July 25, 1946 – Quadruple Lynching in Monroe, Georgia

On this date, two young black couples were shot and killed in Monroe, Georgia. George Dorsey was a veteran of World War II and he was out with his wife Mae and friends Roger and Dorothy (who was seven months pregnant). They were attacked by between 12 and 15 white men who were primarily after Roger, who had stabbed (but not killed) a white man in an altercation. The mob cut Dorothy open and removed her unborn child. They then tied the four to trees and fired some sixty bullets at close range. No one was ever charged with the crime. The “New York Times” observed:

The episode, which became known as the Moore’s Ford lynchings, is considered by many to be the last mass lynching in American history. It prompted national outrage and led President Harry Truman to order a federal investigation, making the case a critical catalyst for the civil rights movement.”

A crowd gathers at the Mt. Perry church near Monroe, Georgia for the funeral services on July 28, 1946, for George Dorsey and Dorothy Malcolm, two of the four African American victims of a lynch mob. The church is about 16 miles from the lynching site.AP file

In 2000, then-Georgia governor Roy Barnes reopened the state’s inquiry and in 2007 the FBI rejoined the investigation. But in 2015 the FBI closed its case, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation followed suit three years later. However, those investigations were apparently conducted without benefit of the grand jury records. As “The Guardian” reports, Georgia state representative Tyrone Brooks, who leads an annual re-enactment of the lynching as part of a campaign for justice, said the absence of prosecutions still hurts black residents of the area:

There is a lot of pain, a lot of frustration and a lot of disappointment,” said Brooks. “Because it has always said – like other cases have suggested more recently – that black lives don’t matter”.

Actors portray the victims of the 1946 Moore’s Ford lynching on July 22, 2017. Marshall Crooks / NBC News

There is still a $35,000 reward outstanding for information that will lead to the arrest and successful conviction of any of the killers who are still alive. Edward DuBose, a member of the NAACP national board and former president of the Georgia branch of the NAACP, has endorsed a letter every year to the Senate Judiciary Committee to reopen an investigation into this case. You can read an interview with him about it here.

In February, 2019, there was finally some movement forward when the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta affirmed a lower court’s ruling ordering the release of the grand jury transcripts from 1946. In a 2-to-1 opinion, Judge Charles R. Wilson wrote that the event was so clearly of “exceptional historical significance” that “the interest in disclosure outweighed the interest in continued secrecy.” The court did not indicate when the rehearing would happen.