The Evening Star (July 26, 1946)
2 Negroes and wives waylaid and slain by armed Georgia band
Four taken away from white man after one is released from jail
MONROE, Georgia (AP) – A band of armed white men waylaid a white farmer and four Negroes on a secluded Northeast Georgia road late yesterday, Sheriff E. S. Gordon said today, and while holding the white man at gun point shot the Negroes to death.
Coroner W. T. Brown after an examination of the bodies estimated that 60 shots had been fired into the bodies of the four Negroes. The hands of the two Negro men had been tied behind their backs. Their wives were the other victims.
One of the Negroes, Roger Malcolm, 27, the sheriff said, had just been released from jail under $600 bond on charges of stabbing his employer, Barney Hester, a farmer.
The sheriff identified the other Negroes as Malcolm’s wife and George Dorsey and his wife.
The Negroes, riding in an automobile with Loy Harrison, a farmer, were en route from Monroe to Mr. Harrison’s farm in adjoining Oconee County when they were waylaid at a bridge over the Apalachee River, the sheriff said.
Couldn’t identify men
Mr. Harrison, at a coroner’s inquest last night, the sheriff said, testified that he could not identify any member of the band which waylaid him. The jury returned a verdict of death at the hands of unknown parties.
In Washington, Attorney General Clark’s office today announced that he has ordered a “complete investigation” into the slayings of the Negroes. The announcement said without further elaboration that the inquiry would be carried out by the civil rights section of the Justice Department.
The slayings, the sheriff said, occurred about eight miles east of Monroe, the county seat of Walton County, which is about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Here is the story of the slayings as told by the sheriff after questioning Mr. Harrison:
Dorsey and his wife worked on Harrison’s farm in Oconee County. Malcolm had worked for Mr. Hester, and Mr. Harrison, after Malcolm’s release from jail, had gone to Monroe to get him and his wife and take them back to jobs on the Harrison farm.
Armed band stopped car
Harrison, driving the car with the Negroes in it, approached a wooden bridge over the 100-foot-wide river which divides Oconee and Walton counties. A band of 20 to 25 men, armed with shotguns, pistols and rifles, stood in the road and ordered him to halt.
Mr. Harrison stopped the car at the entrance to the bridge, and the armed men ordered the two Negro men from the car and proceeded down a side road. Mr. Harrison and the two Negro women were held at the automobile.
Then Mr. Harrison heard one of the men in the armed band remark that one of the Negro women had recognized him, and several of the men came back and took the women from the car.
Mr. Harrison then heard shots. After the shots, the mob dispersed, and Mr. Harrison went back two miles toward Monroe and called Sheriff Gordon from a country store.
Riddled bodies found
The sheriff said he went to the scene immediately and found the bullet riddled bodies in the bushes along the side road, about 40 feet from where Mr. Harrison’s car had been parked at the entrance to the bridge.
The sheriff quoted Mr. Harrison as saying none of the men wore a mask.
The nearest house to the scene of the slayings was about a half mile away, the sheriff said.
Sheriff Gordon said that without identification of any member of the armed band, he had gone as far as he could with his investigation. He said he had called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a division of the state police, and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had called him.
FBI agent John F. Trost said at Atlanta a report on the slaying of the four Negroes had been filed with FBI headquarters in Washington.