
The Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials [GABEO] gathered this morning at the state Capitol to announce a week of activities commemorating the victims of lynchings across America.
The events will culminate with the 5th annual reenactment of the Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching that took place in Monroe, Ga., on July 25, 1946. Five people died at Moore’s Ford Bridge that day, two couples and an unborn baby who was cut out of her mother’s womb by the Ku Klux Klan.
GABEO met underneath the statue of former Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge, who was a gubernatorial candidate at the time of the Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching. “Talmadge played a major roll in inciting the Ku Klux Klan to raise up and put down African-Americans,” state Rep. Tyrone Brooks said.
Walter B. Reeves, who will be playing the governor during the reenactment Saturday, added: “Gov. Talmadge made a career out of race-baiting.”
The point of the reenactment is to raise awareness of the brutal history of lynching in this country — and specifically in Georgia — and to demand the arrest and prosecution of killers who are still living.
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