A bill now headed for a vote in the Florida Senate would provide a total of $4 million in compensation to be shared equally by the families of the Groveland Four.
Those four young Black men -- Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, Ernest Thomas and Charles Greenlee, who was only 16 -- were wrongly prosecuted or killed for the alleged rape of a white woman in Lake County in 1949.
Senate Bill 694, sponsored by Ocoee Democratic Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, won unanimous approval from the Appropriations Committee, its final committee stop on the way to the Senate floor. It has strong bipartisan support.
A separate House bill, however, has not advanced.
In sponsoring the bill, Bracy Davis is continuing the efforts by her mentor and close family friend Sen. Geraldine Thompson, who died one year ago.
Bracy Davis' mother addressed the committee. LaVon Wright Bracy said she was there, not for her daughter, but for Thompson, her best friend, who worked for years to make sure the Groveland Four were not forgotten.
"I was with Senator Thompson when she took her last breath," Bracy said, "and at that sacred moment, I made a promise that I would do my part. This bill is a continuation and the completion of that work."
Some family members were also at Thursday's meeting. Angelia Irvin McKinnon told the senators she was there mainly for her 89-year-old father, Walter Irvin's brother.
"I want you to imagine an old man who is sitting in his rocker right now," she said, "praying that he will live to see that this bill is passed."
All of the Groveland Four are now dead.
'A gross injustice'
Based largely on a Senate staff analysis of SB 694, here's a summary their experiences under the notorious Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall:
In July 1949, shortly after Greenlee and 22-year-old Irvin were arrested, they were taken to the basement of the Lake County Jail and severely beaten.
Thomas was gunned down by a posse of law enforcement officers who found him in Madison County. He was 26.
Greenlee was convicted for the supposed rape and, and as the only minor, was sentenced to life in prison. Irvin and Shepherd were sentenced to death.
In 2021, in a Lake County court proceeding to clear the names of the Groveland Four, State Attorney Bill Gladson described how McCall victimized the men through abuse, lack of evidence, perjury and the hiding of facts that would have cleared them.
It was not, he said, a legitimate criminal investigation, "but a criminal conspiracy between the sheriff and his deputies."
Working for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall -- the future Supreme Court justice -- appealed Irvin's and Shepherd's convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court. And those convictions were overturned.
But in 1951, as McCall was transporting them from a state prison back to Lake County for a pretrial hearing, McCall stopped on a dirt road in Umatilla and shot the men, claiming it was in self defense.
McCall killed Shepherd, but Irvin survived to stand trial and be sentenced to death again. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He was paroled in 1968 and died in 1970.
Greenlee was paroled in 1962. He died in 2012 at age 78.
Over the past 10 years, Florida has taken steps to recognize the injustice done to the Groveland Four.
In 2017, the Legislature apologized. Its joint resolution said they were "victims of a gross injustice," part of a "shameful chapter in this state's history."
In 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued full pardons.
And in 2021, in those Lake County proceedings, a circuit judge dismissed their indictments, set aside their convictions and announced they were "fully restored to the innocence afforded them by the law, though denied for these many 70 years."
At Thursday's committee meeting, Sen. Bracy Davis described her bill as "the final step."
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