A Deed So Accursed: Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881–1940

4. “The Equal of Some White Menand the Superior of Others”: African American Victims of Lynching

102 4 “The Equal of Some White Men and the Superior of Others” African American Victims of Lynching African American resistance to racial oppression resulted in lynching becoming an integral feature of the southern caste system. In the predominantly rural states of Mississippi and South Carolina, landlordtenant relations were rife with racial conflict; hence, the majority of African American lynching victims were agricultural workers who refused to acquiesce to white domination. African American farmworkers regularly challenged the actions of whites who oppressed them. When a black person got the better of a dispute with a white superior, whites sometimes responded with lynching in the hope of discouraging future affronts to white supremacy. The itinerant, isolated, and unsavory working conditions of some African American laborers also invoked suspicion and fear among the white population. The unusual living conditions and habits of some African Americans workers provoked anxiety among many whites, and nonfarm black laborers were lynched more often for alleged sexual crimes than were agricultural workers. African Americans who achieved success in southern society also could be targeted by a lynch mob. Whites lynched successful African Americans for maintaining their dignity in the face of white harassment or because their achievements were an affront to some whites. Occasionally, whites also lynched African American women, often with extreme brutality, to reinforce the notion that every member of the black community could African American Victims of Lynching 103 be held accountable for the “undisciplined freedom” that inspired African Americans to resist the daily constraints of racial oppression. Only about one in twenty lynching incidents, on the other hand, involved a white male victim, who often held a prominent place in a community. White-on-whitelynching,however,usuallyinvolvedthedesiretorender impotent a vexatious exception to the moral or social order. White-onwhite lynching was aimed at individual reprobates and contained few of the terroristic attributes that characterized white-on-black lynching. Lynching, whether directed against a black or a white victim, was an expression of a mob’s desire to maintain appropriate boundaries of behavior, which in the case of blacks were usually predicated upon racial subordination. The desire of black men for social, economic, and political autonomy could threaten the communal and personal power of white men from any status or background. A popular social Darwinistic conception of white supremacy demanded that the “LOWEST white man in the social scale is above the negro who stands HIGHEST” and undermined appeals from some white elites for “law and order.” If southern whites wanted to “keep nigger in his place,” then they sometimes had no choice but to use violence against “obnoxious” blacks who were determined to thwart white oppression. “The black must submit to the white,” bellowed William P. Beard, the racist, iconoclastic, Bleasite editor of the Abbeville (S.C.) Scimitar, “or the white will destroy.”1 Beard’s jarring assessment of the status of race relations in the South had been prompted by the October 1916 lynching of Anthony Crawford, a wealthy African American landowner from the Western Piedmont town of Abbeville.2 Abbeville had been the home of John C. Calhoun and proudly claimed to be both “the cradle and the grave” of the Confederacy . Abbeville’s storied past was reflected in the majestic oak trees that lined its streets and the stately mansions and manicured lawns of its genteel elite. Beyond the town’s elegant façade, however, was a mill district where working-class whites made no secret of their desire to use violence to intimidate blacks. Violence against “uppity” African Americans was commonplaceinAbbeville.“Whenaniggergetsimpudent,”commented a local gin manager, “we stretch him out and paddle him a bit.”3 The 104 a deed so accursed Abbeville elite did nothing to counteract such attitudes, which they regardedasanecessaryevil .Confidentandaggressiveblacksdisturbedthe entire white community and had to be controlled at all costs. Anthony Crawford was a fifty-six-year-old freedman who lived about seven miles from Abbeville on the Little River, where he owned more than 400 acres of prime cotton land.4 As a boy, Anthony Crawford had helped his father farm a small cotton patch, which became the basis of his future fortune. The young Crawford was ambitious and routinely walked several miles to and from Abbeville to attend school. Over the years, the dapper and determined Crawford transformed his ambition and perseverance into a considerable fortune. In his early twenties, Crawfordpurchasednearly200acresoflandfor$830.Justfiveyearslater in 1888, Crawford bought about 100...