March on The Moore's Ford Bridge 2012

 MONROE, GA- On April 7, 2012,   Representative Tyrone Brooks (GA) , President of GABEO (Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials), SCLC, NAACP, The Quitman 10 +2 and several elected officials  lead the Annual March on the Moore’s Ford Bridge in Monroe, Walton County, Georgia.   The group gathers every year for those that committed the last mass lynching in America to be brought to justice and to also commemorate the life of Dr. Martin L King, Jr.  The Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching was on Dr. King’s agenda before he was assassinated in Memphis, TN in 1968.  Isaac Farris, Nephew of Dr. Martin L King, Jr. and  President of SCLC National, delivered the keynote address at the bridge.  Other speakers included Representative Roberta Abdul-Salaam, Ed Dubose, President of GA NAACP, Reverend Samuel Mosteller, President of GA State Unit SCLC, Jeremy Ponds, SCLC National Board Member, Rita Jackson Samuels, Women Flying High, and many others

On July 25, 1946, a group of armed men pulled two black couples out of a farmer's car,  tied them to trees and shot them so many times their bodies were barely recognizable. 

The events leading to the Moore's Ford incident unfolded 11 days earlier when Roger Malcolm was placed in jail for stabbing a white farmer, Barnette Hester. Witnesses told the FBI that Malcolm suspected Hester of having sex with his wife, Dorothy, who was seven months pregnant.  Dorothy Malcolm and her brother, George Dorsey, asked a farmer Loy Harrison, for whom Roger Malcolm sometimes worked, to bail him out of jail.  Harrison, who was reportedly a member of the Klu Klux Klan,  picked up Dorothy Malcolm, George Dorsey and his wife Mae Murray Dorsey and took them to the Walton County jail. He paid $600 to bail out Roger Malcolm.  Harrison then drove the two black couples toward his farm across the Moore's Ford Bridge, a direction investigators noted was not the most direct route to his farm. At the bridge, Harrison's car was blocked by another vehicle and a group of up to 30 armed men.

The men dragged the Malcolms and the Dorseys from the car then beat and shot the two men. Realizing that the two women could identify some of them, they then shot and killed the two women, according to previous investigations.  One of the lynching mob pulled out a knife and cut the unborn child from Dorothy Malcolm's body. 

Harrison told investigators that he did not recognize anyone in the group of men who stopped his car, although none of them wore masks. 

The FBI developed a list of 55 possible suspects during their 1946 investigation, including Barnette Hester's brother George Hester, but no one has ever been arrested or charged in the crime. In 2001,  former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes reopened the case with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, some of those 55 suspects were still alive.   It is believed that some of the participants in the Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching are still living in the area.  There is a $35,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of those involved with the Moore's Ford Bridge Lynchings.

For more information contact Adriane Harden   amharden@gmail.com  or 678-653-2012