On December 26, 1921, while much of white America was still in the afterglow of Christmas, Bill McAllister lay dead in Florence County, South Carolina, his body riddled with bullets. His crime was not proven murder, not theft, not rebellion. His real offense was far more dangerous in the Jim Crow South. He was a Black man accused of having intimate relations with a white woman.
In early twentieth-century South Carolina, white supremacy was not merely social custom. It was enforced by law, violence, and terror. Relationships between Black men and white women were treated as existential threats to the racial order. Even rumors could provoke deadly retaliation.
Prior to the killing of McAllister, rumors spread within the local community in the days leading up to Christmas that a white woman was involved with a Black man. When the man was identified as Bill McAllister, he was warned to stay away. The warnings themselves indicate that the matter was already being closely watched and treated as dangerous.
Despite the warnings, Bill McAllister traveled with his friend Lincoln Hickson to the area near the former home of H. B. Lee, about 20 miles from Florence County, to visit the woman. McAllister likely brought Hickson for safety, hoping that having a companion would offer some protection amid the tense atmosphere. Hickson’s presence is consistently noted in surviving accounts, not as a bystander, but as the second target of the attack that followed.
As McAllister and Hickson were leaving the area on December 26, 1921, unknown gunmen opened fire. McAllister was struck and killed.
Hickson was hit by shotgun pellets across his body, suffering multiple wounds. Some pellets entered his mouth and shattered his jaw, leaving him severely injured but alive.
Even with these injuries, Hickson placed McAllister’s body into his buggy and transported it seven miles to his home. There is no record that law enforcement intervened at the scene.
The lynching did not become public through an official investigation. Instead, reports surfaced after Sheriff Gamble of Williamsburg County discussed the incident while seated next to a reporter on a train. Only then did the details reach a wider audience.
When McAllister’s body was examined, a love letter from the white woman he was seeing was found. The contents are not preserved in the record, but its discovery was reported as confirmation of the rumors that had already justified the violence.
Although McAllister was killed by gunfire rather than hanging, the incident is classified as a lynching. The killing was extrajudicial, racially motivated, carried out by unidentified assailants acting with apparent community tolerance, and followed by no meaningful legal consequences.
After the Boxing Day shooting, the white woman connected to the allegations was forced out of the community. She was taken to Kingstree, and later relocated to Hartsville. The record does not indicate that her departure was voluntary.
Following publication of the incident, Magistrate Baldwin of Lake City, South Carolina, investigated the matter. Available documentation does not show that the investigation resulted in arrests, indictments, or identification of the gunmen.
