Lynching in America

Moore’s Ford Bridge
On July 25, 1946, two black couples were lynched near Moore’s Ford Bridge in Walton
County, Georgia, in what has been called “the last mass lynching in America.” 73 The
victims were George W. Dorsey and his wife, Mae Murray, and Roger Malcolm and his
wife, Dorothy, who was seven months pregnant. Mr. Dorsey, a World War II veteran
who had served in the Pacific for five years, had been home for only nine months.
On July 11, Roger Malcolm was arrested after allegedly stabbing white farmer Barnette
Hester during a fight. Two weeks later, J. Loy Harrison, the white landowner for
whom the Malcolms and the Dorseys sharecropped, drove Mrs. Malcolm and the
Dorseys to the jail to post a $600 bond. On their way back to the farm, the car was
stopped by a mob of 30 armed, unmasked white men who seized Mr. Malcolm and Mr.
Dorsey and tied them to a large oak tree. Mrs. Malcolm recognized members of the
mob, and when she called on them by name to spare her husband, the mob seized her
and Mrs. Dorsey. Mr. Harrison watched as the white men shot all four people 60 times
at close range. He later claimed he could not identify any members of the mob. 74
The Moore’s Ford Bridge lynchings drew national attention, leading President Harry
Truman to order a federal investigation and offer $12,500 for information leading to a
conviction. A grand jury returned no indictments and the perpetrators were never
brought to justice. The FBI recently reopened its investigation into the lynching, only
to encounter continued silence and obstruction at the highest levels. 75 In response to
charges that he was withholding information, Walton County Superior Court Judge Marvin
Sorrells, whose father worked for Walton County law enforcement in 1946, vowed
that “until the last person of my daddy’s generation dies, no one will talk.” 76
Mourners with flag-draped coffin of George W. Dorsey, July 28, 1946. (AJC Photographic Archives.) 27