#abbeville

Book 549

Maps of the Heavens

George Sergeant Snyder

Abbeville Press 1984

So, this pretty exciting for me. Less so, I’m guessing, for everyone else. But this is the first book on my last honest-to-goodness, purpose-built bookshelf. Which is not to say that I’m almost done—only that the rest of my books are either on things not designed to hold books or on the floor. It’s the bottom shelf, so it holds some of my tallest books. Most every book on the shelf is at least 14” tall. And as a general rule, the taller my books, the more interesting they are.

"'The day a white man hits me is the day I die," my great-great-grandfather stated early in life. And he did." --Doria Dee Johnson, great-great granddaughter of Anthony Crawford

(This one's gonna go hard, folks.)

On October 21, 1916 in Abbeville, South Carolina, a white mob surrounded, then beat, stabbed, shot, and finally hanged Anthony P. Crawford; a successful Black entrepreneur and farmer. His "crime?" Having the gall to dispute with a white storeowner over the price of cottonseed. Crawford did not fit the stereotype of the poor and easily-intimidated Negro; quite the contrary --he was easily one of the wealthiest and most influential members of the community. Besides raising 13 children with his wife Tebby, among his other accomplishments were his standing in the local Chapel AME church and the ownership of 427 acres of land --easily 10% of all land owned by Negroes in the county-- and was solvent enough to be able to loan money to other farmers between harvests... even the white ones. Not a bad upcoming for a man who'd been born enslaved in 1865.

Word of this crime spread further and to greater public effect, than (sadly) many other lynchings like it --Anthony's status as a wealthy and successful member of the community ensured that even then-governor Richard Manning demanded answers from the local sheriff. There was considerable press interest and the NAACP even sent attorney Roy Nash to investigate, but ultimately to no avail. While there was a preliminary trial hearing, a grand jury failed to indict any of the mob, and most of the Crawford family --and in fact most Black people-- fled Abbeville after blatant intimidation by many of the town's white population. (Among this mass exodus were Lewis Alfred Ellison, father of future author Ralph Waldo Ellison --see Lesson #10 in this series.) Scattered, the family would eventually rediscover one another generations later (mostly by way of the aforementioned AME church), and in 2016 Crawford's descendants solemnly dedicated a historical marker in remembrance of their brutally murdered patriarch.

(Yeah, anyone still hazy on the origins of The Great Migration?)

De passage à Abbeville le 30 mai 2012, mon temps est compté dans cette petite ville aux portes de la Baie de Somme. Je me contente donc de prendre le temps de visiter la collégiale de Saint-Vulfran. Je ne le regrette pas : quel édifice ! C’est le joyau gothique de la cité, qui appartient aujourd’hui à la commune.

Façade de la collégiale Saint-Vulfran