Samuel S. Crayton (1916 - 1997)

Samuel S. Crayton was born in Omaha, Georgia on February 15, 1916, the son of Noble and Rachelle (Hanley) Crayton. Omaha, Georgia, on the Alabama border and over 100 miles from Atlanta, was a tiny community which even today still has less than 120 people. Sam’s childhood was marked by growing up close to his family in the small segregated community and he learned a lot from his father who was a minister.

Like so many African Americans of his generation, Sam decided to make the trek north to escape the segregated society down south and to look for employment opportunities which were more available in the north. He moved his family to Jersey City, New Jersey and soon found employment in New York City. There he worked as a press operator for a corrugated box company in Brooklyn where his work ethic and creative ideas in the workplace led him to be “considered an expert in the container industry.” When that company bought an interest in the A&P Corrugated Box Corporation in Lowell, the executives asked Sam to come to Massachusetts during the Spring of 1940 in order to set up a new machine and train a worker how to use it.

A few months after Sam had gone back to New York, the company asked him again to return to Lowell to run the machine, as the worker he had trained never really grasped the process. Sam arrived in November of 1940 and eventually moved his growing family to the city.

After just a few years in Lowell, Sam saw the need to get black families in the area organized for social and political purposes. Although Lowell had a much smaller African American community than in New Jersey, Sam still knew there was strength in numbers. He first formed the Lowell Community Social Club as a place for African Americans to get together and socialize after a long days work and later he helped to restart the local NAACP chapter.

Sam was a member of the Lions Club and served on the board of directors of Goodwill Industries, the Lowell Plan, the Greater Lowell Mental Health Association and the International Institute. At Community Teamwork, Incorporated Sam served as the organization’s president for a number of years. Sam was also instrumental in having a radio program around black issues on Lowell station WLLH and was a strong advocate for having press coverage from the local radio and newspaper media.

Sam lived out his last few years after retiring in 1987 surrounded by his family and continuing to see the local branch of the NAACP be a strong force in community leadership. He passed away on July 15, 1997 at the age of 81 and was buried at Lowell Cemetery.

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