Anthony Crawford Lynched in South Carolina for Arguing About Cotton Price

Anthony Crawford, one of the most prosperous Black farmers in Abbeville County, South Carolina — owner of 427 acres — was beaten, jailed, and then lynched by a mob of several hundred men after arguing with a white merchant over the price of cottonseed. His family was run out of the county and forced to sell their land at distressed prices. The lynching illustrated how economic success by Black individuals was itself treated as a provocation, and how violence was used to suppress Black economic independence.