Mae Murray Dorsey

Age 23

A young field hand, known by friends as a stylish dresser

Walton County, Georgia

July 25, 1946

Mae Murray Dorsey was a 23-year-old field hand and domestic worker whose reputation as a stylish dresser earned her the nickname “Mae West” among friends. She lived and labored on a cotton farm in north-central Georgia with her husband, George Dorsey, an Army veteran who had recently returned from World War II.

In the summer of 1946, Dorsey’s brother-in-law, a Black sharecropper named Roger Malcom, stabbed his white boss and landlord during an argument. Roger spent 11 days in jail before the cotton farmer who employed the Dorseys, Loy Harrison, posted his bond. Harrison drove to the local jail to pick up Roger, accompanied by Mae, George, and Roger’s wife, Dorothy Malcom — who was George’s younger sister.

As Harrison drove them, a lynch mob of at least a dozen armed white men blocked their way, near Moore’s Ford Bridge on the border of Walton and Oconee counties. According to Harrison, the men in the mob ordered first Roger then George onto the road. Mae and Dorothy were also pulled from the vehicle after one of the women said she recognized a member of the mob. Harrison claimed he did not know the men but that he saw them line up and execute the two couples with multiple volleys of gunfire.

Initial Investigation

Photographs from 1946 show local law enforcement and agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation working on the case. The killings occurred less than a week after white men shot another Black man from Georgia, Maceo Snipes, after he voted in a primary election. News of the violence led to protests nationwide, including a letter to the editor of The Atlanta Constitution calling for racial equality, penned by a young Martin Luther King Jr.

On hearing of the lynching, President Harry Truman ordered an FBI inquiry that involved a months-long civil rights probe by numerous special agents, according to news reports at the time. Yet people from the community proved reluctant to help, and a federal grand jury empaneled in late 1946 failed to indict anyone, despite having access to as many as 100 witnesses.

Till Act Status

The case sat cold for years until, in the early 1990s, a local man claimed he had witnessed the lynching as a child. With renewed interest, people in Georgia organized various tributes. They endowed scholarships in the victims’ names, held a military service for George and organized reenactments of the killings to keep attention on the case. In 2000, by order of then-Governor Roy Barnes, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reopened the case but closed it again in 2018 without prosecuting anyone.

Author Anthony Pitch, who wrote a book about the lynching, also tried to unseal the grand jury transcripts until his death in 2019. A friend and lawyer took over the mission after Pitch died, but a federal appeals court in 2020 ruled the records must remain sealed.

The FBI reexamined the lynching, starting in 2007, and all four victims’ names appear on a list of cases opened for federal review under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The case was closed again in 2017, although the Department of Justice did not issue a memo explaining its investigation, as it has done for many other cases on the list.

Un(re)solved

Begin the full experience

About the Project

This multiplatform investigation draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. FRONTLINE spoke to family and friends of the victims, and witnesses, some of whom had never been interviewed; current and former Justice Department officials and FBI agents, state and local law enforcement; lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists, to explore the Department of Justice’s reopening of civil rights-era cold cases under the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.

In addition to an examination of the federal effort, the project features the first comprehensive, interactive list of all those whose cases were reopened by the Department of Justice. Today, the list stands at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children.

The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.

A project like Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups, and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), bringing them on as an academic partner. Launched in 2007 by Distinguished Law Professor Margaret Burnham, CRRJ is a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history, and criminal justice. Their work has expanded beyond the names on the Justice Department’s list, archiving documents in over 1,000 cases of racially motivated homicides.

With support from the CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.

At the heart of the project has been a drive to center the voices of the families of those on the list. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps to record nearly two dozen oral histories with victims’ next of kin, which are featured both in the web-based interactive and traveling AR exhibit. These oral histories will also be archived in the National Library of Congress.

To lead the creative vision for the web experience and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker, and technologist Tamara Shogaolu.

Shogaolu rooted the visuals in the powerful symbolism of trees. In the United States, trees evoke the ideal of liberty, but also speak to an oppressive history of racially motivated violence. In Persian myth, trees are humanity’s ancestors, while in Toraja, Indonesia, they serve as sacred burial sites.

“I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” When designing the creative vision for Un(re)solved Shogaolu wondered whether she might be able to reclaim the symbol of the tree. “As a person of color, we’re often terrified of being in isolated places in the woods. And I thought it was kind of crazy that there are natural environments that instinctually give great fear because of this connection with racial terror and I wanted to reclaim that — to turn these into beautiful spaces.”

Un(re)solved weaves imagery of trees, which also recall family ties, into patterns and textures from the American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition for many American communities.

We invite you to enter this forest of quilted memories — a testimony to the lives of these individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.

(Credits to come)