This photo of an unknown African-American lynching victim from 1889 illustrates the terrifying legacy of lynching in the United States that claimed over 5,000 thousand black victims in the southern US in the Post-Civil War period.
Today on the CNN Website Elliot C. McLaughlin wrote a fascinating article about a group of activists who re-enacted the bloody kidnapping/murder of two African Americans couples near the Apalachee River in Georgia on the night of July 25, 2007.
Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey were dragged from their car by a white mob, beaten and then shot before one of the attackers used a knife to cut Dorothy Malcom's unborn 7-month old baby from her stomach.
The case remains unsolved to this day and the CNN article outlines Justice Department efforts to fund an FBI cold-case division to try and resolve some of the many unsolved hate-related murders and lynchings that occurred in the south in the 1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's. A bill to fund the bill, supported jointly by the Southern Poverty Law Center, National Urban League and the NAACP, is currently stalled in the US Senate.
