How South Carolina history was hijacked to sell the Lost Cause

[TexasTowelie]

Abbeville, S.C. is home to three historic markers that tell varying stories of the South's history
Photo: Dustin Waters


Driving into Abbeville's historic Court Square, just past a 7-Eleven selling live bait and a fluorescent-lit Dollar General, sits a 21-year-old monument declaring that the Confederacy was "in the right" all along. It's Thanksgiving day, 2017. The town square is empty, except for a smiling family staging a holiday photo at the Christmas tree next to the 40-foot granite obelisk touting the Lost Cause.

An exact replica of the county's original Confederate marker erected by the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1906, which was damaged by fire in 1991, Abbeville's current monument recognizes that the Confederacy was born here during one of the first organized meetings of secession in 1860. Just a stone's throw away are two markers, much smaller in size, that tell a deeper story about South Carolina's past.

One, erected by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2016, recounts the lynching of Anthony Crawford. A successful black landowner, Crawford was murdered in 1916 for "cursing a white man" who demanded he sell his cottonseed for less than its worth. Pulled from jail by an angry mob and dragged through town, Crawford was among eight black men lynched in Abbeville County between 1877 and 1950 and one of 185 total victims of racial violence who were lynched across South Carolina during that time.

The other monument of interest in this town square littered with historical markers is far less conspicuous. It sits a few feet high, tucked behind an overgrown shrub near the plaque detailing Crawford's murder. On one side, the slab simply reads "Calhoun."

Read more: https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/how-south-carolina-history-was-hijacked-to-sell-the-lost-cause/Content?oid=13762169