Moore's Ford lynchings
The Moore's Ford lynchings, also known as the 1946 Georgia lynching, refers to the July 25, 1946, murders of four young African Americans by a mob of unmasked white men in the US state of Georgia. The lynching victims were two married couples: George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Dorsey Malcom. Tradition says that the murders were committed on Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton County and Oconee County, Georgia, between Monroe and Watkinsville. However, the victims were shot and killed on a nearby dirt road.
The case attracted national attention and catalyzed large protests in Washington, DC, and New York City. President Harry Truman created the President's Committee on Civil Rights and his administration introduced anti-lynching legislation in Congress but could not get it past the Southern Democratic bloc. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated for four months in 1946, the first time it had been ordered to investigate a civil rights case, but it was unable to discover sufficient evidence to bring any charges.
In the 1990s, publicity about the cold case led to a new investigation. The state of Georgia and the FBI finally closed their cases in December 2017, again unable to prosecute any suspect.
The Malcoms and Dorseys have been commemorated by a community memorial service in 1998. A state historical marker placed in 1999 at the site of the attack — Georgia's first official recognition of a lynching — and an annual re-enactment has been held since 2005.
According to the 2017 report by the Equal Justice Initiative on lynchings in the Southern United States, Georgia has the second-highest number of documented lynchings, after Mississippi.
Background
In the aftermath of World War II, there was considerable social unrest in the US, especially in the South. African-American veterans resented being treated as second-class citizens after returning home and began to press for civil rights, including the ability to vote. But many white supremacists resented them and wanted to reestablish dominance. The number of lynchings of black people rose after the war, with twelve lynched in the Deep South in 1945 alone. The states' exclusion of most black people from the political system across the South since the turn of the century had been maintained through a variety of devices, despite several challenges that reached the US Supreme Court.In April 1946, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that white primaries were unconstitutional, making way for at least some African Americans to vote in Democratic Party primaries that year. In Georgia, some black people prepared to vote in the July primary, against the resistance of most whites. This change is believed to have contributed to the lynchings, as related to the continued white effort to intimidate blacks and suppress their voting.
In 1946, the three-time former governor of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, was involved in a difficult battle to win the Democratic primary for nomination as governor in the general election that year. At the time, whites in the South voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates and winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to winning a general election for an office.
Talmadge's campaign was noted for its violent racist rhetoric: he boasted about having assaulted and flogged the black sharecroppers who worked for his family when he was a young man. He claimed to have carried an ax when he chased a black man who had sat next to a white woman. While campaigning in Walton County, Talmadge held a rally attended by about 600 in Monroe. Among those who attended the rally were two local white farmers, Barnette Hester and J. Loy Harrison, both of whom spoke afterward to Talmadge at a campaign barbecue. Harrison was a long-time supporter of Talmadge and had named his second son after the governor.
Although Talmadge called his opponent, James V. Carmichael, a "nigger lover", Carmichael's rally in Monroe a week later attracted a larger crowd. This suggested that many of the white farmers who had voted for Talmadge as governor in three previous elections were beginning to tire of him.
July events
In July 1946, J. Loy Harrison employed two young African-American couples as sharecroppers on his farm in Walton County, Georgia. One was George W. Dorsey and his wife Mae Dorsey. George Dorsey was a veteran of World War II; he had been back in the US less than nine months after having served nearly five years in the Pacific War. Mae Dorsey was born September 20, 1922. The other couple were Roger Malcom and his wife Dorothy Malcom, who was George Dorsey's sister. She was reported by a newspaper to allegedly be pregnant. She was also known as Doris and Millie Kate.On July 11, Roger Malcom allegedly stabbed Barnette Hester, a white man who was his boss and landlord; Malcom was arrested and held in the county jail in Monroe, the Walton county seat.
In 2007, the Associated Press reported revelations about former governor Eugene Talmadge, based on 3,725 pages of FBI material related to its 1946 investigation of the Moore's Ford lynching. Talmadge returned to Monroe on July 12, a day after the stabbing of Barnette Hester. This was five days before the Democratic gubernatorial primary on July 17, and he was seeking rural votes.
The FBI's investigation later that year reported a witness saying that Talmadge was seen talking to George Hester, the brother of Barnette Hester, in front of the Walton County courthouse in Monroe. Talmadge reportedly "offered immunity to anyone 'taking care of negro'." He hoped the Hester family would use their influence to help him win Walton County in the imminent Democratic primary for governor. Talmadge needed to win enough rural counties in Georgia in order to offset the popularity of his opponent Carmichael in urban areas with higher numbers of residents.
Mass lynching
On July 25, Harrison drove Malcom's wife Dorothy and the Dorseys to Monroe, where he personally posted the $600 bail for Roger Malcom to be freed. At the time, Hester was still hospitalized from his stab wounds.Harrison drove with the two couples back to his farm. At 5:30 p.m. that day, he was forced to stop his car near the Moore's Ford Bridge between Monroe and Watkinsville, where the road was blocked by a gang of 15 to 20 armed white men. According to Harrison:
Harrison watched. One of the black women identified one of the assailants. At that point, the man in the expensive suit ordered: "Get those damned women too". The mob took both the women to a big oak tree and tied them beside their husbands. The mob fired three point-blank volleys. The coroner's estimate counted 60 shots were fired at close range. The two couples were shot and killed on a dirt road near Moore's Ford Bridge, which spanned the Apalachee River, east of Atlanta.
Reaction
The mass lynching received national coverage and generated widespread outrage. Large protests and marches against the lynchings took place in New York City and Washington, DC. President Harry S. Truman directed the Justice Department to investigate the crimes under federal civil rights law, the first time the FBI would do so. He also created the President's Committee on Civil Rights in December 1946. The Truman administration introduced anti-lynching legislation in Congress, but was unable to get it passed against the opposition of the white southern Democratic bloc in the Senate. Together with outrage about the Columbia, Tennessee 1946 race riot, the Moore's Ford lynchings generated increased awareness and support from more of the white public for the growing Civil Rights Movement. Demonstrators marched outside of the White House demanding the end of lynchings.On July 28, 1946, a funeral for the Dorseys and Dorothy Malcom was held at the Mount Perry Baptist Church. As George Dorsey was a World War II veteran, and his coffin was draped in an American flag. The funeral was well attended by the national news media, although many black people stayed away out of fear. One black man at the funeral told a journalist from The Chicago Defender: "They're exterminating us. They're killing Negro veterans and we don't have nothing to fight back with except our bare hands".
In his article "The Murders in Monroe", in The New Republic, lawyer H. William Fitelson raised a number of questions about the Moore's Ford case: why did Sheriff L.S. Gordon of Walton County set the bail for Roger Malcom at only $600 and why did Harrison bail out Malcom although he knew Malcom likely be convicted soon and go to prison? Fitelson said that sharecroppers were easy to replace, and he thought it odd that Harrison spent $600 just to get a man who was likely to be temporary labor, when he could have hired another sharecropper to replace Malcom for much less money. Fitelson noted that Harrison could have driven the Malcoms and the Dorseys to his farm via the paved highway, which was faster and more convenient, but instead drove down an unpaved dirt side road that was much slower and less used by travelers. He suggested this choice likely ensured no outside witnesses to the mass lynching.
Fitelson wondered about how the lynch mob knew the precise time of day and the road Harrison would use to return to his farm. He thought it strange that Sheriff Gordon personally released Malcom from the Walton County jail late in the afternoon, but he had not visited the crime scene nor attended the coroner's inquest. Fitelson noted that Mae Dorsey was said to have called out the names of several members of the lynch mob before her death, while Harrison, who had lived his entire life in Walton County, claimed not to know any. Finally, Fitelson noted that Harrison was not harmed by the lynch mob. Even if he truthfully could not identify them that day, the mob let Harrison live, knowing he could recognize one or more of them in the future. Fitelson noted that if charged, members of the lynch mob would have faced four counts of first-degree murder. He wrote that it was most peculiar that the lynch mob allowed a witness to live who had seen them kill four people.