Groveland Four: Who were they?

The Groveland Four were pardoned posthumously Friday by the Florida Clemency Board.

But who were the four young black men accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman, and what happened to them after their legal ordeal in Lake County?

ERNEST THOMAS

Ernest Thomas never got his day in court.

On July 26, 1949, 10 days after Norma Padgett, a white 17-year-old, said she was raped by four black men, Thomas was dead. He was shot 100 or more times by a posse that pursued him into woods 180 miles away.

The 26-year-old Thomas had fled Lake County when word spread about Padgett’s allegation and a violent mob drove many black families out of Groveland.

Thomas is often the forgotten member of the Groveland Four. He is absent from the most well-known photo associated with the case — the other three accused men standing next to a Lake County jailer and notorious Lake Sheriff Willis McCall.

Gilbert King and Gary Corsair, two authors who have researched the case extensively, said they have never seen a photo of Thomas. The undated photo here is of Thomas and his wife, Ruby Lee, according to Aaron Newson, Thomas’ nephew.

McCall described Thomas as armed with a loaded pistol, his finger around the trigger and “belligerent as the devil” before his death, according to newspaper accounts. His death certificate reads: “Justifiable Homicide.”

McCall chauffeured Norma Padgett to a funeral home in Madison County to look at Thomas’ bullet-riddled face.

She identified him as one of her attackers, according to McCall, and he gave her a bullet slug pulled from Thomas’ body.

CHARLES GREENLEE

Charles Greenlee hitchhiked to Lake County to pick fruit in July 1949.

The youngest of the Groveland Four, 16-year-old Greenlee was a friend of Ernest Thomas, who convinced him he could earn more money in Lake County than at his dish-washing job in Gainesville.

He arrived in Lake on July 15 — and was in jail a day later after a night watchman found him with an unloaded pistol.

The gun belonged to Thomas, who had asked him to hold it for him.

After a jailhouse beating by deputies, Greenlee confessed to participating in the rape in the back seat of a car on a roadside near Okahumpka, though it was determined later that he was miles away from the alleged crime scene and already in custody on suspicion of an unrelated crime when the sexual assault allegedly happened, according to King’s research.

By that fall, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Because he was not sentenced to death like co-defendants Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, Greenlee didn’t appeal and spent a dozen years in prison until he was paroled in 1962.

He married and raised a family in Tennessee, where he built a successful heating and cooling maintenance business, said his son, Thomas Greenlee, 53.

Charles Greenlee died at age 78 in 2012, without ever stepping foot again in Groveland.

“My dad was adamant about staying away,” Thomas said. “He felt there was a lot of trouble there.”

WALTER IRVIN

Though beaten by jailers, shot by the sheriff and scheduled to die in Florida’s electric chair, Walter Irvin maintained he didn’t rape Padgett.

Irvin, a World War II veteran, was 22 when he was arrested for the crime.

Despite his denials and evidence that he was in Orlando with close friend Samuel Shepherd at the time of the alleged rape in Lake County, Irvin was twice convicted and sentenced to death. The first verdict was overturned unanimously in 1951 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the majority opinion, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson criticized the legal-system’s treatment of the Groveland Four, writing: “This case presents one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”

Irvin was shot by McCall as the sheriff drove him and Shepherd back to Lake County for a new trial.

A rigid segregationist, McCall claimed the prisoners tried to overpower him when he stopped the vehicle to check a tire. Irvin survived the shooting, but Shepherd died.

Irvin was defended at the second trial by famed civil-rights attorney Thurgood Marshall, who in 1967 would become the high court’s first black justice. The retrial was moved to Marion County but another all-white jury returned another guilty verdict and, once again, Irvin was sentenced to die in the electric chair.

A last-minute stay of his execution was granted in 1954 — and his sentence was commuted to life by Gov. LeRoy Collins.

Irvin was paroled in January 1968 and he moved to Miami to be near his sister, Henrietta.

Conditions of his parole barred him from returning to Lake County, but in 1969 he received permission to attend an uncle’s funeral there. Only hours after his return to the place that forever scarred his life, Irvin died at age 40. He was found dead in his car, apparently of natural causes.

He is buried in Groveland’s black cemetery. A grave marker bears symbols identifying him as a World War II veteran and a Christian.

SAMUEL SHEPHERD

Samuel Shepherd was the son of a prosperous black farmer in Groveland in the summer of 1949 when he was accused of rape at age 22.

A veteran of World War II, “Sammie” was known to wear his Army uniform around town.

The day after the rape allegation, his father’s home was burned to the ground by a mob and his family and other blacks fled in fear for their lives.

The National Guard was summoned to keep the peace in Groveland.

Meanwhile, in Tavares, Shepherd’s jailers beat a rape confession out of the former soldier and he was convicted with his three co-defendants later that year.

A U.S. Supreme Court overturned that conviction. But he never got to stand trial again because he was shot by McCall along with Irvin.

shudak@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6361.

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