Moore's Ford lynchings

rdf:langString Moore's Ford lynchings

rdf:langString The Moore's Ford Lynchings, also known as the 1946 Georgia lynching, refers to the July 25, 1946, murders of four young African Americans by a mob of white men. Tradition says that the murders were committed on Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton and Oconee counties between Monroe and Watkinsville, but the four victims, two married couples, were shot and killed on a nearby dirt road. The case attracted national attention and catalyzed large protests in Washington, DC and New York City. President Harry Truman created the President's Committee on Civil Rights and his administration introduced anti-lynching legislation in Congress, but could not get it past the Southern Democratic bloc. The FBI investigated for four months in 1946, the first time it had been ordered to investigate a civil rights case, but it was unable to discover sufficient evidence to bring any charges. In the 1990s publicity about the cold case led to a new investigation. The state of Georgia and the FBI finally closed their cases in December 2017, again unable to prosecute any suspect. The lynching victims – George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom – have been commemorated by a community memorial service in 1998, a state historical marker placed in 1999 at the site of the attack (Georgia's first official recognition of a lynching), and an annual re-enactment held since 2005. According to the 2015 report by the Equal Justice Initiative on lynchings in the Southern United States, Georgia has the second-highest number of documented lynchings.