Message of hope

A Moore’s Ford Christmas Message of Hope

      Our Christmas greeting card this year, used to thank our many donors and supporters, was first seen in 1998. The Moore's Ford Memorial Committee had just hosted memorial services and installed gravemarkers for two African American couples killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge in 1946 - the infamous "Monroe Massacre." 

   Was our work over? Our 1998 greeting card claimed otherwise: "There's something more a'calling /A'waiting to explore / There's new ways to move on from here / A new hope at our core."

   We grassroots Georgians did indeed move on. We sponsored high school talent show/MLK celebrations, public forums on racial issues, cemetery work projects, calls for justice and renewed FBI and GBI investigations. We encouraged other communities to revisit their own legacies of racial violence and co-organized three national conferences that brought memorial groups together.

   We are less active now. But of our many events and projects since the MFMC’s  founding in 1997, none is more worthwhile than Moore’s Ford Memorial Scholarships. With these annual, $1,000 scholarships to high school seniors and their potential impact upon young people, we have struck the Mother Lode. Rest assured - THESE LIVING MEMORIALS TO THE DORSEYS AND MALCOMS WILL CONTINUE!  

   In 2004, graduating Monroe High School senior Thaddeus Money wrote us a “thank you” letter for his scholarship, right after our workday at Zion Hill Cemetery, that historic African American cemetery in downtown Monroe that was overrun by development several decades ago. We work there most Springs and invite our scholarship students, seeking to restore what is left of the cemetery. The burial site of Mae Murray Dorsey, one of the four brutally slain in 1946, lies underneath a parking lot that now covers her family plot. In 1998, we installed a gravemarker for Mae Murray in the remaining part of the cemetery, on which is inscribed,

“May your suffering be redeemed in brotherly love.”

   Thad first wrote Freedom's Answer, his national student service group. He then copied us.

   "This article touched people around the nation ," he said. "I received an unprecedented number of responses."    

   "Though the fruits of your labor may never be fully realized, rest assured that you (the MFMC) ARE making a difference in your community. Thank you for the gifts that you have so generously bestowed on me."

   Sincerely, Thaddeus Money

   Monroe Area Comprehensive High School, Monroe, Georgia

  

"A display of brotherly love so profound…"

   Today I stood on ground that is a living testament to the racial injustices that occurred forty plus years ago. On the busiest street in my hometown, behind some businesses, there is a cemetery that no one knows about. I have lived here six years and today is the first time I’ve ever seen it. Out of sight, out of mind I guess. But at this cemetery there is a lesson more valuable than any other. It was the most amazing history lesson ever as I sat and listened to a lunch of black old timers tell stories of the way things used to be. I went to the gravesite of one of the people brutally murdered in the Moore’s Ford lynching. This lynching was so brutal that the President of the United States at that time (Harry Truman) personally set out to solve this case. It was never solved because of a “code of silence” that people still fear to break, over sixty years after the lynchings. As I broke my finger with a sledge hammer driving in crosses to mark previously unmarked graves, I learned the power of hate, and yet, at the same time I looked around and saw who was working to clean the cemetery (that one guy likened to a jungle in Vietnam). I saw blacks and whites working together for a common goal. We held a ceremony during lunch where I met people who had met and marched with Dr. King.

   They all had one thing to say: “If we want change, it’s going to have to come from our young people.” People who aren’t afraid of a “code of silence” and people who will stand up for what is right. These men and women, who were given a raw deal by every community figure, local, state and national, are looking to us to make a change. To make a difference in society. Guys, this is an awesome task assigned to us, but as I drove in those white crosses, I thought to myself that this is what the people of Freedom’s Answer are all about. We’re about making a difference and a change for the better. In a time when America is desperately searching for leadership, we will stand up and show them that we’re a force to be reckoned with. For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing being a part of something that is bigger than I or any other single person I know, and it’s a humbling thing. I don’t know how to explain it, but to say this:

   Today, I stood on grounds that have been ravaged by the deepest evils of mankind, and on those grounds I saw a display of brotherly love so profound that words cannot do it justice. I’ve never been so inspired in my life.