High school football player Emmanuel Crawford escapes child slavery en route to stardom
GROVE, Oklahoma — Emmanuel Crawford didn’t want to get back into the boat.
As a child slave, he didn’t have a choice.
Working mostly on his hands and knees as a toddler, Crawford often bailed water out of a leaky, wooden fishing canoe with a coffee can. Then he was forced into the brown, murky water of Lake Volta, underneath the canoe, to untangle fishing nets from submerged tree branches.
After working dawn to dusk, it was back to a thatched hut where he struggled to sleep on the floor. The next morning — every morning — it was back on the boat.
Crawford, now a standout football player at Grove, Oklahoma, was sold into slavery by his birth parents when he was about 3. They were living in Ghana and were unable to provide for Crawford and likely themselves. For more than two years, he worked in the fishing trade on Ghana’s Lake Volta with other enslaved children.
“The older I get, I start to remember a little bit more,” said Crawford, now 16. “I think God protects me, just giving me little memories.”
Now 6,000 miles and more than a decade away from that life, Crawford is making new memories.
His stellar season at running back has helped lead Grove, in far northeastern Oklahoma, into the playoffs as one of the favorites to win a state championship. His dominant season has helped him become a popular name throughout the Oklahoma high school football community.
Yet his journey from being rescued off Lake Volta in late 2009 to emergence as high school football star is something Crawford didn’t imagine in his wildest dreams.
“I have to have a greater purpose,” he said, “than just football or school.”
Meeting Emmanuel Crawford in Ghana
Something about Emmanuel stood out to Pam and Randy Cope.
Co-founders of the Touch A Life Foundation, the Copes have assisted in saving more than 100 Ghanaian children from slavery, many of them from the child trafficking on Lake Volta.
Ghana is one of the poorest countries in the world, with about 21% of children ages 5 to 17 forced to work in child labor, according to UNICEF. There are an estimated 20,000 children working on Lake Volta for slave masters, though the Ghanaian government is working to eliminate the crisis.
In late 2009, Randy, along with Ghanaian negotiator George Achibra, found Emmanuel during rescue efforts on the lake. After what Emmanuel remembers as a difficult negotiating process, Randy was able to purchase Emmanuel, one of the youngest and sickest kids, from his owner.
It was the first time Emmanuel had seen anyone with white skin.
He was skeptical about getting into their boat until Randy handed him three suckers.
Emmanuel doesn’t remember what flavor those suckers were, but it didn’t matter.
He'd never had candy before.
“I was like, ‘All right, I’m in. I’ll go with you,’” he said.
Touch A Life preferred to keep rescued children in Ghana. Let them grow up and be educated in their home country.
With Emmanuel, the Copes believed he was destined for a life somewhere else.
Their former dentists in Grove, Audrey and Stan Crawford, had expressed interest in adoption. They had five children, four boys and a girl, but when the Copes told them about Emmanuel, Audrey went on the Touch A Life website and watched a video of Emmanuel.
“I immediately asked Pam what I needed to do to adopt him," Audrey said.
After being rescued, Emmanuel was put in an orphanage as the adoption process began. That involved months of paperwork, traveling, and finding his birth parents to approve the adoption, which Emmanuel said they agreed to.
For international adoptions, the birth parents have to be deceased or terminate rights for the process to be approved.
The Crawfords met Emmanuel in January 2010. They flew to Ghana and went to visit him at the orphanage. It wasn’t long before he curled up in Audrey’s lap and fell asleep.
“It was the first thing that felt like home,” Emmanuel said. “It was like, ‘OK, I can finally trust another human being.’”
During another trip to Ghana, the Crawfords picked up Emmanuel from the orphanage and took him back to their hotel. He caught a glimpse of a swimming pool.
He had never seen one. He sped through his meal to jump in.
He went from swimming under a canoe in lake water to getting sick from eating too much before jumping into a pool.
After the Crawfords took six round-trip flights from the United States to Ghana, the adoption was approved.
Emmanuel came home Sept. 17, 2010.
Coming to America
Emmanuel couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.
It was his first time on a plane, but Emmanuel wasn't interested in the landscape below. He didn’t even know the plane had taken off. He was fixated, playing games on the chair-back screen in front of him.
The flight was only the beginning of the many firsts Emmanuel experienced once arriving in the United States.
All things that seemed unimaginable when he was on Lake Volta.
Audrey, who went on her own when the adoption was approved, and Emmanuel dealt with tornadoes in New York City after clearing customs.
Chaos was rampant. Nearly every door in the terminal was open. Flights were canceled.
“It was the most bizarre afternoon,” Audrey said.
After leaving New York, they flew into Arkansas. Before driving home, they stopped at Freddy’s, where Emmanuel had his first hamburger.
“There wasn’t anything left on anyone’s plate because I ate everything,” Emmanuel said.
Early on once home, he would eat everything he could and as much as he could. Coming from a situation where he sometimes didn’t know when his next meal would come, he was conditioned to eat when food was available.
Stan and Audrey bought items in bulk. It took them a while to convince Emmanuel there would always be food, even as he cleared out boxes of granola bars, bushels of fruit and other snacks in one day.
The outdoors is also something Emmanuel fell in love with. He recalls the first time seeing snow, he didn’t know what it was. He asked Audrey, who told him before bundling him up and sending him outside.
It didn’t take long for him to build a snowman and have snowball fights with his brothers.
Finding his love of football
Emmanuel's first day home was a Friday.
On Monday, the Crawfords helped him join a family friend’s youth soccer team. Soccer is Ghana’s most popular sport, so it was something he and other kids did during the day at the orphanage.
Emmanuel quickly got in trouble because of his physical style of play, including slide tackling others to get the ball. Growing up as one of the smaller kids but always bursting with energy, Emmanuel had learned to be physical and afraid of nothing to keep up with those bigger than him, and that made him competitive.
Soccer didn’t last long, but then, there were stints with baseball, basketball and swimming.
Football started in fifth grade.
Audrey and Stan didn’t want Emmanuel playing the sport until at least seventh grade because of football’s physical nature.
Emmanuel wasn’t afraid.
A neighbor, Shawn Anderson, coached a little league football team. He saw Emmanuel’s skills and wanted him to join, so Emmanuel came up with a plan.
“I told him that [Audrey] liked chocolate, so he came over that night with some to help convince her,” Emmanuel said.
The coaxing worked.
Anderson put Emmanuel at running back to start, and he fell in love with it. Early on, he watched YouTube highlights of random college football games to pump himself up. From his first game, he seemed bound for success.
“He was so heads and tails above everybody else,” Stan said.
Being in Grove, Emmanuel also spent plenty of time on Grand Lake. He considers himself a lake rat. He does a bit of everything, from swimming to jet skiing to wake surfing.
It was a big change from what he endured in Ghana.
“Being on a lake where it was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to be a slave on this lake. This is just a lake where people go to have fun’ was crazy,” Emmanuel said. “Now, the lake is just a place where I go to ease my mind.
“I've always found it just kind of ironic that I started out my life on a lake as a slave and now it's like I can't get off the lake.”
More: Breaking down the 2021 Class 4A Oklahoma high school football playoff bracket
'He could run for mayor right now'
Each Friday morning, students at Grove High School gather before class to have a prayer group. The final person to pray is Emmanuel.
It’s a position he didn’t shy away from when the group started earlier this year. Emmanuel is open about his faith, how God saved him from his situation in Ghana, led him to Grove and allowed him to have his athletic abilities. He’s a devout Christ follower, and he’s not afraid to share his story or testimony with teammates, classmates or those around town.
His leadership on and off the field has helped him become a prominent figure in Grove. Emmanuel is always smiling and is popular among the younger kids, who shout his name as they walk by the football team’s practice.
“He could run for mayor right now,” Stan said. “He has got a pretty good fan club, and it’s growing. I’ve never seen the community turn out for Grove football like they have this year.”
His story resonates.
Last week during Grove’s final regular-season contest at Miami, he met with a young football player from Carl Junction, Missouri, who is also from Ghana. The younger player, who has a prosthetic leg, is a quarterback and wanted to meet Emmanuel because they came from similar situations. Another Ghanaian adoptee from Alva also showed up.
Emmanuel’s play is a big reason for his rise in popularity.
During the regular season, he helped Grove to a 9-1 record and a district title. The 5-foot-10, 165-pound junior star rushed for nearly 2,100 yards and 37 touchdowns, both of which rank nationally. He’ll attempt to continue his stellar season Friday, as Grove hosts Fort Gibson in the opening round of the Class 4A playoffs.
His play has started to garner recruiting attention, too. Oklahoma State is in contact with Emmanuel, and more colleges are beginning to show interest every week.
“He’s just a special kid,” Grove coach Ron Culwell said. “He’s an unbelievable student, athlete and kid. I wouldn’t change a thing about him.”
Emmanuel still carries his upbringing with him today. He has partially calloused knees from his time on Lake Volta, a stark reminder of where he came from. As he’s gotten older, Emmanuel has started to do more research on child slavery in Ghana. He wants to have an adult perspective on it.
Emmanuel looked into why parents sell their kids and how much they sell for. He also found out parents often sell the oldest child so they can provide for the younger ones, which made him wonder whether he has any siblings back in Ghana.
Emmanuel has forgiven his birth parents, though he has no recollection of them. Still, he knows he wouldn’t be in Grove had it not been for their decision.
He understands his story is unique, but he wants to use his past to help others.
“It has helped me more than I thought it would, just maturing and being able to talk to people about it,” Emmanuel said.
Every Friday night, he gives people a reason to talk. His name is growing in Grove and across the state. It's because of his game and his story.
But really, for Emmanuel Crawford, his story has just begun.