George Galbreath

One bloody afternoon outside of Monroe, Georgia, four Black people were driven to the site of their demise by a white accessory to their murder. George and May Murray Dorsey and Roger and Dorthy Malcom were tied up, beaten, and shot to death by an unmasked mob on the banks of the Apalachee River, below Moore’s Ford Bridge. The lynching took place as the result of an altercation between Roger Malcom and a white farmer and is known as “America’s Last Mass Lynching”. Although President Truman ordered the FBI to investigate the lynching, no charges were ever filed.

Upon Galbreath’s introduction to this tragic story, I was drawn to the symbol of the bridge as a witness to the crime. Bridges have significant meaning to me as the recurring backdrops to some of America’s most horrific tragedies and crimes against Black people. The ropes represent the ties that bound the victims both in life and death. As the ropes wind their way through the “Sliver” installation space of Atlanta Contemporary, they create four urns as the final resting place for the victims. On the back wall, four ominous figures stand in a narrow row representing the lynch mob and the generations of hate and oppression.