On January 1, 1897, in the small community of Magnolia, located in Sumter County, South Carolina, an African American man named Grant Davis was tragically killed during a violent outbreak. The incident began on a Friday when a man named Simon Cooper, who would later be described by locals as a desperado, initiated a disturbance in the town. Armed with a pistol, Cooper discharged his weapon indiscriminately into a gathering, striking several individuals.
During this chaotic shooting spree, Davis was shot and killed, while at least five other people sustained gunshot wounds of varying severity.
After killing Davis, Cooper reloaded his weapon and fired shots into the home of a local white widow before fleeing the immediate scene. He reportedly traveled several miles to a nearby residence where he forcibly took a double-barreled shotgun, further arming himself. For days following the murder of Davis, Cooper terrorized the community and managed to evade law enforcement. Residents were reportedly hesitant to intervene initially, with some accounts suggesting that local authorities failed to arrest Cooper immediately because the violence was initially confined to the black community.
The situation escalated when Cooper returned to the area and was implicated in the brutal murders of the Wilson family, a local white family. This subsequent crime ignited a massive manhunt involving a posse of citizens determined to capture him. Cooper was eventually tracked down to a house belonging to Jake Dargan. When the posse surrounded the building and riddled it with bullets, Cooper was forced to surrender. Although he was briefly taken into custody, he was ultimately killed by the group of men who had pursued him, ending his spree of violence without a formal trial or conviction for the death of Grant Davis or his other victims.
