It was July 25th, 1946, when a white mob in Georgia stopped a car carrying two African American couples, the mobbed then dragged them out and shot them to death. One of the victims, George Dorsey, was a military veteran who had just returned from serving five years overseas in World War II. His wife, Mae Dorsey, was also killed. Dorothy Malcom, the other woman in the car, was seven months pregnant. The mob cut her open and removed her unborn child. Her husband, Roger, had just been bailed out of jail after he was accused of stabbing a white man. An investigator estimated people in the crowd fired more than 60 plus shots at the two couples at close range. The horrific attack happened near Walton County, Georgia, not far from Moore’s Ford Bridge.
When Henry “Dickie” Marrow, a 23 year old black man who was shot and killed by Robert Teel and his two sons, Larry Teel and Roger Oakley, was killed on May 11th, 1970, it was a defining moment for Tyson and the town of Oxford, North Carolina. The ordeal was the result of white supremacist thinking and actions. Larry Teel stated that Marrow was saying inappropriate things to Teel’s young wife. Supposedly Marrow then pulled a knife out and went towards Teel with it after Teel had told him to not speak to his wife in that way. Teel then called for his father and brother to come help him make sure Marrow paid for his mistake. This led to the killing of Dickie Marrow, son, cousin, husband, father, and friend. The Teel’s and Roger Oakley were acquitted of the charges of murder, which may people believe is a result of white supremacy and the Teel’s involvement in the KKK. White supremacy played a major role in day to day life in the South. Both blacks and whites felt the effects on the entire country. There were different bathrooms,
Fire in A Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America by Laura Wexler is about the lynching of four African- Americans: Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey, and Mae Murray Dorsey. This occurred in Walton County on July 25, 1946 at the old Moore’s Ford Bridge. The lynching spurred a six month federal investigation in Walton and Oconee County, but eventually led to no convictions or arrest. The FBI had many prime suspects and prime witnesses, but the white community stuck together and the black community was too afraid to speak against their white counter parts. The reason for the lynching at Moore’s Ford Bridge was because the white community of Walton County wanted revenge for Barnette Hester’s stabbing, to keep interracial relationships separate, and to keep whites in control of the political power.
The death of a young African American male in 1955 haunted the south and the African American society. Images of Emmett Till hanging in a tree were plastered on television and in newspapers for Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, and David Richmond to see while attending North Carolina A & T College in 1960. These four African American men would soon become known as the Greensboro Four after instigating a sit-in at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their courage and determination ignited a movement to end segregation not only in their state but across the nation. History was being made that day as the young men sat at the counter, customers inside watching as the events unfolded, and the impact of this incident permeating across American’s eyes.
During the 1960 Civil Rights Movement, demonstrators were brutalized and killed, sometimes at the hands of law officers, whereas many slayings remain unsolved. “In some cases where local authorities failed to go after the attackers, or all-white juries refused to convict, the federal government moved in with civil rights charges.” Fifty-Two (52) years later in 2012 a murder of young unarmed African American teen Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman from Sanford, Florida, was found not guilty of second-degree murder and acquitted of manslaughter. The verdict sparked a heartfelt online message regarding the decision, which stated “essentially a love note to black people” which ended with “Black people. I love you.
The murder of Carol Jenkins in 1968 is largely accounted for giving Martinsville, Indiana the racist image it has today. Although this was not the first or last act of racist hate crimes in the town, this one stuck in the minds of many people. This woman was murdered by who was thought to have been a local resident, protected by police, and started a huge controversy about racism in this
The Elaine Massacre was one of the most destructive racial dispute that had taken place in Arkansas history and perhaps, the bloodiest racial rivalry in the history of the United States. While its inmost origin lies in the United States dedication to white superiority, the events in Elaine were emanated from strained race affiliates and expanding sympathy regarding the labor unions. A firing incident that took place at a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and the Household Union inflated into throng brutality on the part of the white people in Elaine and the nearby areas. Despite, the perfect number is unidentified, a huge number of African Americans were killed by the white’s territory that was around hundreds; and five white people lost their lives.
On July 25, 1946, two young black couples- Roger and Dorothy Malcom, George and Mae Murray Dorsey-were killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge over the Appalachee River connecting Walton and Oconee Counties (Brooks, 1). The four victims were tied up and shot hundreds of times in broad daylight by a mob of unmasked men; murder weapons included rifles, shotguns, pistols, and a machine gun. "Shooting a black person was like shooting a deer," George Dorsey's nephew, George Washington Dorsey said (Suggs C1). It has been over fifty years and this case is still unsolved by police investigators. It is known that there were atleast a dozen men involved in these killings. Included in the four that were
Let’s examine the reality of violence during the Reconstruction Era. In the document, “Southern Horrors- Lynch Laws in All its Phases, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett we see countless examples of the continued violence in the south against African-Americans. The slogan “This is white man’s country and the
In 1986, Brent Staples wrote a prose essay writing about his experiences because of his color. To this day, his essay is still relevant towards black people, but America is finally starting to change their perspectives on African-Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it an official day for African-Americans to have their rights, but caucasians became aware of such freedom the blacks had and became frightened by them. As a result, white people, especially cops, took action by using weapons against blacks when the blacks were innocent in some cases. In Staples’s prose essay he wrote “Where fear and weapons meet--and they often do in urban America--there is always the possibility of death” meaning when an African-American man would come
The website Remembering Jim Crow gave useful information on the harsh lives endured by the African Americans in the South during the late 1800’s and mid 1900’s. This information expanded my knowledge of how the racist whites treated blacks unfairly and unjust. Places I visited on this site included “Bitter Times”, “Danger Violence and Exploitation”, and audios such as “Wrongly Accused” and “Mob Attack”. With this information, I was able to understand the cruelty that the African Americans felt. Listening to audios of peoples’ stories made me feel what they were going through, as I heard the fear in their own voices. In addition, I learned how the whites disgraced the blacks, and the blacks were put under the constant fear of the white man, even in their own communities. This material enhanced my understanding of Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird by helping me understand the circumstances of the Finches town and the biased judgement of the Tom Robinson trial due to the color of his skin.
fears by publishing daily stories about attacks on white woman by black men. The violence and
The Tulsa Race Riot is an event that is quite possibly the most unknown and misconstrued piece of history in the United States of America. When and if it is discussed, it’s taken as a single event that happened in Tulsa and was deadly and very destructive. The many theories of what occurred and how it came to the extreme mob like violence taken on Tulsa’s own civilians. The evidence found suggest there were alternative motives in Tulsa for acquiring land that the black civilians held.
From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981, at least twenty-eight people were abducted and killed during a murder spree in Atlanta, Georgia; these killings would come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. While the victims of the killings were people of all races and genders, most of the victims of the Atlanta Child Murders were young African-American males. These murders created great racial tension in the city of Atlanta, with its black population believing the murders to be the work of a white supremacist group. (Bardsley & Bell, n.d., p. l) However, when police finally apprehended a suspect in the case, they found it was neither a white supremacy group, nor a white person at all; it was a 23 year-old African-American man named
On May 14th 1961 the Ku Klux Klan had a plan to firebomb the Freedom Riders bus in the Birmingham terminal. The local police department of Birmingham, Alabama was completely aware with what was going on and agreed with what the Ku Klux Klan was doing to the bus. The local police department watched as the Ku Klux Klan were throwing firebombs into the bus for a total of fifteen minutes. They barricaded the bus doors so no one was able to escape. In these fifteen minutes many people died, luckily the state troopers arrived to stop the situation before any more people were hurt or killed.
“From Chicago to Tulsa, to Omaha, East St. Louis, and many communities in between, and family to Rosewood, white mobs pursued what can only be described as a reign of terror against African Americans during the period from 1917 to 1923.” (Rosewood Report, 1995, Pg. 3) Lynching had become very common in the United States, although the number of lynching’s had declined from 64 in 1921 to 57 in 1922. Rosewood was known to some as basically a riot, or a war. I believe Rosewood was known to become a war because the African Americans in Rosewood didn’t want the whites to run them out of the only city they were raised in. So the African Americans refused to leave, and fought back. How would you react if someone tried to run you out of your home, or the city you were raised in? Would you leave? Or fight back? Some incidents that occurred in Rosewood report had to do with Fannie Coleman. She was a married woman with three children, who claimed she was raped and beat by a black male while no one was home. According to Fannie Taylor’s version of events, “A black male came on foot to my house that morning and knocked. When I opened the door the black male proceeded to assault me.” (Rosewood Report, 1995, Pg. 5) None of this was true. She was having a affair with a white man, who beat her, so she lied and made a scene to the community to cover her up. Little do she know how this petty lie will cause many African Americans to die.