The Moore's Ford Bridge lynching
25 July 1946Moore's Ford Bridge on the Apalachee River, Walton and Oconee county line, Walton County, GA
Two young Black couples - one man just home from the war, one woman seven months pregnant - were taken from a car at Moore's Ford Bridge and shot sixty times. The FBI's largest investigation to that date produced no indictment.
On 25 July 1946 Roger Malcom was bailed out of the Walton County jail by Loy Harrison, a white farmer who employed him. Harrison drove Malcom, his wife Dorothy, and George and Mae Murray Dorsey toward home. George Dorsey had served five years in the Pacific and had been back in Georgia less than a year.
At Moore's Ford Bridge on the Apalachee River a mob of fifteen to twenty unmasked white men stopped the car, took the two couples out and shot them. More than sixty rounds were fired. Dorothy Malcom was seven months pregnant. Harrison, the only witness, said he recognised no one.
President Truman ordered an investigation; the FBI sent more than a hundred agents, the largest such effort it had made, and a grand jury sat for sixteen days. No one was indicted - the county said nothing and has largely gone on saying nothing. The killings, with the blinding of the veteran Isaac Woodard months earlier, pushed Truman to create the President's Committee on Civil Rights, whose 1947 report To Secure These Rights led to the desegregation of the armed forces. It is usually called the last mass lynching in America. The case has never been closed.
Sources
- July 25, 1946: White Mob Lynches Two Black Couples in Walton County, GeorgiaA History of Racial Injustice, Equal Justice Initiativecalendar.eji.org
- LynchingNew Georgia Encyclopedia, Georgia Humanities and University of Georgia Pressgeorgiaencyclopedia.org