Devil in the Grove

Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

by Gilbert King

Once upon a time, on a mild February evening in central Florida, a young woman and her estranged husband, in an attempt to reconcile, went for a drive while sharing a bottle of whiskey.  At some point the man turned the car into what appeared to be a dirt road, but the wheels lost traction and the car became hopelessly stuck.  Two men, recently discharged from the army after having served their country in World War II, were driving by and stopped to see if they could help.  The estranged husband offered the whiskey bottle to the good Samaritans and then ordered them to get to work and extricate the car.  The veterans did not appreciate being treated like slaves by the man they stopped to help, and a fight broke out leaving the husband out cold in the dirt.  The men gave the woman a ride in their car and dropped her off a few miles away.  In the wee hours of the next morning, another man picked the wife up and dropped her off in front of a roadside diner at a crossroads in Okahumpka, Florida.  The year was 1948.  The two war veterans were black; everyone else involved was white.

A short time later, the woman’s husband and another man stopped at the diner and the reunited couple then claimed that a group of four black men had raped her, despite having told the security man at the diner, that after beating up her husband, the men had not hurt her.  She was just a bit tired, she had said, from having walked a fair distance.  Why Norma and Willie Pagett concocted this story is part of the mystery of the Groveland Four, a criminal case that riveted the nation during the early days of the American Civil Rights movement.  Within hours of the incident, the two erstwhile good Samaritans and a third young man were arrested, tortured, and jailed for the alleged rape.  A fourth man, Ernest Thomas, was fleeing Lake County to avoid being murdered by gangsters when he was shot and killed by Willis McCall, the all-powerful Lake County sheriff.  Thomas became the forth man.

At that time in our nation’s history the lynching of black men was a common practice in central Florida.  The empty country with vast orange groves remained a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group which formed in reaction to the Reformation following the Civil War.  The Klan, made up of white men who feared racial integration, Communism, and illegal immigrants, considered itself a Christian fraternal organization not unlike the Elks, but with a more menacing agenda.  In reality the Klan was a terrorist organization which co-opted local law enforcement and governments.   Sheriff McCall, a closeted Klan member, found himself in the difficult position of having to protect the three young black men in his custody from a violent and outraged lynch mob.  However, the pleasure of beating confessions out of two of the men, with a little help from some of his good ol’ boys in law enforcement, more than made up for this hardship.  Only one suspect, Walter Irvin, refused to give in to the coercion.  He never confessed, even when offered a plea bargain: life in prison as opposed to the electric chair.

As word spread throughout the black community in America that an outrage had been committed against four innocent men, Florida’s white establishment – from the local police up to the governor – made a mockery of the rule of law in its zeal to protect the “flower of southern womanhood”.  A team of lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) headed up by one of the nation’s greatest legal minds traveled from New York City to Lake County in order to defend the three young men in court.  Thurgood Marshall already had a string of civil rights victories under his belt, having successfully argued Chambers vs Florida before the United States Supreme Court which overturned the murder convictions of four wrongly accused black men whose confessions had been coerced by police in Broward County.  

Marshall was a long-term thinker when it came to matters of law and therefore he chose his cases carefully.  His goal was to overturn Plessy vs Ferguson (1896), a Supreme Court ruling that upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal” public facilities as the basis for legalizing racial segregation.  In order to do that, Marshall strategically crafted his arguments in every case so that each judge’s ruling in some way advanced his cause or gave him an opportunity to chip away at the segregationist doctrine.  By the time President Lyndon Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, segregation had ended, in large part due to his efforts.

Devil in the Grove is a gripping history of not only the Groveland Four case but of Thurgood Marshall’s life and career.  There are passages which describe a Gestapo-like climate in Florida at a time when the United States was engaged in the “Cold War” against the spread of Communism.  The hypocrisy of the brutal treatment of black Americans by their white neighbors, so similar to the Nazi’s persecution of Jews, pleased Russian and Chinese Communist leaders tremendously, and the increasingly ugly situation became a national embarrassment.  President Harry S. Truman, directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to review the facts of the case.  J. Edgar Hoover and Thurgood Marshall, despite their mutual antipathy, used each other to support their respective agendas:  ferreting out Communists and bringing justice to the Groveland Four.

What happened in Lake County, Florida, in 1948 and the eventual outcome of the trail andsubsequent appeals, is important to understand in light of the recent criminal trial in neighboring Seminole County, in which a self-appointed security guard followed and then shot to death an unarmed teenage boy whose only crime was “looking suspicious”.  Florida Statute 776.013 Home protection; use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm, the so called “Stand Your Ground” law, states that “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

Trayvon Martin was not engaged in an unlawful activity;he was followed, perhaps threatened by a man with a gun who didn’t like the way he looked;  he had a right to be walking to his father’s house and had no duty to retreat;  he stood his ground and fought the armed man who wouldn’t leave him alone; at some point, he overpowered his aggressor with physical strength and athleticism;  his assailant, in the midst of this brawl, managed to pull the trigger of his handgun.  Ten minutes later, Trayvon Martin died, and seventeen months after that, George Zimmerman walked out of the courthouse a free man.

While the Trayvon Martin and Groveland Four cases have little similarity, there are some haunting echoes from central Florida’s past which George Zimmerman’s murder trial amplified.   The entire community in the Groveland case tacitly conspired to deny four black men their right to live.  Both the Groveland and Martin cases attracted Federal attention to prevent a lynching in the first instance, and to arrest the shooter in the second.  The degree to which racism on the part of George Zimmerman led to Trayvon Martin’s death is a question which is impossible to answer.  Given Zimmerman’s history of calling 911, however, it is clear that he believed a black teenage boy wearing a hoodie had no legitimate business walking on a sidewalk in the community he was patrolling.  The bigger question this case presents is why the local police were so reluctant to arrest George Zimmerman for Trayvon Martin’s death.  Had they done so, it is likely that no one outside of Florida would ever have heard of Trayvon Martin.

In 1948, brutal treatment of black suspects was done behind closed doors and McCall congratulated himself for delivering three breathing bodies and two confessions to the state prison.  Under the veneer of upholding the laws of the land, the Florida State judicial system suffered from the same institutional racism as the Lake County police department.  The judge at the murder trial suppressed evidence which would have exonerated the Groveland boys, and used every trick he could conjure up to prevent that “uppity negro” lawyer from the NAACP from representing them.

In 2012, George Zimmerman claimed he shot Trayvon Martin in self defense and used the “Stand Your Ground” statute to justify his actions.  It is unlikely that he intended to kill anyone that evening; he probably believed that the gun would scare the “suspicious looking” boy out of the neighborhood.  Only Zimmerman knows what he did and said that provoked the physical altercation which resulted in Martin’s death: as the saying goes, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.  In the aftermath of his acquittal, many Americans believe the Federal government should prosecute Zimmerman for committing a hate crime and/or for denying Martin his civil rights. Both cases would be difficult to win unless Florida’s prosecution team did an inept job (which is possible given how unenthusiastic the state was about arresting Zimmerman in the first place) and overlooked or ignored evidence of racism on the part of Zimmerman.  At a minimum, the Justice Department should review every aspect of the case to be sure that the state of Florida did its job.

In the years between the Groveland and Zimmerman cases, life for black Americans has changed profoundly for the better, thanks in large part to the work of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.  Marshall’s unassailable arguments against segregation and abuses by police and criminal prosecutors continue to strengthen the Constitution for everyone’s benefit.  Racist feelings, unfortunately, persist to varying degrees depending on one’s family and community values.  

It was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who famously said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” and fear is what led George Zimmerman to carry a loaded handgun.  Fear is what made Trayvon Martin fight for his life.  Fear is what caused Zimmerman to pull the trigger.  Fear is driving the parents of black boys to protest the outcome of the trial.  Finally, fear is the reason why so many Americans feel the need to own guns.  Rather than talk to each other to resolve differences we buy guns and threaten to kill anyone who makes us feel afraid.  If George Zimmerman had had an ounce of courage, he would have left Trayvon Martin alone.  Conversely, if  the unarmed Trayvon Martin hadn’t stood his ground, he might still be alive.

Copyright 2013 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

 

"Their Eyes were Watching God"

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

Books that challenge my views and beliefs earn a place on my required reading list, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, a beautiful work of fiction, is such a book. Growing up, I believed that I was “colorblind” and certainly tried to act that way. Reading this book helped me understand that racism is something we are all born with and must struggle against every day. With this work of masterful storytelling, Zora Neale Hurston opens a window into the history and culture of black Americans. After reading it, I felt a new appreciation for the creativity, courage, and spirituality that helped this nation’s slaves endure abuse, torture, and, after emancipation, abandonment by the only world they knew.

Their Eyes Were Watching God takes place in Georgia and Florida in the years following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. After being freed, many former slaves were at loose ends and never emerged from poverty. Some of them, however, had the means and the knowledge to form towns and enjoy prosperity. Eatonville, Florida, (near Orlando) was one such town, and on August 15, 1887, became incorporated. Zora Neale Hurston’s father moved the family there in the early 1890s and was elected mayor for several terms. A keen observer of human behavior and recorder of speech, Ms. Hurston used her experience growing up in that town as the backdrop for her story of this time of great change for America’s newly freed slaves.

Janie, the main character, is a teenager being raised by her grandmother, a woman whose world view and beliefs were formed during her years of enslavement. Janie has an intuitive sense of the possibilities that life has to offer and yearns to find a way to live in harmony and happiness. Nanny, however, sees things differently. Out of a desperate need to protect young Janie and ensure her long-term security, Nanny arranges a marriage to a much older man with property and money. Janie is horrified but has no choice other than to submit. When the marriage becomes intolerable, Janie does the unthinkable: she runs off with a man who seems to offer the promise of romance and happiness that she craves.

Janie and Jody Starks travel to what will become Eatonville, Florida. When they arrive, it is clear that the settlers have no idea of how to form a town in a way that it will work to anyone’s benefit. Jody offers the vision and leadership which is sorely lacking and as a result becomes mayor. Janie, meanwhile, has married him and does his bidding by being well dressed and setting an example for the town. Behind closed doors, however, Jody can be a mean and abusive husband. Janie, like her slave ancestors, learns to take the abuse while protecting her heart and soul by not letting the hurt in. This is not to say she is meek, quite the contrary; when provoked, she has choice words for her husband.

After Jody’s death, Janie, now in her forties, meets a handsome, young stranger and the two fall in love. “Tea Cake” takes Janie away from Eatonville to the Glades just south of Lake Okeechobee. The two work as farm laborers and enjoy a lively social life until a deadly hurricane breaches the dikes holding back the lake. “The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God”. Thousands perish, but Janie and Tea Cake manage to survive the flood at a terrible cost.

As a story, this book could stand on its own, however, Ms. Hurston wrote the dialog in southern black dialect which gives it richness and authenticity. I found that I had to read the characters’ words slowly in order to translate the “Black English” into English. In so doing, I felt transported into a new world and was delighted by the clever word play she recorded and beautiful ways the author had of describing her characters’ lives. Savoring the dialog in this way broke through my preconceived belief that Black English was silly nonsense. Black English enabled the slaves to communicate amongst themselves and create their own subculture which white people could not and would not penetrate. It helped them survive the horrors of life in chains.

Their Eyes Were Watching God did not enjoy much success when first published because it was not a “political” book, in that Ms. Hurston was not publishing as a means of communicating a message about the wrongs of social injustice. Ms. Hurston did explore the topic of racism in its most insidious form: between African Americans. Janie becomes acquainted with a woman, Mrs. Turner, who is light skinned and says “Ah can’t stand black niggers. Ah don’t blame de white folks from hating’ ‘em ‘cause Ah can’t stand ‘em mahself”. She goes on to say “Ah got white folks’ features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain’t fair”. Ms. Hurston likened this type of racism to “the pecking order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t”. This was not a message that early civil rights philosophers and activists were willing to hear.

During her working life, Zora Neale Hurston made her home in New York City and was part of the “Harlem Renaissance” which more militant African Americans rejected as bourgeois. In spite of being a highly educated anthropologist, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, and publishing a number of works, Ms. Hurston fell into obscurity. She returned to Florida in mid-life and worked as a maid until suffering a stroke in the late 1950s. This brilliant American writer died unknown and penniless a few years later and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Like many great artists, Zora Neale Hurston was ahead of her time and was unwilling to cater to popular culture. She wrote what was in her heart and mind and lived as a woman of free will. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, discovered Zora Neale Hurston’s work in the 1960s and endeavored to learn more about this gifted and largely unknown writer. It is thanks to her that Ms. Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as other works resurfaced to be enjoyed by scholars and readers of American fiction. Ms. Walker’s research enabled her to locate Ms. Hurston’s grave and in 1973, she placed a marker on it which reads “A genius of the South”. An understatement if you ask me.

"River of Grass"

The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

Every once in a while, something good happens which makes the national news. On Thursday, November 8, 2007, according to a CNN report, “The Senate … handed President Bush his first veto override -- authorizing $23 billion in new water projects.” Two billion dollars of these funds are earmarked for Florida and of that, most will go towards Everglades restoration. If Marjory Stoneman Douglas were still alive, she would be smiling.

In addition to living 108 years, Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 - May 14, 1998) was unusual in that she was a professional woman in an era when most women did not work outside of the home, and those who did were employed in clerical work. After divorcing her husband, Kenneth Douglas, in 1917 after one year of marriage, Ms. Douglas moved to Miami to work for her father who was the editor of a newspaper which would eventually become the Miami Herald. Across the next several decades, she wrote many short stories and articles for the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Woman's Home Companion, as well as a number of novels.

Everglades: River of Grass was published in 1947 – when development of south Florida was in full swing along the east and west coasts. As more people moved down to enjoy the beautiful winters, demand for buildable land led to the creation of a vast network of canals to convert the wetlands to dry so that development could continue to move inland. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers was so successful in drying the swamps that in addition to almost killing the Everglades, it brought south Florida to the brink of ecological collapse. What no one seemed to understand was that the slow, southward flow of water through the river of grass prevented salt water from seeping into the aquifers which provide Florida’s fresh water. If not for Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her efforts to save the Everglades, south Florida might have become uninhabitable.

In 2007, Pineapple Press published a 50th anniversary edition of River of Grass. It includes two additional chapters which provide an updated look at the state of the Everglades as well as the efforts to reverse some of the damage. Without these new chapters, the book might seem dated as so much has happened, both good and bad, since its initial publication. Just the same, the original work is a timeless and well-researched piece of journalism. Ms. Douglas begins the book with a rapturous description of the vast sea of grass which reads like an epic poem. Her beautiful prose reveals the passion and tenderness she had for the strong, yet fragile, Everglades. In the first chapter, she analyzes each sub-system of the overall: the grass, the water, the rock, the plants and animals, and the people. Her research covers natural and human history which, taken together, enable the reader to understand why the Everglades nearly died, why this ecosystem must be saved, and what the goals of restoration must include.

Even without the drama of saving the Everglades, Florida’s history is fascinating to learn about and River of Grass presents an overview which is detailed enough to give the reader an appreciation of this. Humans have inhabited the Florida peninsula for almost 20,000 years when the last great ice age created mass migrations southward. The tribes settled on the coastlines where fish were plentiful and their descendents – the Seminoles – still live here. Life was predictable for millennia until the Europeans mastered the open ocean in the 1400s and the great age of discovery began.

Christopher Columbus was credited with discovering the American continent, although he made landfall on one of the islands of the Bahamas. It took several voyages for Spain to reach the great continent which would be called “the new world”. During this time, the Spanish proceeded to enslave and exterminate the natives on every island they took. When the Spanish slave ships made their way to the Florida peninsula, the native Floridians, understanding the threat, were prepared to fight and much Spanish blood was shed. The Spaniards did not go away, however, they returned again and again with more men and superior weapons. At the same time, other explorers began encroaching on the Spanish territory. The natives, however, were cunning warriors who refused to be defeated and kept the conquerors at bay.

For approximately 300 years, the natives lived peacefully in and around the Everglades. The Spaniards remained in the north, establishing harbor towns and forts, choosing to leave the natives alone in their watery wasteland. Other Europeans continued to make attempts to encroach on south Florida and as the United States formed and began expanding its boundaries, the native Americans came under attack with increasing frequency.

In the years before the Civil War, escaping slaves often made their way to Florida where they were out of reach of the slave bounty hunters. Some were taken in by the natives and others learned to survive in the wet Florida wilderness. Confederate Army deserters, too, found Florida a good place to disappear and thus the non-native population began to grow and change the nature of the environment by introducing land cultivation and cattle farming. Meanwhile, the United States Government recognized that Florida had both economic and strategic value and began a campaign to kill the natives and displace any survivors by coercing them into signing treaties which took advantage of their naiveté in matters of money and real estate. Some of the natives, understanding that their world had been taken, retreated into the impenetrable cypress swamps where they would be safe for a time. Others, defeated and dispirited, followed the trail of tears to strange and hostile new homelands.

At the same time the United States was fighting the final battles against the native Americans, Spain was causing trouble from its colony, Cuba. Once the United States won the Spanish-American War, trade with Cuba opened up. It was a time of extreme lawlessness on the peninsula with pirates seizing ships and outlaws hiding in the Ten Thousand Islands. Plume hunters ravaged bird rookeries and alligator hunters nearly brought the species to extinction. Mosquitoes plagued everyone and yet, once the natives and the Spanish had been dispatched, industrialists like Henry Flagler and Henry Plant saw opportunities in the swampy south. But, it was Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward who took the idea of draining the swamps and made it happen.

The Army Corps of Engineers, recognizing that Lake Okeechobee turned into an overflowing saucer during hurricanes, built up a levee around its southern shore. In addition to flood control, this levee severely restricted the flow of water out of the lake into the river of grass rather than allowing the water to flow south. Instead, the engineers created canals to channel the water east and west into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers where it emptied into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Healthy, meandering rivers became straight water conduits leaving dried out swamps which no longer could support indigenous plants and animals in their wake. As farming increased, runoff contaminated the water in the lake and consequently, the rivers.

As the Everglades receded, the area around Miami began expanding in all directions. The beautiful climate attracted winter and year-round residents alike and that created a building boom. In the north, from the panhandle and Jacksonville, development along the coasts advanced rapidly, too, surrounding the swampy southern interior and creating additional pressure for drainage. Great fortunes were made in real estate speculation, but not everyone was happy with the changes being wrought in Florida. Some, like Marjory Stoneman Douglas, decided that enough was enough. As champion of the Everglades, Ms. Douglas took on politicians and developers alike in her formidable campaign to save what was left of the Everglades.

Ms. Douglas’ work on the Everglades began as a result of an assignment to write about the Miami River as part of a series on American rivers. In the course of field studies of her subject, she came to understand that without the Everglades, the Miami River would shrivel up and die, along with all the plants and animals living in and around it. Her editor agreed to let her expand the scope of her report and her life’s work was born.

It has taken a long time for us as a nation to appreciate the singular beauty of the Everglades and stop thinking of it as a watery wasteland in need of draining and filling. We should all give thanks to Marjory Stoneman Douglas for being like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike and stopping a catastrophe.

The "Mr. Watson" Trilogy

REQUIRED READING

Killing Mr. Watson
Lost Man’s River
Bone by Bone

A trilogy by Peter Mathiessen

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

Suppose you reside in a peaceful backwater, making a living off the land and providing for your family, when one day a stranger appears and changes everything. This stranger, a well-mannered and nicely dressed gentleman, has a menacing air about him and likes the isolation of your corner of the Everglades. While his public behavior is proper and he establishes a productive sugarcane plantation, rumors surface that he murdered a famous outlaw, that he broke out of jail to avoid a lynch mob, and that he killed his employees on pay day when money was tight. Even more alarming is his reputation as a sharpshooter. After a time, it seems everyone in your community is afraid of him and is therefore relieved when he abruptly leaves his loving family, his successful plantation and the fine home he has built, in the wake of a grisly double murder on the property. You and your neighbors assume that he either did the crime or caused it to happen, and everyone hopes he never returns because there is no law enforcement in this place and time – southwest Florida in the early 1900s – and thus you might be required to take the law into your own hands.

Edgar J. Watson (1855-1910) is one of Florida’s most notorious historical figures. He was tall, powerful, and ruggedly handsome, but it was the look in his eyes that revealed his cold soul. While very few facts about him are known, many stories exist of crimes he is alleged to have committed as well as of his skill at farming and of his larger-than-life personality. He settled in a part of south Florida – the Everglades and the 10,000 Islands – which was largely empty of people because it barely qualified as land. Through intimidation and an understanding of land rights, Mr. Watson laid claim to the highest and most fertile parcel of land in the region. He built a grand home on his sugar cane plantation and was the only man in the Chokoloskee Bay area to own a motor boat. From his plantation overlooking the Chatham River, Mr. Watson could see a boat approaching his island home from almost any direction and was, therefore, never surprised by a visitor. He valued his privacy and made sure that everyone knew it.

Shortly after his arrival in the 10,000 Islands, rumors began circulating that Watson had ambushed Belle Starr, a legendary outlaw, in 1889. Miss Starr, an accomplished horse thief, aided and abetted fugitives and criminals by allowing them to hide on her land within Choctaw and Cherokee Territories. Mr. Watson supposedly was dodging a murder charge and repaid Miss Starr’s kindness by gunning her down when she threatened to turn him over to the authorities. This was never proven and there are discrepancies in the stories which provide room for doubt that the Edgar Watson of southwestern Florida was the same man who murdered Belle Starr.

Mr. Watson married three times, had two common-law wives, and fathered 10 children. During his life, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of murder. Many people he knew including several in his employ, disappeared or were brutally murdered. Circumstantial evidence implicated Watson in several of these murders, but rarely was there enough hard evidence to have him arrested and convicted. On October 24, 1910, an informal posse of his neighbors gunned him down at Chokoloskee Bay upon his return from a brief exile. No one in the posse would say who fired the shot that killed Mr. Watson. These are the facts around which Peter Mathiessen created his trilogy on the life and times of Edgar J. Watson.

Peter Mathiessen is both novelist and natural historian. He delves into the history of people and places in crafting his books, and seamlessly tells the story of how places change as a result of human activity over time. Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone tell the same story – how it is that Edgar J. Watson came to be executed by his neighbors at Chokoloskee Bay – in three different ways. Mr. Mathiessen clearly immersed himself in his subject and was apparently unable to write a single book about the legendary Mr. Watson. Even though the first book starts with Mr. Watson’s execution, each book compels the reader to want more information and understanding of this man who evoked such passionate feelings in those who knew him.

In Killing Mr. Watson, the author seems to believe that most of the stories about Mr. Watson are overblown gossip; the product of overactive imaginations and embellished memories. Killing Mr. Watson, is a series of imagined first person recollections by neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives of Mr. Watson and the world they inhabited. Mr. Mathiessen brings each character to life with the skillful use of dialect and diction which in turn motivate the reader to piece together a complete picture of what it was like to be in Mr. Watson’s world. At the end, which is also how the book begins, the reader is in the middle of that posse, gun in hand and index finger ready to squeeze the trigger when Mr. Watson walks across the invisible, but clear, line in the sand at the river’s edge.

The second book, Lost Man’s River, is an imaginary quest by Mr. Watson’s son Lucius to learn the truth about his “beloved Papa”. Lucius, in his sixties, had made a career as a historian and was somewhat famous for his book History of Southwest Florida. Haunted his entire life by the death of his father and frustrated by his family’s refusals to discuss the man, Lucius placed an ad in a newspaper asking anyone for information about E. J. Watson. The book opens with an anonymous response to the ad which is the deposition of one of the men in the posse. This deposition triggers Lucius to contact the executioners of his father and journey back in time. In addition to discovering the truth about his father, he learns how brutally the Florida landscape was ravaged and what the ugly legacy of racism has wrought.

Finally, Bone by Bone is Mr. Watson’s chance to explain himself and how he became a cold-blooded serial murderer. Mr. Mathiessen seemingly channels Mr. Watson’s voice as he recounts the hardships and tragedies he endured in his early life which caused him to lose his humanity. This is a gut-wrenching book both because of the pain experienced by Mr. Watson throughout his life as well as his matter-of-fact descriptions of the murders he committed, some of which are truly horrific. Of the three, this book is the most challenging, but arguably the best.

Each book in the Edgar Watson Trilogy can stand on its own but, taken together, the trilogy is a masterpiece of fiction, research, and natural history, not unlike Moby Dick. Mr. Mathiessen’s epic describes southwestern Florida in the period following the Civil War when humans, through hubris and greed, drove many bird and animal species to the brink of extinction and began planning to drain the Everglades. While Henry Flagler was busy building his railroad from St. Augustine to Miami, sowing the seeds of the massive population influx to come, the southwest coast could only be reached by boat. The isolation and impenetrability of the swampy islands made this a popular destination for criminals, outlaws, and others needing to disappear for a while. In each of these three books, Mr. Mathiessen brings the reader deep into this almost uninhabitable place where the law was only a loosely understood concept.

I first read these books long before moving to Florida and found them each to be deeply moving in different ways. Killing Mr. Watson made my heart ache for the Everglades and the animals which were killed with so little thought so that ladies in Paris could be stylishly dressed. The second book is more reflective; the main character not only learns about his father, he also learns about himself and his family. In the end, Lucius is freed from the past. Bone by Bone caught me off guard by the depth and many facets of Mr. Watson’s personality. It is an important reminder of how a brutal childhood can deprive a person of his humanity, something that as a society, we should all be concerned about.

"Ecology of a Cracker Childhood"

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, ecology is defined as the relationship of organisms and their environment, and cracker refers to a poor white person of the southeastern United States. The author, Janisse Ray, is a Georgia cracker who grew up in a junkyard separated from US 1 by a hedge, not far from the Florida border. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is her memoir of life among rusting car bodies and other detritus of the industrialized world and how she discovered beauty, nature, and the value of one’s own history.

Driving in rural sections of the southeast, one comes across countless junkyards surrounding shacks and mobile homes where people live and raise children. It is easy to feel a comfortable sense of superiority to these unfortunate souls and wonder how anyone can live like that. And yet, they do. Indeed, as in the case of Ms. Ray, some even thrive. Unlike so many American success stories, Ms. Ray did not engage in an heroic journey. She was instead sensitive to her surroundings and extremely observant, continually adding information to her understanding of the world within and outside of her family’s junkyard. This book tells the story of how the crackers shaped and were shaped by the land. “…I carry the landscape inside like an ache. The story of who I am cannot be severed from the story of the flatwoods.”

In her Introduction, Ms. Ray writes: “In south Georgia, everything is flat and wide. Not empty. My people live among the mobile homes, junked cars, pine plantations, clearcuts, and fields. They live among the lost forests.” By lost forests, the author means the old-growth long-leaf pine forests which were cleared to make room for cultivation. As the South succumbed to poverty following the Great Depression, junkyards sprang up like weeds. Surrounded by such blight, it is hard to imagine that anyone could see the beauty of the natural world. But that is the magic of nature: even in the most degraded environments, plants take root and animals make homes.

As a child, Ms. Ray played with her siblings among the junk that her father collected, reused, repaired, and recycled. On occasion, they would venture beyond the limits of the junk and discover the remnants of the natural world. “The pitcher plant taught me to love rain, welcoming days of drizzle and sudden thundering downpours, drops trailing down its hoods and leaves, soaking the ground. In my fascination with the pitcher plant, I learned to detest artificial bouquets of plastic and silk.” Climbing trees and splashing in muddy creeks was as much fun as getting lost in the junk and jumping from car hood to car hood. The ability to enjoy without judging is one of the great gifts of childhood.

According to Ms. Ray, long-leaf pine forests once covered the eastern seaboard from Virginia to the Florida peninsula and as far west as the Mississippi River. Of that, only one percent of the virgin forest remains. “Apocalyptic” is the word she uses. Bachman’s sparrows make their homes the open pine savannahs characteristic of long-leaf pine forests. They are disappearing as fast as the virgin trees. Likewise the flatwoods salamanders, which retrace their steps to the place of their hatching when it comes time to breed, and each year produce fewer and fewer offspring. While these two creatures may seem inconsequential, they are indicators of the environmental degradation which will eventually take a toll on humans if we continue to develop every acre of empty land.

Woven into the lamentations of this book are autobiographical pieces which reveal a most unusual family. Ms. Ray’s father, Franklin Delano Ray, Sr., was a creative packrat, her mother, Lee Ada Branch, was a devoted wife and mother who created a home in the midst of rotting and rusting piles of junk. Between the two of them, there wasn’t anything they couldn’t make out of everyone else’s cast offs. Franklin Ray was a religious fanatic who took his family on a variety of spiritual pilgrimages. At one point this family of six crackers joined a black church in Brunswick, Georgia, because Mr. Ray had heard the preacher on the radio and felt called. For a time, he required the family to fast for long periods to honor those that Jesus endured. The children were isolated from their peers and had no television and thus grew up not knowing how to be “normal”. And then, Mr. Ray suffered a nervous breakdown and spent many months in a mental hospital. Ms. Ray’s telling of this time is tragic and harrowing.

Janisse Ray’s cracker ancestors are fascinating characters themselves: her grandfather, Charlie Joe Ray was legendary for being a wild ne’er-do-well descendent of Scottish immigrants. Charlie’s wife, Clyo, married him for love but lived to regret it. She bootlegged whiskey to make ends meet and hid the jars when the treasury agents were making a raid. Ms. Ray uses this book to paint a colorful portrait of her people – the crackers – which reveals a sort of pride and appreciation without a hint of defensiveness. She writes “I was a Southerner, a slow, dumb, redneck hick, a hayseed, inbred and racist, come from poverty, condemned to poverty: descendant of Oglethorpe’s debtor prisoners. Descendant of people who pulled from the Union, fought their patria, and lost.” But in spite of this, Ms. Ray went to college on scholarship to study literature and botany and became an extraordinary writer.

This book compresses time so we can observe the way the long-leaf pine ecosystem once was and how clearcutting destroyed it. Janisse Ray asks if it would be possible to restore her family’s junkyard to it’s pristine state and answers that it would probably take two lifetimes, but that is not the purpose of her book. Ms. Ray is writing a letter to the world asking us all to take a good look at how we live on the earth and what we can do to save some room for the animals and plants who also call it home, and in so doing, save ourselves.