Along with Camp Slavery and the Hiroshima
and crucifixion reenactments, this leads me to conclude
that just because something can
be reenacted, doesn’t mean it should be. The AP is silent about the
details. Will Georgians actually be viewing bodies swinging from trees? And…
unless the lynchees are professional stuntmen, isn’t this dangerous? - Jonah
Re-Enactment
of 1946 Lynchings Planned
Civil rights
activists in Georgia hope to stage a re-enactment today of the lynchings that
took place on July 25, 1946. They are looking to gain support for the arrest
and prosecution of anyone still alive who may have been involved. As a
20-year-old civil rights activist in 1968, Tyrone Brooks drove 40 miles from
Atlanta to Walton County to meet Dan Young, who ran the county's only black
funeral home. "Young
man, I want to show you something," Brooks remembers Young telling him. In the basement
of the funeral home, Young opened an old file cabinet and pulled out a manila
folder containing photographs of bodies — the victims, Young told Brooks, of
the last open public mass lynching in the United States. "That
really got my attention," said Brooks, who is now a representative in the
Georgia House. Nearly 40 years
later, those disturbing photos still have Brooks' attention. On Monday, the
59th anniversary of the lynchings that took place on July 25, 1946, he and
other civil rights activists hope to stage a re-enactment of the violent act in
hopes of gaining support for the arrest and prosecution of anyone still alive
who may have been involved or responsible. Just one month
ago, 1,000 members of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials
unanimously passed a resolution urging prosecutors to bring charges for the
first time in the unsolved lynchings. The photos were
of Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey, four young black
sharecroppers who were gunned down on July 25, 1946, along the Apalachee River. The
re-enactment will start on what is believed to be Barney Hester's property,
where Roger Malcom had been arrested not long before the lynching. A fight
between the two men hospitalized Hester, who was white, and landed Malcom in
jail. A few days
later, according to the FBI's 500-page report on the killings, the Malcoms and
Dorseys were riding with a white farmer when 20 to 25 white men stopped the car
on the Moore's Ford bridge. The mob forced the couples out of the car, dragged
them down a wagon trail about 50 yards from the bridge and shot them with
pistols and shotguns. The farmer was spared. The FBI report
named 55 suspects. Brooks said he knows of two living in Walton County, and a
few others still alive outside Georgia. "This is a
stain on our history, and a burden on our soul," Brooks said. "But
the stain can be erased, and the burden can be lifted. The eyes of the nation
shall now focus on Monroe, Georgia, just as the eyes of the nation focused on
Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Birmingham, Alabama," he said, referring to
the recent prosecutions and convictions in civil-rights era slayings in those
cities. Walton County
District Attorney Ken Wynne has said he understands the desire for justice, but
that the case lacks sufficient witnesses and evidence. The FBI was
ordered to investigate the case in 1946 by President Truman but was thwarted by
a lack of witnesses. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Fred Stephens said
recently that his office is pursuing every lead it gets. "They are
sparse," he said, "but we have no doubt that there are still people
in that community who have specific information about this case."
