Ex-governor investigated in 1946 lynchings

There were rumors that George Dorsey, an Army veteran, had secretly been dating a white woman — a taboo in the segregated South. And the town's white establishment was enraged with Roger Malcom, who was imprisoned after stabbing white farmer Barney Hester.

Malcom was waiting in jail when white farmer Loy Harrison paid $600 to bail him out.

Harrison said he was driving Malcom, his wife and the other couple home, when he was ambushed by a white mob that surrounded his car near the Moore's Ford Bridge. As many as 30 people converged on the vehicle and pulled out the two couples, dragged them down a nearby trail and tied them to trees.

Then the mob fired three volleys of bullets at the couples, leaving their dead bodies slumped behind in the dirt. One of the victims, Dorothy Malcom, was seven months' pregnant.

An outraged President Truman dispatched FBI agents to Monroe, about 45 miles east of Atlanta. But the local community — both white and black — clammed up.

White farmers were described by the FBI as "extremely clannish, not well educated and highly sensitive to 'outside' criticism." Harrison, for one, told police he couldn't identify any of the participants.

Black families, who often sharecropped on white farms, were "frightened and even terrified" when approached by FBI agents. One farmer fled into a cotton field and had to be chased down, eventually telling an investigator he had been warned not to talk.

No one ever arrested
Eventually, the FBI identified 55 possible suspects, including George Hester, but no one was ever arrested. After a federal grand jury in December 1946 could not identify any members of the mob, the FBI retreated from the case.

The case grew colder for years, until 1991 when Clinton Adams came forward, claiming he saw the lynching unfold when he was a 10-year-old while hiding in the bushes near the bridge.

While expressing some hope at the time, an FBI memo pointed to a nagging problem — "finding anyone who is left alive to prosecute."

The FBI previously released a 500-page summary of the case file, but the full file was only released this week after the AP appealed to the Justice Department for more than two years.

The Moore's Ford lynching is among about a dozen other unsolved cases from the civil rights era that the FBI has recently reopened but the bureau refused to comment on the ongoing investigation.

Local activists weren't shocked to learn that agents investigated Talmadge and the possibility of state employees being involved.

"It would not surprise me if state officials at all levels were implicated, if not in the actual killings, at least in the cover-up that followed," said Rich Rusk, secretary of the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee. "The conspiracy of silence wasn't just the fault of the local farmers. It was the entire culture, from the top down."

The case file says more than 10,000 interviews were conducted and among the evidence were dozens of slugs, samples of torn shirts and pieces of rope. Investigators never detailed any proof of state involvement. They also found little hard evidence linking any of the suspects to the murders.

Local activists haven't given up hope. Some still search for aging witnesses. To drum up interest in the case, a protest march is held each April and a re-enactment is staged on the anniversary each July.

Bobby Howard, a local activist who's roamed the neighborhoods for decades in search of possible witnesses, said the key is getting past the crippling fear that still grips many in the community.

"They had a right to feel the way that they did," he said. "It's sad that today, it's still the same way, with all that fear in these people."

MORE FROM RACE & ETHNICITY

Race & ethnicity Section Front

After 60 years, black officers rare Tavis Smiley isn’t giving Obama a free pass MLK's children embroiled in lawsuit Immigrant beaten to death in Pa. Little support for NAACP flag boycott White-power groups recruit from military Race & ethnicity Section Front   Add Race & ethnicity headlines to your news reader: