Posted on 07/25/2005 3:33:34 PM PDT by Libloather
Re-Enactment of 1946 Lynchings Planned
By ERRIN HAINES
Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA — 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."
---and blacks manage to murder more of each other every few months than were lynched in the entire time from 1865 to the present---
Why would the Democrats want to bring back this part of their sordid history? Are they planning to apologize yet?
We need the awareness, cause the democrats said that President Bush's appointments to the Supreme Court will roll back all advancements in civil rights over the past 100 years!
Should we reenact the Nazi Holocaust too? How about a slave market? When does teaching of history and calling for justice cross the line into perpetuation of racial tensions and active discouragement of harmony between the races?
If this re-enactment is true to history, then it appears that several black guys with pillow cases on their heads were responsible for the lynching.
Maybe it was Clayton Bigsby, the blind, black "white supremacist".
It's also the last time he was relevant.
isn't that "sheets" byrd underneath that felt hat?
If they are Democrats, they should be guilt-ridden.
Like I say, lynchings, race repression, race murder, all of this is Democrat history. We should have no problem about reenacting any of it as long as everyone understands that the guys holding the ropes are Democrats.
As someone else pointed out, Roosevelt opposed anti-lynching legislation. I think people need to be reminded of that. The other Democrat icon of the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson, brought race repression into federal law. It was repealed later by a Republican president.
The Democrats have a lot to be ashamed of. You can't blame them for wanting to run from their history, if that was my history I'd run from it too.
We should never let ourselves be put in the position of defending or excusing Democrat history.
It's disgusting-wallowing in the death and degredation of others as if they're putting on a play. I wonder what they'd say if some Jewish people reenacted Aushwitz?
Is that you Matt Drudge?
There is no doubt in my military mind that this is a picture of Karl Rove.
Semper Fi,
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