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. The son of Martha and Young Dendy, Norris was college-educated and married with five children at the time of his murder.

While driving a truck transporting picnickers to an Independence Day celebration on Lake Murray, Dendy became involved in an argument with 22-year-old Marvin Lollis, a white man also working as a truck driver, which turned physical when Dendy struck Lollis in the face. He was arrested and placed in jail in Clinton, though he was given little protection because the offense was not considered very serious. Later that night, Dendy was broken out of jail by a group of four white men who were there as part of a larger mob numbering at least one hundred. The men put Dendy into their automobile and later beat and hanged him, causing a fracture near the base of his skull that ultimately killed him. They then transported his body to a churchyard near present-day South Carolina Highway 72, about seven miles outside of Clinton, where he was found the next day by sheriff's deputies.

Five men were charged with the killing, but a July 1934 grand jury failed to indict any of them despite urgings from the NAACP, and Dendy's family was denied a $2,000 claim that ordinarily would have been provided to the families of lynching victims. 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.