ED: Let's imagine this. July 1946, Monroe, Georgia, 2 black couples are pulled from a car and lynched. Their names were Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey. About a week earlier, Roger Malcom had stabbed a white man. He was jailed and then bailed out. His wife and the other couple met him at the jail and their employer gave all 4 of them a ride.
ED: But a mob of clan members intercepted them on the way to work. The couples were pulled from the car, dragged down a hill, and shot by makeshift firing squad. Now a lot of people think the term lynching necessarily refers to hanging, but it can also be like this, a shooting or any other type of murder meant for public spectacle, and this certainly qualified. It became known as the Moores Ford Bridge Lynching, and the perpetrators were never caught.
PETER: So 8 years ago, local activists decided to try something novel, reenact the lynching. They thought by bringing people face to face with the details, the killers might be flushed out. Jacqueline Olive went to this year's reenactment and has the story. A warning to listeners, this story contains both graphic images and racially charged language. If you wanna tune out for about 10 minutes, now is the time. Okay. Let's go to Georgia.
DEREK BOZEMAN: The question that we should really be asking is why are we sitting in First African Baptist Church in Walton County talking about this case in 2012. Yes, sir.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: At a rally before the reenactment, Derek Bozeman, a local activist, voices the frustrations of many blacks in the community.
DEREK BOZEMAN: The real question should have been, why did we go past a couple of days after this incident happened 66 years ago? Why didn't they arrest the perpetrator? Because, obviously, they know who they are. Yes. Right.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: 66 years ago, the FBI did launch an investigation into the murders. They sent agents to dig bullets out of trees where the couples had been shot and offered a $12,500 reward for information, but there wasn't enough evidence for an indictment, and the case stalled. Many blacks in Monroe believe some of the killers are still alive and living in the town. They want to see prosecution. The reenactors agree and think their project can bring justice.
CASSANDRA GREEN: Most people that are doing this would really rather not doing it, but somebody has to do it.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: This is Cassandra Green. She's been directing the reenactment for the last 4 years. She says that immersing herself in such extreme violence can be brutal.
CASSANDRA GREEN: Even though it's painful for you, you'd rather endure that pain for a minute to know that you're sending out a message that we're not just going to let these people's death have been in vain. So I I I feel that way, and I think most of the actors that participate feel that way as well.
OLIVIA TAYLOR: I'm, I'm glad I'm doing this. I'm a little apprehensious. I'm, you know, I'm I'm this come I may be stepping into a world I stepped away from a long time ago and pretending that it's real.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: This is Olivia Taylor, the newest reenactor. She's white and plays a supporter of Georgia's governor at the time. The role brings back memories of her childhood when her father was a member of the KKK.
OLIVIA TAYLOR: The first most traumatic experience was out at Stone Mountain at a lynching, and I was 3 years old. We were sitting there in in the in the car, in that big black Lincoln, And mother was sitting in the passenger seat and I was on the seat beside looking through the windshield at what was going on. The men in their white robes and it was a big bonfire. The black men that they brought there that night, that they hung, they were convinced had done something wrong and they were gonna make it right. I don't know who he was. I don't know what he did. I just remember mom trying to hide it from me, trying to pull me into her so that I wouldn't see, but I fought against it.
OLIVIA TAYLOR: I just knew they weren't really gonna hang him, but they did. And, I'm not sure I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not gonna back out. I'm gonna I'm going through simply because I really believe that somewhere along the line we're gonna find the conversation that needs to be had that would heal it.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: But not everyone in Monroe supports the reenactments. In fact, the group of locals that originally organized the event have since quit. They faced too much backlash from the community and were threatened with losing their jobs. Today, all the reenactors come from outside of Monroe, mostly from Atlanta. Mike Cash is a businessman in Monroe. He says he wants the killers caught. But he doesn't think a reenactment put on by out of towners is the way to do that.
MIKE CASH: And I don't want people coming into our community. And, you know, it's sort of like outsiders coming in saying, look, you guys did something bad. Well, I didn't because I wasn't born yet. And my family didn't even live in Walnut County at the time, and my my wife's family didn't have anything to do with it. I don't know many people that did. It's just a small group of folks that did something really bad.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: Cash believes this murder is like any other murderer in the area. And why reopen old wounds?
MIKE CASH: We can reenact murders like this all over Walton County. We can do black on white. We can do white on black. And it would really cause a lot of racial divides, I think, and a lot of family hurt too.
WALTER REEVES: What, what these people usually mean when they say dividing the community is they, they mean that they're being forced to do something they don't want to do.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: This is Walter Reeves, another of the white reenactors.
WALTER REEVES: Anytime you require people to stand up and address past or existing evils, particularly ones that may implicate their own ancestors, you're going to have folks who aren't gonna wanna do it.
CASSANDRA GREEN: Action.
REENACTORS: We want that [bleep], Roger. Oh. What's going on?
JACQUELINE OLIVE: A week before the reenactment, the actors rehearsed the moment when the victims are dragged from the car.
REENACTORS: Hey, what are you guys doing? No. Don't do this.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The actors try to make the reenactment as authentic as possible. Some facts about the crime itself can be verified in police and court documents. But the reenactors use another source of information that doesn't always match up with the government records. Oral histories collected by local activists in the fifties sixties. One of the most disputed scenes in the reenactment comes after the 2 couples are shot. A clan member reaches over to the actor, playing Dorothy Malcom, and pulls a bloodied baby doll from under her dress. It's disputed because there's no documentation to suggest Malcom was pregnant. But that claim kept coming up in those oral histories.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: So the reenactors had to make a choice as to whose truth to follow. They went with the interviews.
CASSANDRA GREEN: So we really pushed that part so that when they hold this baby up and people see the blood on this baby, they know that this was some sick stuff that went on during that lynching.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: On the day of the reenactment, about 200 people, mostly from out of town, gathered to watch. The actors perform multiple scenes throughout the day. They begin at the courthouse reenacting a race baiting speech given by the governor of Georgia days before the lynching. The event then moves to the jail where Roger Malcom was held before being bailed out. And after 6 hours in the sticky Georgia heat, the final scene is of the lynching itself.
REENACTORS: The way it's coming out of the woods. They locked the wall.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The head Klansman stamps out a cigarette as the car approaches. Another Klansman stands next to him with a rifle, and a few others block the road to the bridge.
REENACTORS: We want that [bleep], Roger.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: They force the car to stop and pull Roger out of the passenger side of the front seat. He looks dazed.
REENACTORS: Get him out of the car.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: Four Klansmen with rifles hold Roger and place a noose around his head.
REENACTORS: You is a dead man, boy.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The audience moves into the road and surrounds the car. Almost all the spectators take pictures with their cell phones.
REENACTORS: Go out. Don't let them back. I know you. What's going on? So you know him? Get them all out of the car.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The Klansman tied the four victims together with a rope.
REENACTORS: Tie him up good, boy.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The Klan lead them off the road and down the hill to a field. The couples are still tied together and struggle not to fall. The crowd has to move quickly to keep up.
REENACTORS: Leave it alone. Make an example to all the n[bleep] in Georgia. Make it You don't touch a white man.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The couples huddle together while the Klansmen line up behind them, pointing their rifles. A wall of onlookers faces the scene.
REENACTORS: Just let us go. Just let us let let the women go. We didn't see anybody. We didn't see anybody. No. We are doing this for the preservation of our race. Really? What?
REENACTORS: On the count of three, I want you to show these [bleep] Yes, lord, we are the supreme race. Anything. Don't do it. Please. Ready? No. All women go. No. 2.
REENACTORS: Go do it.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: There's a glitch, the gunfire. Cassandra used fireworks in the past but decided to try her laptop this year instead. It doesn't sound quite like rifle fire and isn't synchronized with the action, but the audience doesn't seem to notice. People look moved. A man picks up his young daughter and puts her on his shoulder so she can see better. Her eyes are big.
SPECTATOR: He's dead. He's dead.
REENACTORS: Is this good, boss?
REENACTORS: Yeah. It's good, boys. Okay. Come on, boys. Let's go get a drink. Just kidding. That's it. I got a good job here today. I got stuff.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: The reenactment is not easy to watch. I can understand the hesitancy of people in Monroe to relive the ugliness of a violent past. But the reality is, this past is everywhere. It dots the landscape. Over the course of nearly a century, there were more than 3,400 documented lynchings of African Americans all over the country. People brought their families out to watch, even taking pictures with the bodies. Because of that history, watching the reenactment today is a loaded experience. The project forces you to face head on what it meant to be a spectator, watching the violence unfold.
JACQUELINE OLIVE: And it's hard not to feel the terror that people in Monroe would have felt in 1946. I don't know if the reenactment is the best way for Monroe to deal with its past. But outsiders are paying attention. In 2006, the year after the first reenactment, the FBI reopened the investigation into the Moores Ford Bridge Lynching. A $35,000 reward is now available for any information leading to an arrest of the killers.
PETER: Jacqueline Olive is a San Francisco Bay Area filmmaker currently working on a documentary about lynchings called "Always in Season."
BRIAN: You're listening to Backstory. We'll be back in a minute.