Mabel Norris Reese

Mabel Norris Reese (September 7, 1915 – 1995) was a civil rights activist and journalist, editor and owner of the Mount Dora Topic newspaper from 1947-1960. Books written about her defense of 'The Groveland Four' by Gilbert King (author) won the Pulitzer Prize and her induction into the Florida Hall of Fame and subsequent commemoration with a bust by sculptor by Jim McNalis in 2020. Devil in the Grove was a non-fiction book about the 4 Groveland African-American youths accused of the rape of a white woman in 1949. The Groveland Four were pardoned by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January 2019.

She edited the Mount Dora Topic, a small weekly newspaper that was dependent on local ads from the Lake county region near Orlando, Florida, at a time when segregation was still the rule and the local sheriff was taken at his word. After two prisoners were shot while escaping his custody, Reese began to question the narrative sheriff Willis McCall was expounding and believing he's not being forthcoming, by reporting in opposition she became the target of racism, the family dog was poisoned, her house firebombed and a cross was burned on her lawn, forcing her to relocate from Mount Dora. A rival paper was started and her advertisers were told not to use her paper, causing damage to her business model as a result of her reporting on McCall. After interviewing the surviving prisoner and realizing that what the sheriff had been telling her was a lie, she then began exposing the sheriff and the Klu Klux Klan in her reporting.

In 2012 Devil in the grove told the story of attorney Thurgood Marshall's defense of four young black men in Lake County, Florida, who were accused in 1949 of raping a white woman. They were known as the Groveland Boys. Marshall led a team from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Published by Harper, the book was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The Pulitzer Committee described it as "a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice." The wrongful conviction of black men and summary execution by police in Lake county, Florida became front page news and Mabel Reese, a single mother whose daughter lived with her, became the target of racist violence, yet she persisted, reporting on sheriff McCall when the community did not support removing the racist. Dead fish were dumped on her porch and she wrote an editorial reviling the 'KKK', indicating she did not fear the antics of the group.