Court Weighing Whether Judge Can Unseal Lynching Records
Legal Compliance
A historian’s effort to unseal grand jury records from the brazen 1946 lynching of two black couples on a Georgia riverbank prompted tough questions in a federal appeals court, but the judges also suggested there might be another way to win release of the records.
The young black sharecroppers were traveling a rural road in the summer of 1946 when a white mob stopped the car beside the Apalachee River, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Atlanta. The mob dragged them out, led them to the river’s edge and shot them to death in a case that horrified the nation that year.
The FBI investigated for months and more than 100 people reportedly testified before a grand jury, but no one was ever indicted in the deaths of Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey at Moore’s Ford Bridge in Walton County.
Historian Anthony Pitch wrote about the unsolved killings — “The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town” — and continued his research after the book’s 2016 publication. He learned transcripts of the grand jury proceedings, once thought to have been destroyed, were stored by the National Archives.
Pitch, died in June at age 80, before his case could be resolved, but his widow is continuing the fight, along with Laura Wexler, who wrote another book about the lynching and joined the case at the family’s request.
Related listings
-
Appeals Court to Hold Rehearing on Trump Hotel Lawsuit
Legal Compliance 10/16/2019A federal appeals court will reconsider a ruling from a three-judge panel that threw out a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel.The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court...
-
In or out? Court case on job bias casts pall on LGBT fests
Legal Compliance 10/13/2019National Coming Out Day festivities were tempered this year by anxiety that some LGBT folk may have to go back into the closet so they can make a living, depending on what the Supreme Court decides about workplace discrimination law.But the mere fact...
-
Court denies attempt led by Ohio to stop opioid trial
Legal Compliance 10/10/2019A federal appeals court has denied an effort led by Ohio's attorney general to stop a bellwether trial over the opioid crisis from starting this month in Cleveland.The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Ohio didn't object when laws...