Book Review: Fire In A CaneBreak

What was in the dark, never came to light.

Stars: 4/5

Fire In a Canebrake is about the 1946 unsolved lynching of 4 black Georgians, George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom, in Walton County, Georgia.

By all accounts Roger Malcom, a tenant farmer, was the primary target in retaliation for his near-fatal knife assault on his white landlord, Barnette Hester.  George, Mae Murray, and Roger’s wife, Dorothy, had the misfortune of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, FBI investigators uncovered where there may have been a motive to lynch George Dorsey as well; his flirtations with white women.

Despite coming close to breaking the case on a number of instances, the investigator’s leads in identifying suspects never fully panned out.  Townsfolk were either too scared to cooperate, purposely gave misleading information, or had moved away.  The horrific act, it’s legacy, “... the nation would never again see as many victims lynched on a single day after July 25, 1946” (p. 75), and the unsolved nature of the case, is a scar on Walton County that remains to this day; an unspoken but persistent reminder of the injustice of the past.

Very good read & may be of interest to native Georgians.

historical marker

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