critically said, referring to the notorious commissioner of acclaimed books know if they’re in the public safety in Birmingham, Ala., during the running,” Mr. King said during an interview in civil rights era. “Connor used dogs and fire his small walk-up apartment on the Upper East hoses. McCall actually killed people.” Side, a few blocks from Gracie Mansion. “But I’d Mr. King traveled a winding professional road just gotten a notice from my publisher that the on the way to his Pulitzer. A native of book had been remaindered.” Schenectady, N.Y., he attended the University of Mr. King, an amateur historian, stumbled on the South Florida with the thought that he might Groveland case while writing his first book, make a career playing second base. That dream “The Execution of Willie Francis,” another tale died when he got a look at some of the of racial injustice. Groveland “wasn’t really Dominican players the school had recruited. covered in a lot of the Marshall biographies, After coming up two math credits short of a which tend to treat his criminal cases as degree in English, he moved to New York and footnotes,” he said. “His clerks knew all about it, patched together a living doing freelance editing though, because he always talked about it when and ghostwriting. One project was a coffee-table he recalled the old days.” book dedicated to antique bicycles. There was a lot to recall, most of it horrific. One While working for a publisher of medical of the accused men never made it to a magazines, he was asked to fill in and supervise courtroom. He was hunted down and shot to a photo shoot in Puerto Rico. The work death by a hastily organized posse. Two others appealed to him. He learned to handle a camera, were shot by the local sheriff, Willis McCall, got into fashion photography, and picked up while being transported from state prison to the lots of jobs from foreign magazines that needed local jail for a hearing after their convictions a man on the spot in New York. were overturned by the Supreme Court. One died on the side of the road. The other survived. His two books enjoyed only modest sales, and he is undecided what the next project might be. Mr. King was able to reconstruct events, When the Pulitzer news came, “I was sort of virtually day by day, after getting his hands on lying low,” he said. Three times a month he files two troves of data. He gained access to the offbeat historical stories for Past Imperfect, a unedited files of the F.B.I., which sent blog on Smithsonian magazine’s Web site. His investigators to Groveland to conduct topics have included the great Australian prison interviews with local officials and police. He break of 1876 and, to coincide with the Masters also convinced the N.A.A.C.P. to let him see the tournament, the story of Craig Wood, the tightly controlled files of its Legal Defense and unluckiest golfer of all time. Educational Fund. The fund’s directors, citing concerns about lawyer-client confidentiality, has It was while editing a crime encyclopedia that been loath to grant access to the material even to he found the subject of his first book. Willie eminent civil rights historians like Taylor Francis, a teenager convicted of murdering a Branch. white pharmacist in St. Martinville, La., in 1944 and sentenced to die in the electric chair. “I don’t think anyone had seen those files for 20 Because of a malfunction, Francis survived years,” Mr. King said. ”But I just kept at it. I electrocution; a local lawyer, arguing that a said, ‘My focus is very narrow. I just want to second electrocution would be cruel and look at this one case.’ ” unusual punishment, took his case all the way to Mr. King was fortunate in his protagonists. the Supreme Court. Marshall, already assuming larger-than-life Mr. King, a fan of Walter Mosley’s historical dimensions, was determined to see justice done crime novels, took full advantage of the setting, but focused on cases that let him set legal in the heart of Acadiana, to spin an atmospheric precedents to dismantle segregation and Jim yarn around the facts. “It became a strange Crow. The public-relations value of the Cajun murder mystery,” he said. Groveland case was not lost on him, either. 2 It ended badly. In 1947, weary of the legal unarmed African American teenager by a police battles being fought on his behalf, Willie Francis officer in Ferguson, Missouri, Amnesty took his seat once again in the chair nicknamed International USA was on the ground Gruesome Gertie. There were no glitches the monitoring events. With the return of its human second time around. rights delegation from Ferguson, the organization today called for an investigation In the case of the Groveland Four, Mr. King was into police tactics used during protests. able to track down some participants; the case still burns in local memory. When he returned to Groveland for a reading, the local librarian informed him that two threats had been phoned in. “Don’t worry,” she said, “we called the sheriff’s office.” Mr. King savored the moment. One interview subject he saved for last: Norma Lee Padgett herself, who lived in a trailer at the end of a dirt road in rural Georgia. A relative answered the door of a second trailer on the property and acted as a go-between. The Kalaya'an Mendoza, one of Amnesty's 13-person human message he brought back to Mr. King was, “Let rights delegation, on the ground in Ferguson (Photo sleeping dogs lie.” Credit: Amnesty USA). Author Bio Amnesty International USA sent a 13-person Gilbert King is the author of Devil in the Grove: human rights delegation, which included Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the observers who monitored police and protester Dawn of a New America, which was awarded the activity and sought meetings with officials. Pulitzer Prize in 2013. A New York Times Other members of the delegation trained local bestseller, the book was also named runner-up activists in methods of non-violent protest.

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