CRP's Blog

On New Year’s Eve, 1939, a horrific triple murder occurred in rural Oklahoma. Within a matter of days, investigators identified the killers: convicts on work release who had been at a craps game with one of the victims the night before. As anger at authorities grew, political pressure mounted to find a scapegoat. The governor’s representative settled on a young black farmhand named W.D. Lyons. Lyons was arrested, tortured into signing a confession, and tried for the murder. The NAACP’s new Legal Defense and Education Fund sent its young chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, to take part in the trial.

This wrongful conviction story spotlights Thurgood Marshall’s experiences as a lawyer for the fledgling NAACP before he took on Brown v. Board of Education.

Read below for an exclusive excerpt of the first chapter:

Learn more about the book here!