Lynching of Norris Dendy

Norris Dendy (May 1900 – July 4 or 5, 1933) was an African-American man who was taken from his jail cell and lynched by a group of white men in Clinton, South Carolina.

Suspected motives have included a beating that was originally not supposed to be fatal and a premeditated killing owing to Dendy's family's financial status compared to some poor whites living around them.

[2] Young was a carpenter at the time of their marriage, and Martha ran a laundry business, largely providing service to nearby Presbyterian College.

In 1924,[3] Young, working as a carpenter and a contractor, built a house outside the part of town where most of the black population lived and received a threatening anonymous letter in response.

[11] They got into an argument—about the "merits of their respective trucks", according to a report by the Commission on Interracial Cooperation[12]—and Dendy struck Lollis in the face,[11] allegedly in response to being called a racial slur,[13] before leaving.

[21] The men beat Dendy before hanging him;[10] after he was dead, they moved his body to a different location, the yard of Sardis Church seven miles away along present-day South Carolina Highway 72,[21] where it was found about twelve hours later by members of the Laurens County Sherriff's Office (LCSO).

[26][27] An April 1935 article in the Pittsburgh Courier posited that the motive was jealousy of the Dendy family's "financial independence" and that the altercation with Lollis was merely a "spark".

[28] This was not unheard of, as it had been recorded before that a lynching was the result, in part, of a black family's financial comfort and reluctance to view themselves as subservient to the poorer whites around them.

[30] Numerous black witnesses to Dendy's kidnapping from jail were threatened into silence or intimidated into not testifying by citizens or police,[19] to the point that some left the state entirely.

[18] In addition, the attack prompted the relocation of the Piedmont Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was scheduled to be held in Clinton on November 29.

[33] The Laurens County grand jury deliberated for about two hours on that day without reaching a decision,[33] but said that it would use the testimony and affidavits in considering the case during their meeting in June of that year.

[25] During that June meeting, the grand jury failed to indict any of the men, instead returning no bill[19] and opining that Dendy's death was due to the actions of an unknown party,[20] in spite of the fact that one of the lynchers reportedly confessed to the crime in writing to state detectives.

[34] In December 1934, Young Dendy filed a $2,000 claim (equivalent to $46,000 in 2023) with the Laurens County board of commissioners for Norris's death, as was standard in state law for recovery from a "proved case" of a lynching, according to The Greenville News.