Devil in the Grove

Devil in the Grove is, from beginning to end, a story of racial prejudice in the South. King begins the book with a recollection of a trial Marshall argued in Columbia, Tennessee, defending a group of black townspeople accused of starting a riot. The prosecutor in the case, Paul Bumpus, assumes that the black men on the defense team are not his intellectual equals and is thus shocked when they defeat him. In two instances in the book, a black defense team is hounded by the KKK in automobiles after the trial. By contrast, the Florida assistant attorney general leaves the U.S. Supreme Court unmolested after the Groveland hearing. King notes, “No one was going to chase Assistant Attorney General of Florida Reeves Bowen out of the capital at ninety miles per hour, or drag him at gunpoint to a waiting mob along the banks of the Potomac” (218). This contrast highlights the glaring racial inequity that exists in the South.

We also see the ostensibly gentler racial prejudice of Mabel Norris Reese and Jesse Hunter. Reese is initially prejudiced in favor of the prosecution and expresses her views in her newspaper coverage of the case.