In what ways does Gilbert King support his findings in “Devil in the Grove”? - Joe

“Devil in the Grove” is meticulously researched, artfully composed, and unconventionally narrated. Gilbert King’s eye for detail is scrupulous, and through internal citation, he supports his narrative with concrete evidence from a range of primary sources. Whether from editorial articles or court files, his inclusion of details from primary sources into the text is done with an upmost concentration to accuracy throughout the book. Acquiring unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund Files, Gilbert King was able to synthesize a comprehensive historical perspective on the Groveland Case in his Pulitzer Prize Winning Book.

I was blown away by the sheer amount of investigation that went into creating “Devil in the Grove”. Each page tends to have four to five citations correlated with it in the “Notes” section of the book. Some citations support direct quotes from external sources, seamlessly imbedded within King’s writing. Other citations denote that the author derived his dialog between multiple characters from a given source. Each style of citation serves a specific purpose.

One kind of citation Gilbert King uses is a direct citation. This type of citation is the only citation that might be directly evident to the reader while he or she is reading the text. Often it appears as a quoted phrase in a place you would not expect to see quotes, such as an area without dialog. In doing this, Gilbert King calls attention to his notes in the back of the book. Although he does not use numbered footnotes, he denotes that these directly quoted excerpts are cited in the back of the book with their unconventional placement within the text. Two examples of this are the quotes in context, on page 55, “After the noon recess, however, the crowd “about doubled” and “the fireworks started,” as Marshall moved to have the first confession excluded from evidence because police officers had beaten the defendant.” These two quotes, “about doubled” and “the fireworks started”, were stated from Thurgood Marshall to Walter White, through the NAACP, on February 2, 1941. This is simply one example of the many times Marshall seamlessly and directly imbeds quotes from primary sources into his narrative. The insertions facilitate the flow of the narrative, and give Gilbert King credibility.

Another kind of citation Gilbert King uses is more generic. Gilbert King often sites scenes or detailed dialogs between multiple characters by citing one general source that he derived the scene from. One example of this is the dialog between Sherriff Willis McCall and Charles Greenlee on page 179. In the correlating “Notes” section King cites, “179 “You lied on the witness stand?”: Moore Report, p. 288. This scene is derived from the transcript that Harry T. Moore’s biographer, Ben Green, made (July 15, 1992) from Willis McCall’s interview of Charles Greenlee. The transcript appears in the Moore Report.” It is important to note here that King writes that he “derived” the scene from a transcript, and did not say that the scene was taken from a transcript. The notion that King did so much research on the Groveland Case that the book should be read like a novel only holds up so far. At a certain point it must be acknowledged that for all the effort and meticulous research put into the creation of the book, the book is still an historical account and Gilbert King takes certain liberties in his presentation of it.