We are introduced to the central figure of Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimore-born African American and grandson of slaves, who by the mid-1940s is a leader in the campaign to secure civil rights for blacks. Later, Marshall will argue far-reaching cases before the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with racial justice—among them Brown v. Board of Education. At the time of the book’s events, Marshall is a lawyer working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in New York and defends blacks falsely accused of capital crimes in the South, where Jim Crow laws are in force and “white supremacy ruled” (2). There, vigilante justice often ends in lynching, a fact mourned by and publicized at NAACP headquarters. 

As the book opens, Marshall is riding a train to Lake County, Florida, where he will handle the case of three young black men (the Groveland Boys) accused of raping a 17-year-old white girl named Norma Lee Padgett. The case will become a firestorm, inciting mob violence and bringing the National Guard to the community to restore order. Although seldom mentioned in histories, the Groveland case was a key event in Marshall’s career and the civil rights movement.