Emma Hamilton Dancing

George Williamson Crawford was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1877. He attended Tuskegee Institute and graduated from Talladega College before attending Yale. In 1903, he graduated from Yale Law School, where he was awarded the prestigious Townsend Prize for oratory. Crawford’s achievement, which included $100 and the honor of speaking at graduation, was covered in newspapers across the country.

In 1903, Crawford was appointed clerk of New Haven Probate Court. Crawford worked in private practice in New Haven from 1907 to 1954, when he was appointed corporation counsel for the City of New Haven, the first Black person to hold this office. He stepped down in 1962. He had also served as vice chairman of the city’s housing authority.

Crawford was a leader in civil rights work locally and nationally. He was a member of the “Niagara Movement,” an early civil rights organization and forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A close associate of the intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, Crawford participated in the groundbreaking 1916 conference organized by Du Bois and the NAACP at Troutbeck, Amenia, New York. He served on the national board of the NAACP and, in 1917, was instrumental in establishing the Greater New Haven branch.

Crawford was a national leader of the Prince Hall Freemasonry, the oldest African American masonic organization, which promoted Black rights, uplift, and fraternity. In 1914, he published a book, Prince Hall and His Followers: Building a Monograph on the Legitimacy of Negro Masonry, and was a member of several other fraternal organizations. A longtime member of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church and a founder of the Dixwell Community House, Crawford served on the boards of Howard University and, for over fifty years, of Talladega College. His daughter, Charlotte Crawford Watkins, received her Ph.D. in English from Yale in 1937. Crawford died in 1972.