The Best People Won't Talk

Gene Talmadge's campaign to be governor of Georgia had ripped the thin gauze of decency from the body of his state. Last week the nation saw the running sores beneath it.

In Rupert District of South Georgia's Taylor County, Macie Snipes was the only Negro to vote. The day after election four white men called him out from supper. Macie Snipes staggered back into the house with blood gushing from the bullet wounds in his belly. A coroner's jury solemnly reported that he had been killed by one of his visitors in self defense.

Then the hate of white men for their Negro neighbors burst forth in a lynching bee seldom equaled for viciousness in the state. It began at the jail in Monroe (pop. 4,000), only 40 miles east of Atlanta. There Roger Malcolm, 27-year-old Negro farmhand, was in trouble. He had stabbed a white man. He had been locked up for ten days. The white man was still in the hospital.

One night last week the deputy sheriff opened the jail door, and told Roger that Mister Loy Harrison was there to fetch him. Roger's sister-in-law and her husband George Dorsey, just discharged after service overseas with the Army, both worked on Harrison's farm. At their urging ex-convict (bootlegging) Harrison had put up $600 bail to free Roger; the Dorseys and Roger's wife Dorothy were all waiting outside in the car. Mister Harrison would take care of everything.

Shortcut. Loy Harrison, his 275 pounds sweating uncomfortably behind the wheel of an old Pontiac, started on the road toward home while Roger Malcolm chattered happily. Six miles out from Monroe, Harrison turned off on a rough, sun-drenched, red-clay shortcut between the cotton fields.

When he reached the wooden bridge over muddy Apalachee creek, Harrison jammed on the brakes. A car blocked the bridge. A band of 20 white men, unmasked, armed with pistols and shotguns, moved silently out of the roadblock.

Said Loy Harrison: "A big man who was dressed mighty proud in a double-breasted brown suit was giving the orders. He pointed to Roger and said, 'We want that nigger.' Then he pointed to George Dorsey, my nigger, and said, 'We want you, too, Charlie.' I said, 'His name ain't Charlie, he's George.' Someone said 'Keep your damned big mouth shut. This ain't your party.' "

Shotgun. Harrison watched part of the mob lead quivering Roger Malcolm and George Dorsey down a sandy track toward an oak tree. The Negro wives left behind in the car began to shriek. Harrison heard one of them call out the name of one of the mob, but swore he couldn't remember what it was.

Then "the big man said 'Git them bitches, too.' A little fellow wearing Army shoes, clothes and an Army cap held a shotgun on me. One man said, 'Let's shoot him too.' The big man thought it over. He asked me twice, 'Do you recognize anybody?' I said, 'No, you shouldn't shoot me.' "

Loy Harrison silently looked on as the men dragged the struggling women over to the oak tree and shoved them beside the bound figures of their husbands. Then the mob fired three pointblank volleys into their prisoners.

Back in the jail at Monroe, Deputy Sheriff Howard picked up the jangling phone. The voice on the other end was Loy Harrison's. "Mr. Howard," it said, "they just hijacked me and killed my niggers."

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This week Governor Ellis Arnall offered $10,000 in rewards to solve Walton County's "mass murder ... one of the worst incidents ever to take place in our state."

But Major William F. Spence, Georgia State Police head, complained: "We just can't cope with the case. . . . The best people in town won't talk about this." Loy Harrison, who had lived in those parts all his life, still could not identify either members of the mob or its "dressed mighty proud" ringleader.

Said Governor-Elect Gene Talmadge: ". . . While I am Governor, I know that such atrocities will be at a minimum."

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