Lynching victims’ estates were systematically looted through friendly white executors and rigged auctions

Evidence

In the wake of this savage lynching, members of the Crawford family and many hundreds of black people fled Abbeville. According to the AP report, two white men were named the executors of Crawford’s estate, one of whom was Andrew Ferguson, a cousin of the mob’s two ringleaders. Ferguson sold off most of Crawford’s property and walked away with 5,438. Although Crawford’s children inherited their father’s farm, they each received only 200 from the liquidation proceeds. They tried to keep the farm but ultimately forfeited the property when they couldn’t settle a 2,000 balance on a bank loan, even though the farm was valued at 20,000. A white man won the property at a foreclosure auction for $504. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 315

Categorization

• QUESTION: The 20,000 farm sold for 504, and the estate executor was the mob’s kin — the mechanism connecting murder to asset transfer is explicit, worth reconstructing as a named pattern.