Loss and Lived Memory at the Moore’s Ford Lynching Reenactment

ABSTRACT

Each year, members of the Moore’s Ford Movement conduct a memorial rally for and reenactment of a lynching that took place in 1946 near Monroe, Georgia. While a lynching memorial that includes a reenactment may sound suspect, particularly because lynching reenactments play a role in white supremacist activities, the Moore’s Ford Memorial’s unusual form offers affordances that other lynching memorials do not. This article argues that the memorial’s simultaneous attachment to and critique of necessarily inadequate traces of the past raise questions about what it means to remember violence in situ. Most lynching memorial rhetoric revolves around the narrow archive of lynching photographs produced, for the most part, by lynchers themselves. Through its combination of archival and lived memory, the Moore’s Ford Memorial both tells a broader story and draws attention to the archive’s inability to capture all that was lost. In dwelling in the gap between past and present, the memorial creates a generative space for community action.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Moore’s Ford Movement, Lauren Gantz, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors for their invaluable assistance with this article.

Funding

This research was supported in part by a Lightsey Fellowship from the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities at Clemson University.

Notes

1. There were rumors about the exact nature of Dorothy’s alleged relationship with Barnette. Laura Wexler notes that, while some community members thought Dorothy was sexually promiscuous, others suspected that Barnette and/or his brother were forcing or coercing Dorothy into sex (11–12).

2. The Moore’s Ford Movement Facebook page emphasizes this goal in its “About” section: “The Movement to solve the mysterious, brutal killing of two Black couples.”

3. See Haskins; Kalin and Frith.

4. For more about the cultural anxieties that motivate memorialization practices, see Doss.

5. While there is no historical marker at the site, the inscription on Dorsey’s tombstone alludes to her violent death: “May your suffering be redeemed in brotherly love.”

6. Owen and Ehrenhaus write that, in 2008, “an African American woman in a choir robe … [sang] ‘Precious Lord,’ sanctifying the sacrifice of innocents” (84).

7. As Owen and Ehrenhaus note, there is no archival evidence that Dorothy Malcom was pregnant. Rather, Malcom’s mutilation links the Moore’s Ford Lynching to the 1918 lynching of Mary Turner and her unborn child (89–90, n. 6 and 10). This inclusion further suggests the limits of the available archive. While Malcom may not have been pregnant, her disemboweling in the reenactment stands in for the White supremacy’s repeated attempts to destroy African American women, children, and families.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a Lightsey Fellowship from the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities at Clemson University.