Proposed law would create scholarships, business loans in honor of the Groveland Four - Orlando Sentinel

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State Rep. Geraldine Thompson, who in November witnessed the long-awaited exoneration of the Groveland Four, wants Florida to create scholarships and priority business loans as recognition of the injustices suffered by the young Black men wrongly accused of raping a white teenager over 70 years ago.

“It is a means in a very limited way to try to make these families whole,” said Thompson, an Orlando Democrat who pushed legislators in 2017 to issue a formal apology on behalf of the state to the families of the four — Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas.

The four, all now dead, ranged in age from 16 to 26 in 1949 when they were accused of kidnapping and raping 17-year-old Norma Padgett.

Thompson’s bill, HB 1133, would create 50 college scholarships worth up to $6,100 a year toward tuition and fees for descendants of the four or for current Black residents of Groveland, the south Lake town where three of the four lived or worked. Greenlee, just 16 but married to a wife who was pregnant, had come to Groveland to look for work.

The bill also would direct the state to prioritize low-interest loan applications for Black-owned businesses in Groveland.

Contacted by the Orlando Sentinel, descendants of the Groveland Four endorsed her bill, saying they never sought reparations only the truth.

“My goal was three-fold,” said Carol Greenlee Crawley, 72, in a phone interview from her home in Tennessee. “One was to clear my dad’s name, another was to let the world know my father’s not a rapist, the third was to get him completely exonerated. ... As far as I’m concerned, I’m in peace.”

“Sam didn’t have any kids,” she said. “But to honor his name by giving kids an opportunity to excel in whatever field they decide is wonderful.”

Though Groveland is not in Thompson’s legislative district, she attended the extraordinary exoneration hearing Nov. 22 to support the families in their crusade to clear the names of the four, who were posthumously pardoned of alleged crimes in 2019 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his executive Cabinet.

She said she included the provision for low-interest loans from the Department of Economic Opportunity for Black-owned businesses “because not everybody is going to be in a position to go to school but there are people who may want to open a business who don’t have the capital to get started.”

Padgett, the accuser, told authorities she and her husband were looking for a place to get a sandwich after a night out dancing when their car broke down in Okahumpka, a rural outpost between Leesburg and Groveland. She alleged the four men initially stopped to help but then overpowered her husband and took turns raping her, a claim cast in serious doubt by a medical report prosecutors never shared with defense lawyers.

A Leesburg doctor examined the 17-year-old the morning after the alleged rape and did not find semen or other evidence of sexual assault.

Now 89, she declined her right to appear at the exoneration hearing Nov. 22 to present evidence or testimony.

Legislators last year approved a similar scholarship program for descendants of victims of the Election Day racial violence in Ocoee in 1920 when a deputized white mob rampaged through Black communities, burning homes and churches and killing residents who tried to defend themselves.

Florida legislators also created a scholarship fund in 1994 as part of a $2.1 million, compensation package for survivors and descendants of victims of racial terror in Rosewood in 1923. Violence erupted after a married white woman said she was raped by a Black resident of the small town, nine miles south of Cedar Key on Florida’s west coast.

source: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orange-county/os-ne-groveland-four-scholarships-loans-20220107-k32fpybxfne4dhq6istzospdxy-story.html

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