Mabel Norris Reese
Mabel Norris Reese (July 2, 1914 - January 1, 1995) was a civil rights activist and journalist, editor and owner of the Mount Dora Topic newspaper from 1947 to 1960. A book written about the NAACP's defense of the Groveland Four by Gilbert King won the Pulitzer Prize and discussed her mixed reporting on that event. Her induction into the Lake County, Florida Women's Hall of Fame and subsequent commemoration with a bust by sculptor Jim McNalis in 2020 memorialized the crusading journalist's fight against the Ku Klux Klan. 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. Mount Dora 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 began believing he was not being forthcoming. By reporting in