LaVon Bracy Davis is hopeful her Groveland Four plan still has a shot in 2026

The Legislature must decide whether the state pays the Groveland Four families $4 million when lawmakers return to Tallahassee to finish the budget next month.

With overwhelming bipartisan support, the Senate unanimously passed SB 694 in February to compensate descendants of the young men who were victims of a racist system in 1949. Each family would receive $1 million under the bill.

However, the House bill version stalled and was never called to a Committee vote during the 2026 Legislative Session.

Friday was Sine Die, although lawmakers left without passing a budget. They will return next month to deliberate on the budget, which is their only constitutionally required responsibility.

Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, who filed SB 694, said her proposal is not dead and is currently included in the Senate’s proposed budget. 

“To the descendants of those four men: I hear you, I see you, and I will not stop fighting for you. It would be a further tragedy after 76 years, to once again turn its back on these families and continue to ignore their pain. They have waited long enough. We have all waited long enough,” Bracy Davis told Florida Politics on Sunday.

In 1949, a young White married girl accused the Groveland Four of rape. What happened next was a terrible injustice that stained Florida’s history books and the Justice System for decades, as recounted by Bracy Davis, Civil Rights advocates and historians.

Ernest Thomas was shot more than 400 times by a mob.

Sheriff Willis McCall and Deputy Sheriff James Yates fired on Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin while transporting them to jail. Shepherd died, while a handcuffed Irvin survived only by playing dead. Charles Greenlee, who has since passed away, served 12 years in prison.

The accuser, Norma Padgett, died in 2024 without ever publicly recanting her rape allegations.

The Groveland Four’s relatives said the cruelty and violence left a generational trauma on their family that has lingering since.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning book in 2013 cast more attention on history that many in Central Florida did not know. The work of modern-day Lake County State Attorney Bill Gladson uncovered new evidence that proved the men hadn’t raped Padgett. The late Sen. Geraldine Thompson, who taught Black history, also fought to clear the names of the Groveland Four.

The Legislature gave a formal apology in 2017. Early in his first term as Governor, Ron DeSantis delivered on his campaign promise to pardon the Groveland Four.

“For seventy years, these four men have had their history wrongly written for crimes they did not commit. As I have said before, while that is a long time to wait, it is never too late to do the right thing,” DeSantis said at the time.