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<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cMy mother, my grandmother, and my dad did not want me going to Florida. They asked me who I was going with. They wanted to know everything,\u201d Newson recollected. \u201cThey made me call every day at a different time to make sure that I was OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newson noted that he was a corrections officer at the time, yet his family was less worried about his job than they were his trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cI deal with criminals every day and you don\u2019t throw a fit about that? I\u2019m going to Florida to enjoy myself at a football game and it\u2019s like I\u2019m going off to war,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, I know. I understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s fear was part of the trauma that\u2019s haunted the Black families of the Groveland Four for decades, lingering from generation to generation. It was like a black hole consumed the family tree, yet some of the younger generation never knew why. It was too painful for the older family members who lived through it to talk about it.<\/p>\n
Newson\u2019s uncle, Ernest Thomas, was shot more than 400 times by an angry mob in Lake County in 1949 after being falsely accused of raping a White teenager.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall shot Sam Shepherd and Walter Irvin, claiming they tried to escape when the Sheriff was transporting them to jail. Shepherd died, but Irvin, still handcuffed, survived by playing dead. Irvin was later tried and convicted. He was paroled in 1968 and died a year later. <\/p>\n The fourth man, Charles Greenlee, was convicted and served 12 years in prison before he was paroled. Greenlee later died in 2012.<\/p>\n Seventy-seven years later, the state of Florida is giving their descendants $4 million as compensation. The money made it into the 2026-27 state budget<\/a> that Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> recently signed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile no amount of money can erase the pain of the injustice they endured, this $4 million represents a long-overdue acknowledgment of the harm that was done and our responsibility to make it right,\u201d said Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis<\/a>, who shepherded the efforts through the Legislature this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Newson\u2019s family members were told to leave Lake County and never come back.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did not want to subject my brother and sister and myself to Florida,\u201d said Newson, now 65 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n So Newson\u2019s family fled. They left behind Lake County and moved to New York. They changed their last name so no one could find them. The family surname, originally spelled Newsome, evolved into Newson by the time Aaron was born in 1961.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI just wish they had really talked to us about it,\u201d Newson said. \u201cIt was like a taboo. \u2026 I think that generation, when something happened that was traumatic, they did not talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until DeSantis, Florida\u2019s new Governor, was pardoning the Groveland Four that Newson learned the circumstances behind his then-26-year-old uncle\u2019s death. His cousin alerted him about the news.<\/p>\n A pardon? Newson asked, confused. For what? All he knew was that his uncle had been shot and died. Thompson must have done something wrong, Newson always assumed.<\/p>\n Newson didn\u2019t know the Sheriff took justice into his own hands, a Sheriff\u2019s deputy was accused of falsifying the evidence, and the victim never publicly recanted even when the evidence was clear she had lied.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Newson was a law-and-order man. In a 28-year law enforcement career, he worked as a Sheriff\u2019s jail deputy and then a corrections officer in New York.<\/p>\n He reflected on the miscarriage of justice against his uncle.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty,\u201d Newson said. \u201cIt was just completely different, backward.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Groveland Four descendants grew up on the straight and narrow, warned to never get into trouble. They became teachers, joined law enforcement, and worked for the government, said Eddie Irvin Jr., the nephew of Walter Irvin, at a 2021 news conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n The same press conference featured remarks from\u00a0Greenlee\u2019s daughter, Carol Greenlee, who was only 3 years old when her father went to prison.<\/p>\n \u201cI would not let injustice define me,\u201d she said. \u201cI would not go to prison. I would not be violent. I would not hate, but I would love and embrace all of those who did not know at the time that my father is a caring and loving compassionate person that did not rape anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n A sad ritual began when relatives gathered together every few weeks. The women sat at the kitchen table, weeping, holding hands to comfort each other. The men stood outside around a barrel, talking. Hushed voices. Tears. Dark family secrets.<\/p>\n \u201cThey killed my baby,\u201d Beverly Robinson\u2019s aunt would say.<\/p>\n Little Beverly always wondered: Who were \u201cthey\u201d? Why was her family so sad?<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up, we were forbidden to ask about the story,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n Robinson had never met her first cousin, Sam Shepherd, who died before she was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n The memories of her family mourning around the kitchen table were unforgettable on an impressionable 5-year-old as she grew up and went to college. Robinson vowed to find out what happened. She became a detective of sorts, digging into her family tree.<\/p>\n As a college freshman living in Georgia, she drove alone in her old green Plymouth Duster to Fort Lauderdale where the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was located. Her mother didn\u2019t know she was going. Robinson did not find any lead, but she was determined not to quit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Robinson read microfilm at the library, pouring over the black-and-white archived newspaper stories.<\/p>\n \u201cI went home from college one weekend and my mother went into her room and she came back with a newspaper so old you couldn\u2019t touch it. She said to me, \u2018I see you are determined and interested in the story, So here you go,\u2019\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n The article prompted her to read more about the court proceedings. Robinson also returned to Groveland to interview people who witnessed what happened firsthand \u2014 the race riots, people running for their lives, and the arrival of Thurgood Marshall, who led the defense for the Groveland Four.<\/p>\n Once Robinson knew the truth, it was almost unbelievable.<\/p>\n \u201cI just could not wrap my mind around it,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cI had to grow to believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n Robinson\u2019s career took her to Florida\u2019s community college system, where she connected with someone who was going to become a powerful ally for justice.<\/p>\n Geraldine Thompson was employed at Valencia College before she ever ran for the Legislature. Robinson and Thompson befriended each other. Thompson, who cared deeply about Central Florida\u2019s African American history, was unfamiliar with the Groveland Four until Robinson told her, Robinson said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe said, \u2018You know what? I\u2019m going to take this on. We\u2019re going to get them pardoned.\u2019\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n Thompson bought 40 copies of Gilbert King\u2019s<\/a> Pulitzer Prize-winning book \u201cDevil in the Grove\u201d for lawmakers to read, Robinson said. The book brought public attention to the case.<\/p>\n The Legislature apologized to the Groveland Four in 2017 and DeSantis, a newly elected first-term Governor, delivered on his campaign promise to posthumously pardon<\/a> the Groveland Four in 2019.<\/p>\n But a pardon means forgiveness, Lake County State Attorney Bill Gladson acknowledged, and the families of Shepherd, Thomas, Irvin and Greenlee wanted their names fully cleared. Only a prosecutor could do that. But first, Gladson needed to find a smoking gun.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout any new evidence \u2014 true new evidence \u2014 you can\u2019t just go back and change something that had been final,\u201d Gladson said. \u201cI work within the confines of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n The first trial was in 1949 in Lake County, and a retrial took place in 1951 in Marion County. Since then, evidence was misplaced and forgotten. Some of the trial transcripts were lost.<\/p>\n Now, Gladson was on the hunt to find the old evidence to reexamine it. Court officials were digging through storage and old archives in two different counties when an old cardboard box was rediscovered.<\/p>\n Inside were Irvin\u2019s old pants, the denim he wore during the alleged rape. The pants had been an important piece of evidence at trial.<\/p>\n A Sheriff\u2019s deputy, who had a history of lying, testified that Irvin\u2019s pants were stained with \u201csmudges.\u201d<\/p>\n Even then, a FBI lab already existed, but Lake County officials chose not to test the pants at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the prosecution never did use the word \u2018semen\u2019 when discussing the smear, the implication to the jury was obvious,\u201d Gladson wrote in court records. \u201cThe jury was left with the improper suggestion that Walter Irvin\u2019s pants contained evidence of the rape for which he was ultimately convicted.\u201d<\/p>\n Gladson tested the jeans and discovered that no semen or human stains appeared on the pants. It was the breakthrough evidence he needed, which fit into the troubling behavior Gladson knew about the Sheriff and prosecutor working against the Groveland Four during the Jim Crow era.<\/p>\n In 2021, Gladson filed a motion to dismiss<\/a> Thomas and Shepherd\u2019s indictments for the two young men killed before they ever stood trial. Gladson\u2019s motion also sought to vacate the sentences of Greenlee and Irvin, who by then were both deceased. <\/p>\n His motion was scathing to read.<\/p>\n \u201cEven a casual review of the record reveals that these four men were deprived of the fundamental due process rights that are guaranteed to all Americans. Given these facts today, no fair minded prosecutor would even consider filing these charges and no reasonable jury would convict,\u201d Gladson wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cThe evidence strongly suggests that the sheriff, the judge, and the prosecutor all but ensured guilty verdicts in this case. These officials, disguised as keepers of the peace and masquerading as ministers of justice, disregarded their oaths, and set in motion a series of events that forever destroyed these men, their families, and a community. I have not witnessed a more complete breakdown of the criminal justice system, nor do I ever expect I will again.\u201d<\/p>\n The family members wept after Lake County Circuit Court Judge Heidi Davis approved Gladson\u2019s motion. One daughter wailed uncontrollably, bowing her head in the courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even King was surprised by what happened next.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody ever mentioned compensation,\u201d King told Florida Politics this week. \u201cIt just didn\u2019t come up. I just thought maybe that was something they didn\u2019t even think was even possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Thompson died in 2025<\/a>, and the lawmaker who won a Special Election to fill the rest of her term was Bracy Davis, who had served as a state Representative from Ocoee.<\/p>\n This year, Bracy Davis sponsored a bill to give $4 million to the families. Her fellow Senators were fully on board<\/a> after several emotional hearings with Groveland Four family members and civil rights advocates testifying.<\/p>\n Yet the bill died in the House without any hearings.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Sunburn_FloridaPoliticsWebsite_728x905186-scaled-e1740018793631.jpg\")
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Three generations of Newsons. Aaron Newson in third row, right. Image via Aaron Newson.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Geraldine-Thompson-640x427.jpg\")
Geraldine Thompson sought to make amends for the Groveland Four. Image via Colin Hackley.<\/p>\n