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From The Militant, Vol. X No. 31, 3 August 1946, pp. 1 & 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
In a bestial Jim-Crow massacre, two Georgia farm hands and their wives were lynched on July 25 by a gang of 25 to 30 white storm troopers. The Negro couples were waylaid and dragged from an automobile on a dark and swampy road in Walton County, not far from Atlanta. They were brutally beaten and pumped full of bullets.
The mass lynching was carefully planned and carried out in cold blood. The murderers disdained to even conceal their identity. For the signal to brutally beaten and pumped full of bullets.
The mass lynching was carefully planned and carried out in cold blood. The murderers disdained to even conceal their identity. For the signal to launch a reign of terror had already been given to organized fascist gangs by Governor-elect, Eugene Talmadge.
The four victims were Roger Malcolm, 27, and his wife Dorothy; George Dorsey and his wife, May. The two women were sisters. Dorsey was a war veteran with five years service in the Army, including overseas duty in the Pacific and North Africa. He was rewarded for his part in the “war against fascism” abroad by torture and death at the hands of fascist gangsters in Georgia.
The three relatives of Roger Malcolm drove to Monroe with Loy Harrison, a planter and landlord. The Dorseys sharecropped for Harrison on his farm. They were on their way to bail out Roger Malcolm, who had been jailed on July 14 on a charge of stabbing his white employer. Harrison claimed he was going to employ the Malcolms on his farm also.
The $600 bond was posted at 2 o’clock. According to a PM reporter on the spot, ‘‘for some reason, not yet explained, Malcolm was not released immediately. Harrison went to get his car fixed and the women went shopping. They came back at 5 o’clock, got Malcolm and started in Harrison’s car for his farm some ten miles away.”
Then they “started out of town by one road, but ‘someone’ told them to go another way. Harrison said he doesn’t know who the ‘someone’ was.” But they took the road they were requested to take, and were ambushed. “There was a car drawn up across the road. Harrison stopped. Another car swung in behind his ... About 25 or 30 men piled out.”
The leader of the gang was described by Harrison as a big man, well dressed in a brown double-breasted suit and broadbrimmed black hat. He was deeply suntanned and spoke commandingly “like a retired doctor or general.” Most of the gang, Harrison said, “were dressed in khaki clothes, just like me.”
The lynchers planned to murder only the Negro men. They jerked them out of the car and down the river bank. But one of the wives evidently recognized the leader. She cried out, pleading: “Don’t kill him, Mr. ...
Harrison said he did not catch the name.
But the gang leader barked out: “She recognized us. Get those women too! You know what you’re supposed to do.” Four members of the mob dragged the women out of the car. Their bodies revealed that each had an arm broken in the assault. The faces of the four victims and parts of their bodies were blasted by the volley of shots.
There are plenty of clues as to the identity of the murderers, particularly of their leader. But everyone is frightened of the lynch gang. They say: “I don’t know anything, but if I did, I sure wouldn’t tell. My life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel.” They dare not talk, even for the $10,000 rewards demonstratively offered by Governor Ellis Arnall.
In Washington, Attorney General Clark of the U.S Department of Justice is dodging behind Civil Rights statutes. But J.J. Gautier of Macon and another U.S. attorney for the middle Georgia district, visiting Walton County right after the hideous crime, affably chatted with the Sheriff for about an hour. They said they didn’t think there had been a violation of any Federal law. They didn’t think the Civil Rights statute would apply.
Thus does Wall Street’s government uphold the Lynch Law of its Southern Bourbon supporters.
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