Abbeville County, SC
On October 21, 1916, a white merchant demanded to buy Mr. Crawford’s cottonseed for a lower price. Mr. Crawford refused to sell. After an argument, Mr. Crawford was arrested. A few hours later, 300 white men seized him from jail and dragged him through town behind a buggy. Finally stopping at the fairgrounds, the mob stabbed, beat, handed, and shot Mr. Crawford over 200 times – then forbade the Crawford family to remove his hanging body from the tree. The gruesome public murder, though committed openly, did not lead to prosecution or conviction for any members of the mob.
The patriarch of a large, multi-generational family and the owner of 427 acres of land, Mr. Crawford was a successful farmer and leader whose murder had long-reaching effects.
Days after the lynching, Abbeville’s white residents “voted” to expel the Crawford family from the area and seize their property. When South Carolina’s governor declared himself powerless to protect the family from violence, most of the surviving relatives fled to destinations as distant as New York and Illinois, fragmenting the once strong and close-knit family.
Burial Site
Perpetrators
Legal Action
Perpetrators never prosecuted
Quanda Johnson is a Fulbright Scholar and the recipient of the Fulbright Community Leadership Grant. Currently a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she has earned a Master of Arts in Africana Studies from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she was a Dean's Graduate Scholar and recipient of the Clyde Taylor Award in Africana Studies. Other degrees include a Master of Music from the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College and a Master of Fine Arts from New School University's School of Drama. A performer from Broadway to grand opera, she seeks ways to utilize performance to disrupt and consequently alter entrenched, cyclical conversations about Blackness and the African diaspora. An AUDELCO Award nominee for her portrayal of Marian Anderson, she appeared in Broadway's Tony award winning Ragtime and made her New York City Opera debut in The Mother of Us All with Lauren Flanigan. Her performance work and diasporic research have taken her around the world including Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Western Europe. Her work is dedicated to the memory of the first artist in her life, her mother, Vernetta.