Revisit: THE MOORE’S FORD LYNCHING (JULY 1946)

On July 14, 1946, four African American sharecroppers were lynched at Moore’s Ford in northeast Georgia in an event now described as the “last mass lynching in America.” Yet the killers of George Dorsey, Mae Murray Dorsey, Roger Malcolm, and Dorothy Malcolm were never brought to justice. The violence and public outcry surrounding the event reflected growing African American challenges to Jim Crow in the post-World War II years as well the failures of state and federal authorities to address racial inequality and violence in the South. Continue reading Revisit: THE MOORE’S FORD LYNCHING (JULY 1946)

THE WAPATO RACE RIOT, 1938

Around 10 P.M. on Saturday, July 9, 1938, a mob (estimated by local paper to be two hundred strong) of white residents of Wapato, a small town in the Yakima Valley region of Washington State, instigated what the Yakima Morning Herald termed a “miniature race war.” For two hours, the mob rioted with clubs, hammers, sticks, and rocks with the aim to drive the small African American … Continue reading THE WAPATO RACE RIOT, 1938

ROSEWOOD MASSACRE (1923)

On January 1, 1923, a massacre was carried out in the small, predominantly black town of Rosewood in central Florida. The massacre was instigated by the rumor that a white woman, Fanny Taylor, had been sexually assaulted by a black man in her home in a nearby community.  A group of white men, believing this rapist to be a recently escaped convict named Jesse Hunter who was hiding in Rosewood, assembled to capture this man. Continue reading ROSEWOOD MASSACRE (1923)