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 white males. Tradition says that the murders were committed on Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton and Oconee counties between Monroe and Watkinsville. in fact, the four victims, two married couples, were actually 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 FBI 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 lynching victims — George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom — have been commemorated by a community memorial service in 1998, a state highway marker placed in 1999 at the site of the attack, and an annual re-enactment held since 2005. According to the 2015 report by the Equal Justice Initiative on lynchings in the Southern United States, Georgia has the second-highest number of documented lynchings.
Background
In the aftermath of World War II, there was considerable social unrest in the United States, 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 had been maintained since the turn of the century, despite several court challenges.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 summer's primary, against the resistance of most whites. In the 21st century, some commentators have related this change to the lynchings, seeing them as motivated by an effort to suppress the political voting rights issue. In 1946, the former governor of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, was involved in a difficult battle to win the Democratic nomination to be the candidate for governor in the election that year. At the time, whites in the South voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats and winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to winning a general election.
Talmadge's campaign was noted for its violent racist rhetoric as he boasted about assaulting and flogging the black sharecroppers who worked for his family as an young man and he claimed to have chased a black man down the streets with an ax because he sat next to a white woman. While campaigning in Walton County, Talmadge held a rally attended by about 600 in Monroe. Amongst those who attended the rally were two local farmers, Barnette Hester and J. Loy Harrison, both of whom spoke afterwards to Talmadge at a campaign BBQ. Harrison was a long-time supporter of Talmadge who had named his second son after him. Through Talmadge called his opponent, James V. Carmichael, a "nigger lover", Carmichael's rally in Monroe a week later attracted a larger crowd, showing many of the white farmers who traditionally voted for Talmadge was beginning to tire of him.
The Lynching
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 W. Dorsey was a veteran of World War II; he had been back in the United States less than nine months after having served nearly five years in the Pacific War. He was married to Mae Dorsey. The other couple consisted of Roger Malcom and his wife Dorothy Malcom, who was seven months pregnant.On July 11, Roger Malcom had allegedly stabbed Barnette Hester, a white man; Malcom was arrested and held in the county jail in Monroe, Georgia, the Walton county seat. Several people later stated that they saw Talmadge talking to George Hester, the brother of Barnette Hester, in front of the Walton County courthouse in Monroe, saying he would "take care of the Negro" in exchange for the Hester family using their influence to help him win Walton County. Talmadge needed to win as many rural counties in Georgia as possible such as Walton County to offset the popularity of his opponent Carmichael in urban areas. 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 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:
A big man who was dressed mighty proud in a double-breasted brown suit was giving the orders. He pointed to Roger Malcom and said, "We want that nigger." Then he pointed to George Dorsey, my nigger, and said, "We want you, too, Charlie." I said, "His name ain't Charlie; he's George." Someone said "Keep your damned big mouth shut. This ain't your party."
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 sixty shots fired at close range. They shot and killed them near Moore's Ford Bridge spanning the Apalachee River, east of Atlanta. After Dorothy Malcom was shot, a man cut her fetus from her body with a knife.
The mass lynchings received national coverage and generated outrage. There were large protests and marches in New York City and Washington, DC against the lynchings. President Harry S. Truman created the President's Committee on Civil Rights. The Truman administration introduced anti-lynching legislation in Congress, but was unable to get it passed against the opposition of the southern Democratic bloc in the Senate. Together with outrage about the Columbia, Tennessee 1946 race riot, the Moore's Ford lynchings garnered awareness and support from more of the white public for the Civil Rights Movement. Demonstrators marched outside of the White House demanding the end of lynchings.
On 28 July 1946, a funeral for the Dorseys together with Dorothy Malcom were held at the Mount Perry Baptist Church. As George Dorsey was a World War Two veteran, his coffin was draped in an American flag. Tthe funeral was well attended by the national news media, through 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".
The Investigation
Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall offered a reward of $10,000 for information, to no avail. For the first time, President Truman ordered the FBI to investigate the murders. They interviewed nearly 3000 people in their six-month investigation, and issued 100 subpoenas. The investigation received little cooperation, no one confessed, and perpetrators were offered alibis for their whereabouts. The FBI found little physical evidence, and the prosecutor did not have sufficient grounds to indict anyone. The FBI agents reported that the farmers of Walton County were "extremely clannish, not well educated and highly sensitive to 'outside' criticism." The black sharecroppers were described as by the FBI as "frightened and even terrified" with one black sharecropper running into a field and having to be chased down by the FBI agents to be interviewed. When he cornered, he stated he had been warned not to speak to the FBI or otherwise he would be lynched as well.Harrison claimed not to know any of the lynch mob. The FBI agents also heard allegations that Harrison was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and had only bailed Malcom out of jail to hand him over to the lynch mob. The contradictory statements given by Harrison as he changed his story, saying he been "directed" by someone whose name he claimed not to remember to use a less traveled road on the way home, led to suspicions by the police that he had been involved in the plans for the lynching. None of the lynch mob wore masks and Harrison's claims not to know any of them were widely disbelieved; one policeman, Major William Spence, told the press on 3 August 1946: "Harrison is either scared of being killed himself or he's lying in his teeth or both". The assistant police chief of Monroe, Ed Williamson, told the FBI about the conversation he overheard between Talmadge and Hester, with the FBI reporting: "The opinion on Mr. Williamson's part was that this conversation between Talmadge and Hester probably resulted in the Blasingame District going very definitely in the Talmadge column". The FBI agent investigating the lynching called the allegation that Talmadge led the lynch mob "unbelievable", but he nonetheless forwarded the allegation to FBI director J.E. Hoover as "as it may be of some possible future interest." Thurgood Marshall, the legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who monitored the FBI's investigation, wrote in a memo to NAACP's director, Walter White: "I have no faith in either Mr. Hoover or his investigators...and there is no use in my saying I do". No one was brought to trial for the crimes.
In the Democratic primary, Talmadge won Walton County by only 200 votes; his opponent Carmichael won more votes overall, but as Talmadge won more counties, under the "county unit system" used in Georgia at the time, it was sufficient to give him the nomination to be Democratic candidate for governor in 1946. The "county unit system" gave the nomination to the candidate who won the most counties, not the most votes; hence even through Carmichael won the urban counties with the most votes, Talmadge by winning the majority of the rural counties ended up as the victor.
Grand jury investigation
U.S. District Judge T. Hoyt Davis selected and charged a 23-man grand jury, which included two African Americans, to hear testimony in the case on December 2, 1946. At the time Governor Ellis Arnall claimed "that 15 to 20 of the mob members are known by name." The case was presented to the jury by United States District Attorney John P. Cowart and John Kelly from the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. The judge "pointed out that federal courts have no jurisdiction over the offense of murder except under well defined conditions."Harrison testified for six hours after Barnette Hester, the man allegedly stabbed by Roger Malcom, concluded his testimony. The following Monday was the fifth day of testimony. On that day Harrison's sons Loy Jr. and Talmadge testified. Additionally, B.H. Hester, the father of Barnette, testified. Perry Dillard, Eugene Evans, Emmerson Farmer, and Ridden Farmer, who lived near the location of the shooting murders, testified that day as well. The last to be questioned that day was FBI Agent George Dillard.
On December 10, the sixth day of hearings, ten witnesses were heard. They were: Joe Parrish, Harrison's brother-in-law; George Robert Hester and James Weldon Hester, brothers of Barnette Hester; Grady Malcom, Weyman Fletcher Malcom, Cleonius Malcom, Levy Adcock, Willie Lou Head and FBI Agent Dick Hunter.
On the seventh day of testimony, six people were questioned. Among them were Mrs. Elizabeth Toler, Eugene White, Boysie Daniel and Paul Brown.
Monday's testimony was highlighted by the appearance before the grand jury of Mrs. Jesse Warwick. The wife of a Monroe minister, she testified to seeing men in at least two carloads gather on a roadside in the vicinity of Monroe at some point between the stabbing of Hester and the incident at Moore's Ford. That event was believed to have been a rehearsal for the lynching. The government intended to show planning, possibly with the knowledge of Walton county law officers and Harrison. Other witnesses that day were Monroe chief of Police Ben Dickerson; Gene Sloan, a youth from the Georgia Boys' Training School at Milledgeville; and Mrs. Moena Williams, mother of Dorothy Malcom, who said that Dorothy was killed on her twentieth birthday.
George Alvin Adcock, a resident of Monroe, was indicted by the federal grand jury for perjury. He was accused of two counts of false testimony regarding his statements on December 11, 1946. The first count alleged he denied leaving his house the day of the crime. He supposedly visited the town of Monroe that day. The second count states that he denied visiting the scene of the crime on July 26. Sixteen witnesses were questioned that day, including Mrs. Powell Adcock.
After hearing nearly three weeks of testimony, the grand jury was "unable to establish the identity of any persons guilty of violating the civil rights statute of the United States."
On February 11, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, affirmed a lower court's ruling that the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings should be released.
Beating of Lamar Howard
At about four o'clock on January 1, 1947, brothers James and Tom Verner walked into the municipal ice house, briefly speaking with plant manager Will Perry. When the pair walked to where Lamar Howard was sitting, Tom Verner slapped the cap of the young African American to the floor. James asked him, "What did you tell 'em down at Athens?" To which he replied that he knew nothing to tell them. They started to attack him. Howard's employer, Will Perry, allegedly suggested for the two to "take him out in the back."The Verner brothers continued beating Howard while questioning him. The beating concluded after 10 or 15 minutes with no resistance from Howard, as he feared he would be killed. When the Verners stopped, Howard got to his car and drove home. U.S. Attorney John P. Cowart arrested the Verner brothers and charged them with "unlawfully injuring Golden Lamar Howard because of his having testified before a federal grand jury" and "conspiring to injure" him. The Verners' $10,000 bonds were signed by H.L. Peters of Walton County, who put up of land as security. Howard had testified to a grand jury in the Moore's Ford lynchings, but it was supposed to be secret.
James Verner acknowledged he had beaten Howard until his fists were bloody. His brother Tom testified, as did other witnesses, who said that James Verner committed the crime for which he was charged. Despite the testimony, the jury deliberated for nearly two hours and rendered a verdict of not guilty.
Memorial committee and reopened investigation
In 1992, Clinton Adams told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he had been a witness to the murders at Moore's Ford Bridge. Only ten years old when he saw the lynchings, Adams had been on the run for 45 years, fearing for his life. After extensive research, reporter Laura Wexler wrote a book about the case, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America. She said that Adams had "holes in his story."In 1992, The Atlanta Constitution reported Adams' story and the history of the unsolved lynchings. Five years later, the Oconee Enterprise, Walton Tribune, and the Athens Daily News also published accounts. With the renewed publicity, some people in the community decided to act.
In 1997 Georgia citizens led by Richard "Rich" Rusk established the biracial Moore's Ford Memorial Committee to commemorate the lynching and work for racial reconciliation. They have conducted a number of activities, including restoration of cemeteries where the victims were buried, erecting tombstones at the previously unmarked graves, conducting education about the events, and setting up scholarships in the names of those who died. In 1998 they held a biracial memorial service on the anniversary of the attack.
They worked with the Georgia Historical Society to ensure a state historical marker was placed near the murder site. It was erected on U.S. Highway 78 in 1999, on the fifty-third anniversary of the incident. The marker, to the west, identifies the site as the location of the last unsolved mass lynching in America. Additionally, it recognizes the 1998 memorial service. It is believed to be the first highway marker to commemorate a lynching. Also in 1999, the Memorial Committee arranged for a military memorial service to honor veteran George Dorsey on the anniversary of the lynching.
In 2001 then-Gov. Roy Barnes officially reopened investigation into the case with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. By 2006, the FBI had reentered the case. In June 2008, as part of the continuing investigation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and FBI searched an area at a farm home in Walton County near Gratis and collected material which they believed to be related to the lynching. While the FBI questioned an 86-year-old man about the lynchings in 2015, it closed its investigation, unable to prosecute any suspect. In January 2018, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation officially closed the lynching investigation, officially ending the effort to bring the perpetrators of the lynching to justice. No one was ever charged or prosecuted in the case, which has become known as "America's last mass lynching".
In 2007, evidence emerged from the previously closed FBI files that the lynching at Moore's Ford were ordered by the former governor of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, as part of his election campaign in 1946. At the time, Rusk told a journalist: "It would not surprise me if state officials at all levels were implicated, if not in the actual killings, at least in the cover-up that followed. The conspiracy of silence wasn't just the fault of the local farmers. It was the entire culture, from the top down.". About the allegations that it was Talmadge who led the lynch mob, the historian Robert Pratt stated: "I'm not surprised...historians over the years have concluded the violently racist tone of his 1946 campaign may have been indirectly responsible for the violence that came at Moore's Ford. It's fair to say he's one of the most virulently racist governors the state has ever had."
Since 2005, the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee has annually re-enacted the lynchings at Moore's Ford in July as a living memorial to the victims. This effort was initiated by Tyrone Brooks, an activist and state legislator. In recent years, most of the participants have come from Atlanta, about an hour away. One of the white actors in the reenactment of the lynching, Bob Caine, is a descendant of Leo Frank, a Jewish man lynched in 1915 after the governor of Georgia had commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment following his wrongful conviction of charges of murder and rape.