POSTED BY JAE JONES - JANUARY 9, 2016

... Crawford learned to read and write in a small school in town. After his father’s death, he inherited the land and increased the acreage by making further purchases over the years.

By 1916, it is said that Crawford had over 400 acres of land. Known for being one of the richest black men in Abbeville County, he gave land to his children and allowed them to build homes close by ...

On October 21, 1916, Crawford .. loaded up two loads of cotton and headed to W. D Barksdale’s store. He had a disagreement with the owner, a white man, over the price offered for his cotton. After the agreement, one of the Barksdale’s employees followed Crawford out of the store and struck him on the head with the handle to an axe. Crawford called for help, after which he was arrested, most likely for his own protection, as a mob of angry whites was already beginning to accumulate.

Crawford was held in jail briefly was later released on a $15 bail. After Crawford was released, a white mob was waiting and chased him into a nearby cotton mill. He fought for his life and struck one of the white men with a hammer. Crawford was then beaten and stabbed several times. He was again arrested, and the sheriff told the men that he would most likely die from his wounds ...

https://blackthen.com/anthony-p-crawford-the-lynching-of-one-of-the-richest-black-men-in-abbeville-south-carolina/

Difference between many martyrs and and a hero is that many martyrs die not for doing anything noteworthy, but just for living. A hero does something.

Xian martyrs and even some Muslim martyrs are a bit different: They're viewed as defending the faith or their people and dying for that, even if the PTB responsible for their deaths view them with marked indifference or even say they die for doing bad things. For example, for preaching another king or stabbing an old Jewish woman. Such martyrs may be asymmetrically perceived, but they can still contribute to something that can be viewed as a positive: defending one's people, maintaining the faith.

There were many Xians and Muslim killed whose death was of absolutely no importance because they just died. Some died not because of their faith, but just because they were in the wrong place. Xians like those killed by ash-Shabaab in Kenya, killed for marginally killed their faith, aren't really martyrs in the usual sense. They did nothing heroic except they failed to recite the shahada or be able to recite bits of the Qur'aan. That's pretty thin gruel for meriting any importance to be given to their martyrdom. At most their martyrdom will be overlooked as just another murder, a word added to their eulogy and quickly passed over and forgotten. At worst, their martyrdom will be used to foment divisiveness and rancor against Muslims, as a symbol of eternal Muslim hatred and oppression. That sort of exalting a non-act to symbol as a means of perpetuating division or establishing authority or grievance tends to be what you get in honor societies stuck with a strong sense of misplaced humiliaited and a strong sense of division and antagonism, and it usually prevents solutions. So in Palestine, it's easy to be a celebrated martyr. Do something wrong or just be in the wrong place and you get great honor, not because of what you did but because it helps to show how horrible those on the other side of the dividing line are. Such was Europe at times in the Middle and Dark Ages. And commoners until Enlightenment thought managed to make inroads.

By: AP | Abbeville | Updated: October 20, 2016 11:52 pm

In this small South Carolina town near the Georgia line, where some say the Confederacy was born and died, descendants of a man lynched 100 years ago are erecting a downtown memorial to him and other black men killed by white mobs after the Civil War. Abbeville City Council authorized the marker ...

“Most of life is generational. Thoughts, attitudes and actions change,” said interim Abbeville City Manager David Krumwiede, who serves a town of 5,200 people where about half are white and half are black.

Crawford’s marker will sit in front of Abbeville’s Opera House in the town’s brick-lined central square. A quarter-mile from there, visitors can find Secession Hill, where locals in November 1860 passed the first resolution calling for South Carolina to leave the US. A quarter-mile another way is the Burt-Stark Mansion, where Confederate President Jefferson Davis, fleeing Union troops, met for the last time with his war council in May 1865 and declared all was lost.

“You have all of this Confederate memorabilia, but nothing that talked to the black experience. So we wanted to do something big and bold and outdoors,” said Doria Johnson, Crawford’s great-great-granddaughter. Crawford’s marker recounts his life and also gives an overview of racial violence in South Carolina. It names seven other men lynched in Abbeville County from 1877 to 1950 and says “lynching, or murder at the hands of a mob, became a tool for re-establishing white supremacy and terrorizing the black community” ...

http://indianexpress.com/article/world/world-news/lynching-memorial-anthony-crawford-jefferson-davis-rises-near-revered-confederate-sites-3093884/