A successful landowner in Abbeville, South Carolina, Anthony Crawford was murdered by a lynch mob on October 21, 1916, after arguing with a white store owner over the price of cottonseed.
Library of CongressAnthony Crawford was murdered by a lynch mob in 1916.
By the time he was in his 50s, Anthony Crawford was one of the wealthiest men in Abbeville, South Carolina. He was a successful farmer and landowner, and the father of 13 children. But Crawford’s wealth was resented by his white neighbors. And on one bloody October day in 1916, a mob brutally lynched him after Crawford argued with a white store owner.
In the aftermath, no one faced charges for Crawford’s brutal murder. And the town voted to drive his family out of Abbeville, depriving them of their valuable land holdings.
This is the tragic story of Anthony Crawford, the wealthy Black businessmen who was murdered by a lynch mob.
The Wealthy Black Landowner Of Abbeville
Anthony Crawford was born in 1865, the year that the Civil War came to an end. He grew up on his father’s farm outside of Abbeville, South Carolina, and when his father died, Crawford inherited the land.
Slowly but surely, Crawford added to his land holdings until he owned more than 400 acres. This made him a very wealthy man — one of the richest in Abbeville — with an estimated net worth of more than $700,000 today. As Terrance Finnegan reported in the 1998 essay collection Men and Violence, Crawford’s wealth was well-known in town, and one local paper even reported on Crawford’s “six horses, 12 heads of cattle, 18 hogs, two wagons, a McCormick rake, a new top buggy, and a substantial bank account.”
Crawford familyAnthony Crawford was a wealthy landowner in Abbeville, South Carolina.
Crawford was rich and successful, and proud of what he had built. The son of slaves, he had built up his family’s wealth, and even sent some of his sons to college. But this drew the ire of many of his white neighbors.
They resented Crawford’s wealth, and saw his pride as insolence. But Crawford had worked hard for what he had, and would make no apologies for it — although he realized that this stance could be dangerous.
“The day a white man hits me,” he told his family, “is the day I die.”
Tragically, his words were prophetic.
The Lynching Of Anthony Crawford
The lynching of Anthony Crawford occured on Oct. 21, 1916. Crawford had brought cotton and cottonseed into town that day, and while waiting to use the cotton gin, Crawford went into W.D. Barksdale’s store to sell his cottonseed. As a longtime farmer, Crawford knew that cottonseed fetched 90 cents a bushel. But Barksdale offered Crawford just 85 cents.
As a South Carolina paper noted a few months later: “As to just how the dispute started, no one knows but Mr. Barksdale.” But it was alleged that Crawford told Barksdale he’d already received a better offer for his cottonseed. Barksdale purportedly responded by calling Crawford a liar, after which Crawford supposedly cursed at him and stormed out of the store.
Public DomainA postcard of Abbeville, South Carolina, from around 1910, just a few years before Anthony Crawford was violently lynched.
A clerk from the store then raced after Crawford and struck him with an ax handle. This altercation drew the attention of the sheriff, who put Crawford under arrest. But it had also drawn the attention of a growing white mob, outraged at the news that Crawford had cursed at Barksdale.
When Crawford posted his bail and emerged from the Abbeville jail, the mob was waiting. They chased him to the boiler room of a nearby cotton gin, where Crawford tried to fight off his attackers with a hammer. The mob then pulled Crawford from the building and beat him until the sheriff was able to intervene. He whisked Crawford back to jail for his own safety.
By then, Anthony Crawford was fatally injured. But the bloodlust of the mob — which had grown to more than 200 men — was unsated. As rumors spread that Crawford might die, or that the sheriff planned to sneak Crawford out of town on a train, they attacked the jail. After overpowering the sheriff, they dragged Crawford into the street and beat him further.
They spit on him, jumped on his body, dragged him through town, and — though Crawford was likely already dead by this point — hanged him at the local fairgrounds. Then, they riddled his body with bullets.
But though Anthony Crawford had been brutally killed, the mob was still unsatisfied. In the aftermath of his murder, the white residents of Abbeville took a “vote” and expelled Crawford’s family from town. This deprived them of their land holdings, and forced the family to start over in the North.
The Legacy of Anthony Crawford Today
None of Anthony Crawford’s killers ever faced justice — the county coroner recorded that Crawford had been murdered “at the hands of parties unknown.” But he was not forgotten.
In 2016, hundreds of people — including more than 100 of Anthony Crawford’s descendents — gathered in Abbeville. As the Equal Justice Initiative reported at the time, Crawford’s family collected soil from where he had been lynched, and celebrated the unveiling of a new historical marker which told the story of his death.
Equal Justice InitiativeDescendants of Anthony Crawford gathered in 2016 for the unveiling of a historical marker in Abbeville, South Carolina.
Together, they marked the 100th anniversary of Anthony Crawford’s lynching.
“You have all of this Confederate memorabilia, but nothing that talked to the Black experience. So we wanted to do something big and bold and outdoors,” Crawford’s great-great granddaughter, Doria Johnson, told the Philadelphia Tribune. “He was a strong Black man who through hard work was becoming quite rich and I think that bothered a lot of people. He was killed because he was too successful. That is unconscionable in America.”
The Crawford family still doesn’t know what happened to Anthony Crawford’s body. But, together, they celebrated his memory — and made sure that his story would not be forgotten.
After reading about the brutal lynching of Anthony Crawford, discover the inspiration stories of civil rights leaders that you didn’t learn about in school. Or, look through this stunning collection of photos from the 1963 March on Washington.