Dusty Crutchfield Women's Coalition

The Dusty Crutchfield Women's Coalition was founded by Helen Ladsen immediately after her 2021 Brunswick Georgia Mayoral bid.   The Coalition seeks to educate, organize and lead people from poverty to progress. 

It's initial public effort was as a cosponsor of the Drapetomania Conference hosted in Brunswick Georgia in the Spring of 2022.  

The Womens Coalition takes its name from Loduska 'Dusky' Crutchfield, of Harris County Georgia.  On January 22nd, 1912, Ms. Crutchfield was lynched along with Hamilton Georgia minister Burrell Hardaway, John Moore and Gene Harrington.  Each was a tenant farmer working land owned by Norman Hadley Jr., the wealthy, unmarried nephew of the County Sheriff.  They were hung from a water oak beside the outdoor baptismal font of the black Friendship Baptist Church before their bodies were riddled with over three hundred bullets, one of those shot through Ms. Crutchfield's tongue.

Drapetomania was first discussed in an 1851 address to the Medical Association of Louisiana by Dr. Samual Cartwright  Dr. Cartwright described Drapetomania as a mental illness which led enslaved Africans to flee captivity.  His article on the subject was widely reprinted in journals throughout the South and widely mocked among Abolitionists everywhere. 

After her husband was convicted and imprisoned for his moonshine business, Dusky was compelled by Hadley to move on to his land and to serve as his concubine.  Although she endured this man's sexual predation, she would not bear false witness likely to cost the lives of others.  The Sheriff's nephew had a reputation for the predatory sexual abuse of young black girls in Harris County.  This nephew not satisfied by his access to rape Ms. Crutchfield was also pursuing a 14 year old girl in Minister Hardaway's congregation.  The pastor had spoken out about this from the pulpit urging his congregation to protect their own.  Some have speculated that Hadley may have been murdered by his own uncle, the Sheriff.  But a lynch mob was intent on framing John Moore and Gene Harrington for the crime.  On their second attempt, the sheriff allowed the lynch mob to break his inmates out of the jail.  The mob also gathered Dusky Crutchfield and her pastor.  They sought to compel Dusky Crutchfield to testify against Moore and Harrington.  When she refused they proceeded to lynch her, the two men being framed for the Sheriff's nephew's murder and their pastor.  Offered one last opportunity to save her life in exchange for her testimony which would have justified the frameup and execution, she told the lynch mob, "Pull the rope, white man."