[NFBV-Potomac-Announce] Book Club Questions for March Book Devil and the Grove

[John Halverson]

Hello Friends and Colleagues,

The March 2022 book club will meet via Zoom at 7:00 PM on Wednesday March 2.

The book is the Devil in the Grove.  The discussion leader is Leroy.  We both found a  set of five questions.  They are the last five questions in the list.  This morning I found another set of questions and I think they will be easier to discuss.  I am attaching both sets of questions to this email and including them after the zoom information.

John

Zoom
https://zoom.us/j/8297256345?pwd=SFAyamlQNU44ZTJ6dUZNMTV4RmhCQT09


 Telephone Dial: tel:6468769923
Meeting ID: 829 725 6345

One tap mobile
tel:+16468769923,,8297256345

Book  Club Questions.

These questions come from the West Hampton Library in New York State.

1. By interspersing the events that led to the trial and what Marshall was doing to get where he was, did King make the narrative too complicated?
2. Were you able to keep the characters and details straight?  If you couldn't, were there any particular characters or events that jumped out for you?
3. Was this book too dramatic for non-fiction?  Or not dramatic enough, given the events that it describes?  Or just right?  The New York Public Library's reviewer thinks it "reads like a crime thriller".  What do you think?
4. How much did you know about Thurgood Marshall prior to reading this book, particularly about his time as a lawyer, before being named to the Supreme Court?
5. Was there anything that made you think about Marshall differently in terms of his role in American history based on what you read in this book?
6. So much of the history we read about the Civil Rights era takes place in Georgia and Alabama, but not much is about Florida.  Were you surprised by the description of Florida in the pre-Civil Rights era?  Recall the author's description of Florida as the "south of the south".
7. Talk about Sheriff McCall's motivations.  Don't forget that he also prevented a mob from storming the jail)
8. why do you think he was able to remain in office for 28 years?
9. Publisher's Weekly's reviewer praised the author's "evenhanded treatment of the villains".  Do you agree that the author was fair in his portrayal of all the characters?
10. If you agree that he was "evenhanded" do you think that's appropriate for this type of book on this subject?
11. Walter Irvin spent nearly 20 years in jail and was beaten and shot 3 times.  Four people were killed during this case, yet Marshall still saw it as a victory.  Why do you think that was so?  What do you think?


The next five questions come from the Evanston Illinois Library.

I think they are extremely difficult but here they are in case we want to discuss.

1. What do you think about the various strategies for social change depicted in the book? For example, there's Thurgood Marshall's firm insistence that the Legal Defense Fund focus on legalistic strategy (48-49). Meanwhile the NAACP and sympathetic journalists attempted to use the court of public opinion to make incidents like Isaac Woodward's maiming (120-123) and Harry T. Moore's murder (277-282) into national embarrassments.  Outside of the public or legal eye, there's Marshall's interesting alliance with J. Edgar Hoover, rarely seen by history as a champion of civil rights.  Which of these, or other methods, seemed to be the most effective?

2. What does the book's portrait of Willis McCall tell us about this period? At times he defends law and order in the face of vigilante violence (as when we first meet him in chapter 5) and at others he becomes a vigilante himself (as when he shoots Shepherd and Irvin in chapter 15)?  What sense can be made of the balance of order and fear in an age of white supremacy by considering this man who was elected Sheriff seven consecutive times?
3. The book focuses tightly on this one case, but occasionally the lens widens. There's the portrait of black Harlem centered on 409 Edgecombe Ave (25-29).  There's the way Florida's economy depended on citrus labor (76-81) and the way the state's demography and economy were changing (343-4).  There's the local politics of the bolita lottery game (78-79, 114). Which of these asides - or others - helped you understand the Groveland case better?  Which did you find useful for thinking about mid-20th Century American history?
4. Gilbert King makes Thurgood Marshall the hero of his book, which is unsurprising given his larger significance to 20th Century American history, not to mention what a colorful character he appears to have been. What do you think about this as a history-telling strategy?  What do we gain and lose by dwelling on Marshall's idiosyncrasies and peccadillos?
5. Fifteen years after the Groveland case, Marshall gave a speech with the line, "There is very little truth to the old refrain that one cannot legislate equality." But the NAACP certainly didn't have a resounding victory in this case.  Was this just the best that could be hoped for on Martin Luther King's famed "long arc of the moral universe"?  Conisder that Marshall's best known legal victory is the Brown v. Board of Ed desegregation case of 1954, but many recent reports have shown de facto segregation to be holding strong over 60 years later.  Looking at the successes and failures of this case and way some characters changed (Mabel Norris Reese, Jesse Hunter, potentially even Norma Padgett at the very end), what do you see as effective ways to create equality, legislative or otherwise?

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbv-potomac-announce_nfbnet.org/attachments/20220225/93765469/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
These questions come from the West Hampton Library in New York State.

1. By interspersing the events that led to the trial and what Marshall was doing to get where he was, did King make the narrative too complicated? 
2. Were you able to keep the characters and details straight?  If you couldn’t, were there any particular characters or events that jumped out for you?
3. Was this book too dramatic for non-fiction?  Or not dramatic enough, given the events that it describes?  Or just right?  The New York Public Library’s reviewer thinks it “reads like a crime thriller”.  What do you think?
4. How much did you know about Thurgood Marshall prior to reading this book, particularly about his time as a lawyer, before being named to the Supreme Court?  
5. Was there anything that made you think about Marshall differently in terms of his role in American history based on what you read in this book?
6. So much of the history we read about the Civil Rights era takes place in Georgia and Alabama, but not much is about Florida.  Were you surprised by the description of Florida in the pre-Civil Rights era?  Recall the author’s description of Florida as the “south of the south”.
7. Talk about Sheriff McCall’s motivations.  Don’t forget that he also prevented a mob from storming the jail)
8. why do you think he was able to remain in office for 28 years?
9. Publisher’s Weekly‘s reviewer praised the author’s “evenhanded treatment of the villains”.  Do you agree that the author was fair in his portrayal of all the characters?  
10. If you agree that he was “evenhanded” do you think that’s appropriate for this type of book on this subject?
11. Walter Irvin spent nearly 20 years in jail and was beaten and shot 3 times.  Four people were killed during this case, yet Marshall still saw it as a victory.  Why do you think that was so?  What do you think?


The next five questions come from the Evanston Illinois Library.  

I think they are extremely difficult but here they are in case we want to discuss.

1. What do you think about the various strategies for social change depicted in the book? For example, there’s Thurgood Marshall’s firm insistence that the Legal Defense Fund focus on legalistic strategy (48-49). Meanwhile the NAACP and sympathetic journalists attempted to use the court of public opinion to make incidents like Isaac Woodward’s maiming (120-123) and Harry T. Moore’s murder (277-282) into national embarrassments.  Outside of the public or legal eye, there’s Marshall’s interesting alliance with J. Edgar Hoover, rarely seen by history as a champion of civil rights.  Which of these, or other methods, seemed to be the most effective?

2. What does the book’s portrait of Willis McCall tell us about this period? At times he defends law and order in the face of vigilante violence (as when we first meet him in chapter 5) and at others he becomes a vigilante himself (as when he shoots Shepherd and Irvin in chapter 15)?  What sense can be made of the balance of order and fear in an age of white supremacy by considering this man who was elected Sheriff seven consecutive times?
3. The book focuses tightly on this one case, but occasionally the lens widens. There’s the portrait of black Harlem centered on 409 Edgecombe Ave (25-29).  There’s the way Florida’s economy depended on citrus labor (76-81) and the way the state’s demography and economy were changing (343-4).  There’s the local politics of the bolita lottery game (78-79, 114). Which of these asides – or others – helped you understand the Groveland case better?  Which did you find useful for thinking about mid-20th Century American history?
4. Gilbert King makes Thurgood Marshall the hero of his book, which is unsurprising given his larger significance to 20th Century American history, not to mention what a colorful character he appears to have been. What do you think about this as a history-telling strategy?  What do we gain and lose by dwelling on Marshall’s idiosyncrasies and peccadillos?  
5. Fifteen years after the Groveland case, Marshall gave a speech with the line, “There is very little truth to the old refrain that one cannot legislate equality.” But the NAACP certainly didn’t have a resounding victory in this case.  Was this just the best that could be hoped for on Martin Luther King’s famed “long arc of the moral universe”?  Conisder that Marshall’s best known legal victory is the Brown v. Board of Ed desegregation case of 1954, but many recent reports have shown de facto segregation to be holding strong over 60 years later.  Looking at the successes and failures of this case and way some characters changed (Mabel Norris Reese, Jesse Hunter, potentially even Norma Padgett at the very end), what do you see as effective ways to create equality, legislative or otherwise?