Moores Ford Lynching
On July 25, 1946, two young black couples- Roger and Dorothy Malcom, George and Mae Murray Dorsey-were killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge over the Appalachee River connecting Walton and Oconee Counties (Brooks, 1). The four victims were tied up and shot hundreds of times in broad daylight by a mob of unmasked men; murder weapons included rifles, shotguns, pistols, and a machine gun. "Shooting a black person was like shooting a deer," George Dorsey's nephew, George Washington Dorsey said (Suggs C1). It has been over fifty years and this case is still unsolved by police investigators. It is known that there were atleast a dozen men involved in these killings. Included in the four that were known by name was Loy Harrison. Loy Harrison may not have been an obvious suspect to the investigators, but Harrison was the sole perpetrator in the unsolved Moore's Ford Lynching case. The motive appeared to be hatred and the crime hurt the image of the state leaving the town in an outrage due to the injustice that left the victims in unmarked graves (Jordon,31).
Many African Americans lived on farms and tended for white landowners. Bob Hester was a landowner, on this farm the Moore's Ford Lynching began. On July 14, Roger Malcom followed Dorothy Malcom to Hester's farm, Roger was arguing with her. According to the original FBI report,
Hester's son, Barney, told Malcom to leave. As he was leaving a fight broke out between Malcom and Hester. Malcom then pulled out a knife and stabbed Hester in the chest. The reason for the argument is uncertain although at that time Barney Hester may have been having an affair with Dorothy Malcom. One of the neighbors said that the black community f...
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...t this time. The fact that a long the way he was stopped by a dozen men on a bridge fully loaded with weapons and he was the only one not murdered in the car leads to suspicion. Harrison was a white man and this could be an answer to why he was not killed. If Harrison did not have anything to do with these murders then he would have been killed also due to the fact that he could have told police investigators evidence to the murder. Thirdly, if Harrison laid down $600 to get a black person out of jail, which was not accepted at this time in society, it could have led to the closing stages that Harrison would have spent money at any cost to see the African Americans dead. Although Harrison is deceased, the evidence that has been proven thus far concludes that he was the sole perpetrator and if he was still alive, he could answer questions that remain unanswered.
Months before Emmett's death in 1955, two African American activists in Mississippi had been murdered. An NAACP field worker, the Reverend George Lee, was shot and killed at point blank range while driving in his car after trying to vote in Belzoni. A few weeks later in Brookhaven, Lamar Smith was shot and killed in front of the county courthouse -- in broad daylight and before witnesses -- after casting his ballot. Both were active in black voter registration drives. No one was arrested in connection with either murder
Regardless of a personal dislike of reading about history, the book was captivating enough to get through. Ann Field Alexander, author of “Race Man: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Fighting Editor,’ John Mitchell Jr”, explains the hardships of a black male activist in the same time period as Lebsock’s novel. The main character Mitchell was president of a bank and ran for a political office, but was tried with fraud. After Mitchell was sentenced as guilty, the case was found faulty and was dismissed. Mitchell was still bankrupt and full of shame when he died. On the same subject of Lucy Pollard’s death, “Murder on Trial: 1620-2002”, written by Robert Asher, included the Pollard murder in chapter three of the novel. The aspect that any well written historically based novel brings to its readers is the emotion of being involved in the development and unraveling of events. As was said before, one who enjoys a steady but often slow novel that sets out a timeline of events with more than enough information to be satisfactory, then “A Murder in Virginia” is a riveting
Laura Wexler’s Fire In a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America, is an spectacular book that depicts what, many refer to as the last mass lynching. The last mass lynching took place on July 25, 1946, located in Walton County, Georgia. On that day four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. This book presents an epidemic, which has plagued this nation since it was established. Being African American, I know all too well the accounts presented in this book. One of the things I liked most about Fire in A Canebrake was that Wexler had different interpretations of the same events. One from a black point of view and the other from a white point of view. Unfortunately both led to no justice being served. Laura Wexler was
...lusions—not only in regards to who the lynchers were, but also in regards to the identities of the victims (230), and, worst of all, whether or not the issues central to the Moore’s Ford lynching have been settled, and are past. In these senses, conclusiveness about these issues encourages falseness, precludes justice, and makes the audience let go of things that ought not to be let go—and this, short of the lynching itself, is one of the greatest possible wrongs (244). It is by refusing to conclude, then, that Laura Wexler achieves the greatest success of her outstanding narrative, and is able to successfully navigates the lies and deception of a muddled historical event by adeptly presenting them in the context of larger historical truths.
Brown then asked Judge Sebe Dale’s to drop the case because a black man was not on the grand jury. Brown did this because of a recent ruling made by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling stated that it was unconstitutional for a jury of an all-white person to convict a black man. The ruling went on to say that one African American had to be on a jury when an African American was on trial. This defense tactic by Brown was a legally intelligent thing to do, but this actually became the motive for the mob to kill Parker.
Emancipated blacks, after the Civil War, continued to live in fear of lynching, a practice of vigilantism that was often based on false accusations. Lynching was not only a way for southern white men to exert racist “justice,” it was also a means of keeping women, white and black, under the control of a violent white male ideology. In response to the injustices of lynching, the anti-lynching movement was established—a campaign in which women played a key role. Ida B. Wells, a black teacher and journalist was at the forefront and early development of this movement. In 1892 Wells was one of the first news reporters to bring the truths of lynching to proper media attention. Her first articles appeared in The Free Speech and Headlight, a Memphis newspaper that she co-edited. She urged the black townspeople of Memphis to move west and to resist the coercive violence of lynching. [1] Her early articles were collected in Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, a widely distributed pamphlet that exposed the innocence of many victims of lynching and attacked the leaders of white southern communities for allowing such atrocities. [2] In 1895 Wells published a larger investigative report, A Red Record, which exposed how false or contrived accusations of rape accompanied less than one third of the cases documented around 1892. [3] The statistics and literature of A Red Record denounced the dominant white male ideology behind lynching – the thought that white womanhood was in need of protection against black men. Wells challenged this notion as a concealed racist agenda that functioned to keep white men in power over blacks as well as white women. Jacqueline Jones Royster documents the...
The mob had to make a point to follow Meredith Lewis and kidnap him and hanged by his neck for a murder which her was not convicted. I feel that the white people felt that the blacks were getting to close to be like an equal. With that on mind, the whites felt that they need to show the blacks that they still run things. For instance, on page 107, it clearly states, "There are friends of humanity who feel their souls shrink from any compromise with murder, but whose deep and abiding reverence for womanhood causes them to hesitate in giving their support to this crusade against Lynch Law, out of fear that they may encourage the miscreants whose deeds are worse than murder."
In October of 1870, Gunfighter, Clay Allison sat drinking in an Elizabethtown saloon when Kennedy’s wife stumbled in and spoke about the gruesome murders. Kennedy was quickly arrested and awaited trial. It was alleged that Allison rallied a mob together, dragged Kennedy from his prison cell, lynched him, cut off his head and placed it on a fence post (similar to the fate of Captain Kidd).
Despite the star witness recanting his story completely and with new evidence proving beyond doubt that Walter could not have been at the scene of the crime. Despite overwhelmingly compelling evidence, the case still gets dropped several more times, all the while, Stevenson is receiving bomb and other types of death threats. It strikes me that this is all taking place in Monroe County, Alabama. “To Kill A Mockingbird” was written there, and everyone acts like the book is their greatest treasure and proof of their stance on racial equality. The public proves to be completely fruitless when a very parallel story actually happens in their town. It is as if they took all the memorabilia throughout the county, gathered it up and burned it in resounding, united rage against this innocent man due only to his
Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee were both accused with the murder of two gas station attendants. The police had beaten a confession out of Lee and Pitts, and after their false confession the police arrested them and took them to jail. “Their conviction was swift and they were beaten by their interrogators” (floridainnocent).They had asked for a mercy trial, they were then sent to a courtroom with a jury full of white men. Willie Mae Lee, was one of the only “eyewitnesses” to the crime that happened on that night. She had been threatened that if she had not told what she had seen on July 31 of 1963 they would punish her. Pitts and Lee were accused that they were the were the killers because of their skin color. They had gotten sentenced to a death
Bryan Stevenson decided to write this article explaining why he chose to focus on lynchings for the memorial honoring black people who were killed. According to the article Bryan wants people to examine an era of American history that goes ignored. They called it ¨a chapter often left untold.¨ In the article, Bryan explains that he felt this was apart of our history that needed to be addressed. I also feel as if this was a big part of our history that needed to be addressed due to the lack of understanding. In the article it says ¨The era of racial terror is the least understood in the American history,¨ and according to most people, no one has had the audacity to actually talk about it. The author of the article also asks Bryan if he is
Wells. In May 1892, whites envied three of her friends for opening a successful grocery store. Her friends were arrested, then taken from jail, and lynched. Lynching was a very public act that differs from ordinary murders or assaults because it is a killing that is against the boundaries of due process; the legal requirement that all states must respect all legal rights owed to a person. This horrific execution took place every other day in the 1890’s, but the mob killing of the innocent three men who owned the grocery store was extremely frightening. In protest 2000 black residence left Memphis that summer and headed West for Oklahoma, but Ida B Wells stayed and began her own research on lynching. Her editorials in the “Memphis Free Speech and Headlight” confronted the Lynch Law; which was said to be in place to protect white women, even though they leave white men free to seduce all the colored girls he can, yet black men were being lynched for having consensual relations with white women. Ida B. Wells states, “No one believes the old thread lies that Negro men assault white women, and if the southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women”. Whites were outraged with her words and Wells was fortunately away in the East when a mob came looking for her, they trashed the offices
In the late evening of February 28th 1930, seventy-five Klu Klux Klan members came to Oakville and proceeded to Ira Johnson’s house, who a black man who had a white woman living with him (Isabel Jones). The Klan then forcibly separated the couple. They took Isabel away from Ira and brought her to her parents. They rounded up Ira’s family and then nailed a cross to their yard and burned it down. They threatened that if they ever saw Ira again with a white girl they would be back for him.(Blackhouse 1999 p.173) When a black citizen alerted the Police Chief of what was going on he did not make any arrests,
Black Panther party member, Assata Shakur, is another instructive example of high-tech lynching. In 1973 police arrested Shakur, born JoAnne Chesimard, as an accomplice to the murder of a white state trooper. In her book, Assata: An Autobiography, Shakur chronicles the way she was “lynched” by the media before the murder trial had even begun: “Evelyn had brought some newspaper clippings and it was obvious the press was trying to railroad me, to make me seem like a monster.