TAVARES, Fla. — The Lake County Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday afternoon voted to build a monument dedicated to the Groveland Four outside Tavares' historic Lake County Courthouse building, where the four men were beaten until they confessed to a rape.
The State Board of Executive Clemency on Jan. 11 unanimously agreed to posthumously pardon the men after hearing from Norma Padgett, the victim, and members of the accused men's families.
In 1949, Padgett, then 17, said she was raped and that her husband was assaulted, resulting in the quick arrests of the four black men.
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Earnest Thomas was killed by an angry mob during a manhunt. Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin were shot by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall after he said they tried to escape.
Irvin survived, and he and Charles Greenlee spent much of their lives in prison after being convicted by an all-white jury.
Greenlee and Irvin were eventually paroled after serving lengthy prison sentences.
Commissioners said they would like the monument to be built outside the former courthouse so it can be visited at all hours.
"That's where so much of the story actually happened -- injustices and, frankly, the brutality," Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione said. "We wanted this story to be there to basically say 'never again.'"
The monument will also describe how residents urged state officials to pardon the men.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King, who wrote "Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America," and relatives of the men will be consulted on the monument's design.
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