Commemoration of the assassination of MLK, Jr. and the reenactment of the Moore’s Ford Bridge Lynching to take place April 4

The 58th Anniversary Commemoration of the Assassination of MLK Jr. and the 22nd annual reenactment of the lynchings at the Moore’s Ford Bridge will take place on Saturday, April 4, 2026.

The commemoration will begin with the pre-enactment rally at 10 a.m. at First African Baptist Church, 130 Tyler Street, Monroe. At 1 p.m. the motorcade will depart the church and begin its tour, which will include visits to the grave sites of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae Murray Dorsey.

Commemoration services will conclude at Moore’s Ford Bridge featuring the reenactment of the events that took place almost 80 years ago and continues to highlight the unsolved murders of black sharecroppers Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey. After years of holding the well-known and controversial reenactment of the Moore’s Ford lynching in late July to commemorate and memorialize the infamous murders, the Moore’s Ford Committee decided last year not to hold the event in the dog days of summer.

Instead, the event now takes place in April with the combination of the two major events into one. All are invited to attend.

The reenactment depicts the July 25, 1946 murders of the four black sharecroppers at Moore’s Ford Bridge on the Walton-Oconee County line. The couples were ambushed after Roger Malcom was bonded out of jail where he’d been held for stabbing a white farmer.

According to the narration of the reenactment, he was the intended target, but when George Dorsey fought to prevent him being taken by the mob, and one of the women recognized someone in the crowd, they were all dragged from the car and murdered. All four were shot multiple times.