Klan Kidnappees Priest to Warn Him Against Racial Mixing in Children’s Band

 

Headline Regarding the Kidnapping of Father Warren 

Virginia Beach, Virginia, September, 1926 ― “It seemed like a death ride,” said Father Vincent D. Warren. “I didn’t know what was going to happen, so I prayed. “ 

Father Warren was grabbed by three men in hoods while he was standing outside the cabin of Charles Woodhouse a Negro farmer who held several tracts of land. Father Warren was sitting in the car of his friend Belford Emanuelson. While it was only three men who had approached the car the men saw a dozen other hooded men at the side of the property. Warren went with the men given the threat to the children in his program. 

There were 22 men in the group that took Father Warren with seven cars. They left the Princess Anne community and went north of Virginia Beach. Emanuelson then went to try and find help.  

“I asked myself what offenses I could have committed.” said Warren. “All I could think of was that I had led children to love the Lord.” Warren though was praying with his rosary and said he was steeling himself for the inevitable. 

The band was made up of all Black boys and they had stopped playing and sort of wandered around without any adults to direct them. Most went home since they all lived with two miles of Saint Josephs, Warren’s church. Some of them though tried to get the sheriff to look for the Priest but he refused them.  

Emanuelson had also gone to the Sheriff’s house, but he wasn’t home. Emanuelson also went on his own hunt for his friend driving around all the backroads of the county; as darkness fell, he went to the city building of Virginia Beach hoping to find aid. All he found was the mayor who refused to send his police because the sheriff would look upon it as interference. 

Along a dark road well off any paved roads the Klan had stopped with Father Warren, and they all got out of the car. Two men spoke to the priest, “what is your purpose with these children father?” Warren explained his mission was to help the children just learn music and to be good citizens at his school and that he had brought these boys to share their talent with some older folks like them. 

The lead man questioning Father Warren looked at him with hooded eyes and said the group had been misinformed, that they had been told that he had been bringing White children and Black children together with the singular purpose of mixing the races. They refused to inform the priest who had told them this or why they believed it. 

They then apologized to the priest and brought him back to town, or at least where he thought he could find an easy way back to Virginia Beach, and he did with an elderly Black man. 

There was a strong backlash against the local leaders. When asked why he wasn’t available to conduct a search the sheriff told reporters and Emanuelson it was none of their business. The county prosecutor for Princess Anne County argued that with no actual eyewitnesses able to say who was involved it might be impossible.  

Despite the calls from the ACLU, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot editor Louis Jaffé and from Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd no investigation was ever launched. Sheriff J.C. Litchfield kept to his line that there was nothing to investigate. Whether Litchfield, who could not be found the night of the kidnapping, was in the local chapter of the Klan or not clearly wasn’t concerned about their crimes. Which continued with an attack on a Black woman’s home where she was hosting a party and beat a Black for appearing on a Virginia Beach street after 6 P.M. Virginia Beach was an established Sundown Town. 

Father Warren served at St. Josephs for most of his life dying at age 85 in February 1975 at the the Josephite Fathers retirement home in Baltimore, Maryland 

All information gathered from the NYT: Times Machine and Newspapers.com

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/09/03/98852693.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58631a0c8419c2a7d069205d/t/6537d16cf37fcd48770c6cbe/1698156909475/Virginia+Beach_+A+Sundown+Town.pdf

The Groveland Four Arrested: Racist Corruption Of A Florida Sheriff And Community

 

Three of the Groveland Four. Left to right: Sheriff Willis McCall, jailer Reuben Hatcher, Walter Irvin, Charles Greenlee, and Samuel Shepherd. Not pictured: Ernest Thomas, killed earlier by law enforcement. Library of Congress photo

July 16, 1949, Groveland, Florida ~ Three African American men were arrested today, as the search goes on for a fourth. The men are charged with raping a White woman and assaulting her husband on a rural road. Willie Padget stated that he had pulled over on a county road when his car broke down, he then said four Black men approached his car and at first offered to help but then turned on Willie and beat him before driving off in his car with his wife.

They reported this to Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall a man known for his brutal treatment of Blacks and strict belief in segregation. The Padgets did not explain how they were reunited if in fact the men had kidnapped Norma Padget, or how a car that broke down was driven off. Of course, these were incidental details the sheriff wasn’t interested in. He had identified four men as suspects, Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. McCall had already determined that Shepard and Irvin were malcontents because they refused to work in the orange groves and against his orders often wore their Army uniforms. Both men were veterans of World War Two and duly proud of their service, but for many Whites in Lake County this was a sign of disrespect and of two Black men being too proud.

McCall arrested Shepard and Irvin quickly and, Charles Greenlee. Greenlee did not know the other men. A warrant was issued for Ernest Thomas who was a friend of Greenlee. The three men were taken by the sheriff and his deputies to the supposed site of the crime and frustrated by the shoe prints not matching and the unwillingness of the men to confess they beat them badly with blackjacks and nightsticks. They were then taken to the jail and in the basement cuffed to overhead pipes and the beatings continued.

The next day a mob of at least 500 men came to the jail demanding the three captured men, McCall told them the men were not there because he wanted them to be tried, he had already taken them to the penitentiary for holding. The mob angrily left the jail and attacked Groveland shooting into Black homes and setting other homes ablaze. The mob blocked roads and attacked anyone trying to get in. They burned Samuel Shepard’s father’s home to the ground. Most of the residents though had fled in trucks.

By the next day, the Florida National Guard was in Groveland on the order of Governor Fuller Warren. The NAACP was now involved and had been putting pressure on Warren. The NAACP was something else that Sheriff McCall hated because it challenged his worldview and order. He had worked hard to keep Blacks under Jim Crow provisions and he had used all his power to keep union activity out of the orange groves.

On July 26 the posse McCall had assembled found Ernest Thomas in the swamp land approximately 200 miles north of Groveland. They shot him over 400 times because he was allegedly reaching for a weapon. Still, the coroner's jury determined that Thomas had been lawfully killed and ruled his death a justifiable homicide.

A grand jury was convened, with one Black member for the first time, and they quickly indicted Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin.

All three were represented by NAACP attorney Franklin Williams. Williams interviewed all three and found solid evidence to support that Shepard and Irvin had been in Orlando the night of the alleged attack on the Padgets. Greenlee had witnesses that said he was 19 miles away. Williams also had a doctor who had examined Norma Padget prepared to testify that he found no evidence she was raped. Judge Truman Futch refused to allow the doctor to testify. Regardless of the evidence it took an all-White jury just 90 minutes to convict the three. Futch then sentenced Shepard and Irvin to death and Greenlee to life in prison because he was a minor.

All three appealed their conviction with the help of the NAACP and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In 1952 Marshall argued the case in front of the Supreme Court which overturned the convictions, on the grounds it wasn’t a fair jury. The NAACP and Marshall had the Department of Justice and FBI to interview the three men. They gave statements that they were all badly beaten, and Shepard and Greenlee confessed under duress. The FBI presented their evidence to U.S. Attorney Herbert Phillips of Florida to prosecute, but a grand jury did not return indictments of the Lake County deputies James Yates and Leroy Campbell.

A new trial was ordered in 1951 but when Sheriff McCall was transporting Shepard and Irvin from Raiford State Prison. He suddenly pulled over claiming a bad tire. He then shot both men, killing Shepard and wounding Irvin. McCall claimed he was jumped by both men and they tried to escape, this was backed up by Deputy Yates. Irvin again gave a statement to the FBI stating that he was on the ground when he was shot by both men. McCall did go to the hospital where he was treated for a head injury. The coroner's jury cleared McCall and even praised him for his bravery.

At the second trial, Marshall represented the surviving two men and did get the venue change. However, this didn’t help and even with more evidence of their innocence, they were again convicted in 90 minutes. Irvin again was sentenced to death.

The appeal this time failed to make it to the Supreme Court. Irvin turned to Florida Governor Charley Jones; Jones rejected clemency for Irvin. Irvin was saved by the November election when the more moderate LeRoy Collins. Collins had requested a report on the trial and determined to his satisfaction that there was enough unfairness that he commuted Irvin’s sentence to life.

Greenlee was paroled in 1962 and moved with his family to Tennessee and never returned to Florida. He died in 1912. Irvin was finally released in 1968. He initially went to Miami but returned to Lake County in 1970 and died soon after. Sheriff McCall was reelected several times and was finally removed from office in 1972 after a controversial accusation and trial for killing a Black prisoner. McCall died in 1994 never regretting any of his actions. In 2005 a Lake County Road named after him in 1985 was renamed after local Black residents petitioned for a change, expressing concerns of memorializing a man with his history.

Beginning in 2016 there was a concentrated effort by leaders on all levels in Florida to exonerate all four men. It began with Groveland mayor Tim Loucks and Lake County commissioners who issued a formal apology to the men’s surviving family. The state legislature took up the cause and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued full posthumous pardons in 2019 this was followed by State Attorney William M. Gladson making a motion for the court to exonerate the men, Judge Heidi Davis granted the motion to posthumously dismiss the indictments of Thomas and Shepherd and vacate the convictions of Greenlee and Irvin.

Most of the facts for this post come from Gilbert King’s fantastic 2012 book Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

Other Sources:

https://www.pbs.org/harrymoore/terror/groveland.html