Measure filed — yet again — to exonerate Groveland Four

For the third year in a row, a bill has been filed asking for the exoneration of the Groveland Four.

The bill was filed last week by Rep. Bobby B. DuBose, D-Fort Lauderdale.

It mirrors two bills filed by now former state Sen. Geraldine Thompson, which both didn’t make it through the legislative process.

Last year, both Groveland and Lake County offered apologies and pushed lawmakers to exonerate the men, but came up empty handed.

Officials are hoping the effort might help this year.

“We’re hoping the state will wake up and see the grave injustice and that we have the power to fix it,” former Groveland Mayor Tim Loucks said. “I have good faith that this year might be the year.”

He said both proclamations in the city and county were filed too late to make a difference during the last legislative session.

The bill calls for the acknowledgment of the “grave injustice” local against Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Ernest Thomas, who were accused of raping a 17-year-old white girl in 1949.

All four men have died. Now, 68 years after the alleged crime, the families of the men might get some closure.

The case against the Groveland Four in the racially divided South caused chaos throughout the region, leading to a white mob destroying a black community near the city.

The National Guard was even called in to bring order back to the area.

Facts about the case were called into question in Gilbert King’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America.”

The book chronicles Lake County’s past race-relation issues and attempts to prove the allegations against the men were false.

It also included documents that showed the doctor who examined the alleged rape victim didn’t find evidence of a sexual assault.