From Grandpa to Emmett to Trayvon,
the trajectory of lynching history has shifted over time in America.
I am the great-great-granddaughter of Anthony Crawford
who was lynched October 21st 1916.
At my aunt's home, which was where we had our Thanksgiving dinners and Christmases,
she owned the largest photograph of him in a permanent space over the dinner table,
and they always pointed to him and said,
"Walk with a sense of pride because Grandpa Crawford
stuck up for his rights to the time of his death."
As a child, when we were told the story
of Grandpa Crawford, he's like a king almost.
We were told that he was born enslaved and had worked his way up to owning property, and was wealthy.
He started a school for the black children of Abbeville.
He was the president of the Black Masons of South Carolina,
and at the time of his death,
Grandpa Crawford owned 427 acres of prime cotton land.
So one day in 1916,
it's a Saturday morning,
Grandpa Crawford went to town to sell cotton seed,
and they offered him 85 cents per unit.
It was worth more.
He said, "Give me my damn cotton seed back,"
and was arrested for cursing a white man.
Word had gotten around town that Anthony Crawford had started acting uppity,
and so about 400 people gathered,
taking Grandpa out of the jail.
They stabbed him, beat him,
tied him to the back of the buggy, and drove that around town to the county fairgrounds.
They hung him there and riddled his body with 200 bullets.
Last thing he said was:
"I thought I was a good citizen, and give my bankbook to my children."
The family tried to retrieve the body
and were told to leave it there.
So if you could imagine
your grandfather being at home, eating breakfast with the children,
laughing, and then all of a sudden he's hanging from a tree with 200 bullets in him -
that's a form of terrorism.
And then, there was an ad taken in the newspaper
by white citizens, and they said that the Crawford family needed to leave the state
of South Carolina, otherwise everybody's life was in danger.
My great-great uncle Walter,
Grandpa's oldest son,
wrote Governor Richard I. Manning
and asked him for protection.
Governor Manning wrote back and said while he deplored the lynching, he could not
guarantee our safety.
So my family didn't leave the South:
they were chased away from the South.
We moved to Evanston, Illinois, and not only did the Crawfords leave,
but half of the black population of Abbeville was gone within the next ten years.
I haven't spent a lot of time in the South.
The first time I went to Abbeville was the first time
I could understand what 427 acres looks like,
and that's when I think I got really offended.
That's the day I became an activist.
I came home and I started writing congressmen,
and I'm saying, "Do you know that our family was kicked off this
property for this?"
These are unsolved murders,
and people who benefited from lynchings,
their families are still alive, and they're still benefiting financial
rewards from the land of our ancestors, and it just seems a shame.
So from Grandpa to Emmett to Trayvon,
the trajectory of lynching history has
shifted over time in America.
Because when grandpa was killed in 1916,
there was no charges brought and no trial.
In 1955, Emmett Till's murder,
there was a trial,
but no convictions.
And then Trayvon Martin,
now you have a trial and a not guilty verdict.
So all the time, you have dead black bodies,
and nobody's ever convicted for the murders.
On the 100th anniversary of Grandpa Crawford's lynching,
we went back to Abbeville.
Over 200 family members came from all
over the United States to help unveil the marker dedicated to Grandpa Crawford's lynching.
And I remember Grandpa's granddaughter
- one of the only living grandchildren -
was next to me in a wheelchair,
and when we took the cover off of the marker,
she looked at the picture of him,
I saw her face light up
and I heard her say, "My my my."
And to watch her enjoy that moment,
that meant the world to me.
So the marker being in Abbeville is important because
the story has been denied for so long.
But now, if you go to Abbeville City Hall
to do business, you have to walk right past Anthony Crawford to do it.
You can't bypass him anymore.