Series Puts Cold Cases on Front Burner

When asked to characterize a life lived near the murder suspects, Howard sighs. "Somewhere along the line, I deliberately put myself in the path of those people," he says. "I wanted to know -- well, does a person look different who does something like that? But they don't. They look just like ordinary people."

Dramatizations of those ordinary people populate each segment of Beauchamp's series. Reenactments of an unsolved case -- accompanied by interviews with historians, activists and law enforcement officials -- are designed to stir memories and galvanize attention. Relatives of the slain men and women also appear on-screen, providing a measure of their painful legacies.

On the day of the "Moore's Ford Bridge" killings, J. Loy Harrison, a white landowner, personally posted bail for Roger Malcom, who had been jailed for stabbing his white employer. Harrison then offered to drive the Malcoms and the Dorseys to his farm.

Maybe Harrison was planning to employ the two couples as sharecroppers, Beauchamp suggests, or maybe he was abetting the slayings. Harrison chose a backcountry route home, past Moore's Ford Bridge. There, the group of white men pulled the two young couples from Harrison's vehicle.

Exactly what happened next is the subject of much debate. "Even our memories are segregated," says author Laura Wexler, who documented the case in her 2003 book, "Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America," and who appears in the program.

This much becomes clear: Tensions were running high in Georgia that summer, due in part to Eugene Talmadge. The recently elected governor, who visited Monroe shortly before the slayings, openly endorsed violent acts of intimidation against African American voters. By phone from Baltimore, Wexler characterizes Talmadge's campaign as: "Vote for me, and I'll make sure that blacks stay in their place."

On-screen, investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, points out a particularly painful irony: George Dorsey, a World War II veteran, had risked his life to help eradicate bigotry in Europe -- only to die at the hands of his countrymen.

Glimpses of progress are rendered naive by hindsight. Archival footage shows President Truman addressing a gathering of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on the Mall. "It is my deep conviction," Truman says, "that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens."

The "Moore's Ford Bridge" installment ends with the host, the Rev. Al Sharpton, mentioning the victims in the three other cold cases in the series: Lamar Smith, Willie Edwards and the Rev. George Lee.

Taking his cue from community organizers such as Smith and Lee, who registered black voters in 1955, Beauchamp urges young audience members "to grab their video cameras and go talk to their grandparents."

"If we can't catch these murderers," Beauchamp says, "they should go to their graves terrified that we might."

Murder in Black and White (two hours) continues tonight at 10 on TV One.