George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey along with Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, all of whom were in their 20s, were employed as sharecroppers on the land of a white man named J. Loy Harrison. On July 11, Roger Malcolm was said to have stabbed in self-defense a white man employed on the Harrison farm by the name of Barnette Hester.

Malcolm spent nearly two weeks in jail but was released after Harrison paid his bail. Harrison drove Dorothy Malcolm and the Dorseys to pick up Malcolm when they were allegedly hijacked by a lynch mob which killed both couples.

This cold blooded and calculated massacre was carried out in the aftermath of World War II during a wave of such killings throughout the South. George W. Dorsey had served in the military during the war in the Pacific and had only been out of the army for nine months when he was victimized by the lynch mob.

Some 2.5 million African American men registered for the draft between 1941-45, along with over 6,000 Black women who volunteered in segregated units of the army corps and the navy. After experiencing racism within the military while deployed in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Pacific, many veterans were not willing to accept legalized segregation and racial exploitation.