Marking 80 Years since Moore’s Ford

Participants in Saturday’s reenactment of the 1946 Moore’s Ford lynching march toward the site of the incident. The reenactment, and an associated historic tour of sites related to the lynching, attracted dozens of people to Walton County. Photo credit Jim Thompson | The Walton Tribune

Dozens of people took a deep dive Saturday into a dark chapter of Walton County history, as the 80th year since the lynching of two black couples was observed with a re-enactment at its actual site where a bridge had crossed Moore’s Ford at the Oconee County line.

In addition to the reenactment, Saturday’s somber history lesson, which coincided with the 58th anniversary of the slaying of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., included visits to the cemeteries where the victims are buried, and to the old county jail, still standing at 203 Milledge Ave. in Monroe, where the sad saga began.

The story – which may yet have a new chapter — is well-known.

It began on July 14, 1946 when Roger Malcom and his pregnant wife, Dorothy, got into a dispute with white farmer Barnett Hester — apparently due in part to inappropriate contact between Hester and Dorothy Malcom — in which Roger Malcom stabbed Hester in the back, leaving Hester with a lifelong injury.

Malcom was subsequently arrested and taken to the Walton County jail.

Eleven days later, on July 25, 1946, Malcom’s $500 bond was posted by Loy Harrison, on whose farm the Malcoms and George and Mae Murray Dorsey worked as sharecroppers.

After posting Roger Malcom’s bond, Harrison told him, his wife and the Dorseys, who had gotten a ride into town from Harrison to go shopping, that he was taking them back to the farm.

Instead of taking the most direct route, Harrison drove toward the Moore’s Ford bridge between Walton and Oconee counties, where his car was stopped by a mob of about two dozen people, from about a dozen cars. The Dorseys and the Malcoms were taken out of the vehicle, and were subsequently fatally shot with at least two shotguns and an undetermined number of handguns.

No one was ever charged in the killings, although they did provide a boost for civil rights initiatives under the administration of President Harry Truman.

The case prompted numerous federal and state investigations over the years, but the probes were closed less than a decade ago, as both the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concluded that all known suspects had died by that time, and no new leads had been developed in the intervening years.

There is, however, one possibility for getting new information on the case, according to former Democratic state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, who founded and chairs the Moore’s Ford Movement (365), which is affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In an interview at First African Baptist Church in Monroe prior to leading Saturday’s vehicular tour of the Moore’s Ford victim’s final resting places, the old county jail, a historical marker detailing the lynching, and the lynching site, Brooks suggested transcripts from a federal grand jury convened in the relatively immediate aftermath of the lynching might hold some new information, although efforts to get the transcripts have thus far been unsuccessful.

“The goal is to get the grand jury transcripts on the Moore’s Ford lynchings,” Brooks said.

Addressing a small crowd at the church prior to Saturday’s tour of the gravesites, Brooks set the tone for the day, saying, “We’re here for history, we’re here for justice, we’re here for remembrance.”

Also speaking Saturday at First African Baptist Church was the Rev. Ed Dubose, national board member of the NAACP. In part of his remarks, Dubose asked for leadership in pursuing whatever justice might yet be found in connection with the Moore’s Ford lynching.

“Who is it that will go for us?” Dubose asked. “We have to be able to say nothing is going to deter us.”

Tour of gravesites

The first stop on Saturday’s journey into the history of the Moore’s Ford lynching was the resting place of Mae Murray Dorsey, at 226 Alcovy Street in Monroe. Now an office park, the site had been the initial location of First African Baptist Church. Now dotted with wooden crosses marking burial sites in the old church cemetery, Dorsey is one of the few people whose place is marked with an actual gravestone.

From there, the caravan headed to Chestnut Grove Baptist Church in Rutledge, where Roger Malcom is interred.

Also interred at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church is Lynn McKinley Jackson, a 22-year-old black Army soldier who was apparently lynched in nearby Social Circle in 1981.

According to Brooks, despite the fact Jackson’s body was found hanging in a tree whose first branches were 20 feet from the ground, a coroner’s inquest found there was no evidence of foul play.

While the inquest included testimony about Jackson’s mental state, there is some indication that he was targeted for lynching because he was dating a young woman in a local white family, Brooks said.

Perhaps the most poignant stop on the tour was Mount Perry Baptist Church in Bishop, where George Dorsey and his sister, Dorothy Dorsey Malcom (Roger Malcom’s wife), are buried side-by-side in the church cemetery.

Located in an overgrown corner of the burial ground, the site shows signs of less-than-careful attention, to the point that Brooks took time to brush leaves and other vegetative debris from the headstone, and to do the same for a later-installed plaque in nearby ground detailing Roger Malcom’s military service achievements.

Tour reactions

Nonetheless, the tour served as a vital history lesson for those new to the Moore’s Ford lynching story. One of those people was Carol McChesney of Doraville, who knew one of Saturday’s re-enactors.

Just recently, she said, she had expressed a wish to be able to go back in time to experience history firsthand. While the tour and reenactment weren’t exactly a complete fulfillment of her wish, they were close enough.

“This is wonderful for that,” she said, as she walked away from viewing the historical marker at U.S. Highway 78 and Locklin Road on the way to the re-enactment.

Willie Lee Binns, an 81-year-old Atlanta man, had a similar sentiment, calling Saturday’s events “a way to me to see how things were.”

With that vantage point, Binns said, he was able to see that today is “a sort of better world” than the past.

Then picking up on a political theme that had underpinned the day, Binns touted the power of voting as the “best thing we can do to keep things in order.”

The re-enactment

Attended by several dozen people, including a contingent of mostly young people who marched a half-mile to the lynching site with Brooks leading the way, the reenactment at the bridge site split the late evening air with the sounds of a loudly idling car, loud white voices, the pleading voices of those representing the lynching victims, and finally, the recorded – yet still chilling – sounds of gunshots as pistols and rifles were wielded and used.

That re-enactment was preceded by a reenactment at the old jail of the confrontation between Roger Malcom and Barnett Hester, and a couple of reenactments of black citizens bravely asserting their voting rights.

One of the re-enactors at the bridge, James Potts – an occasional actor who has participated in previous Moore’s Ford reenactments as part of the weapon-wielding mob — said he did a deep dive into the facts and issues surrounding the incident before participating.

“These people need to be able to tell their stories,” Potts said, suggesting that his participation in the reenactments gives them a chance to do exactly that.

“I hope this (lynching) doesn’t happen again,” Potts added, while also expressing a hope that “we’ll find a time of peace somewhere.”