George and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom are Black sharecroppers in Walton County, Georgia, in the rolling piedmont east of Atlanta. Mr. Dorsey is a WWII veteran, home just nine months and his wife is seven months pregnant. Mr. Malcom is in jail for allegedly stabbing a white farmer.

On this day in 1946, J. Loy Harrison, the white landowner for whom the couples sharecrop, drives them to the jail to post the $600 bail.

On their way home, they are stopped and forced out of the car by a mob of 30 white men. The mob ties Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Malcom to an oak tree. When Mrs. Malcolm calls some of the mob out by name, they seize the women, too. Mr Harrison watches as the mob fires over sixty shots into the Black people, killing them all.

No one has ever been held accountable.