Monday, July 20, 2009
News Remembering lynching victims
Posted by Joeff Davis @joeffly on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 8:23 PM
The Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials [GABEO] gathered this morning at the state Capitol to announce a week of activities commemorating the victims of lynchings across America.
The events will culminate with the 5th annual reenactment of the Moore's Ford Bridge lynching that took place in Monroe, Ga., on July 25, 1946. Five people died at Moore’s Ford Bridge that day, two couples and an unborn baby who was cut out of her mother’s womb by the Ku Klux Klan.
GABEO met underneath the statue of former Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge, who was a gubernatorial candidate at the time of the Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching. “Talmadge played a major roll in inciting the Ku Klux Klan to raise up and put down African-Americans,” state Rep. Tyrone Brooks said.
Walter B. Reeves, who will be playing the governor during the reenactment Saturday, added: “Gov. Talmadge made a career out of race-baiting.”
The point of the reenactment is to raise awareness of the brutal history of lynching in this country — and specifically in Georgia — and to demand the arrest and prosecution of killers who are still living.
The Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching case has never been solved. ““We believe the perpetrators of this crime are still alive, and we want them persecuted,” Brooks said. "The FBI and the GBI are still jointly working this case. It is the last open public mass lynching in America that remains unsolved. We believe the killers were very well known and prominent in the Walton Count community."
The 63rd Anniversary Commemoration and 5th Reenactment of the Lynchings at the Moore’s Ford Bridge takes place this Saturday in Monroe and is open to the public.
(Photos by Joeff Davis)
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