The Groveland Four: Righting a historical injustice

The Groveland Four Clemency Coalition (GFCC), a group of citizens bringing justice to wrongly accused victims, gained justice for The Groveland Four, four young African-American men wrongly accused of rape, by creating a communications and advocacy program during a high-profile election year.

Situation

Nearly 70 years ago, four African American men – Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Ernest Thomas – were falsely accused and wrongly convicted in one of the most shameful episodes of Florida history. Accused of raping a white 17-year old woman in 1949, the local sheriff, along with the Ku Klux Klan, pursued these four young black men who came to be known as "the Groveland Four boys."

Over the last few decades, passioned activists brought this story to light through television documentaries, media coverage and a Pulitzer Prize winning book, Devil in the Grove....

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands