A few weeks ago, in the midst of an argument about Jackie Robinson, there arose on this site a side discussion about Hattie Carroll.   I mentioned then that I had written a short piece about the death of Hattie Carroll for a book I am working on, but also that the bit was cut from the book.    Three or four people said they’d like to read the piece, but at the time I couldn’t find it, and decided that I had “written” it only in my head.   But then today, looking for something else, I stumbled across the Hattie Carroll bit, and decided to post it here, since it would otherwise never see the light of day.  

            The information about Zantzinger in the final paragraph comes from an article by Ian Frazier in the November/December, 2004, issue of Mother Jones.

Bill James

December 15, 2008

            Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.  In February, 1963, a heavyset black lady named Hattie Carroll, 52 years old, was working as a serving woman at a party for rich white fops in top hats and tails, the women in finery and lace.   It was long past midnight, and many of the rich white fops were as drunk as skunks and acting silly.   One of the rich white skunks, twenty-three-year-old William Zantzinger, took offense at something Hattie said, and struck her with his cane, not very hard, and made a vile and racist remark (reportedly “I shouldn’t have to take that from a nigger.”)  Overcome with stress and emotion, Hattie became ill almost immediately, and fell into a sickness, which triggered a stroke.  She was dead before the morning.

            Zantzinger was arrested and charged initially with murder.   He was convicted on a lesser charge, and was sentenced to five months in the county jail.   The judge who sentenced Zantzinger expressed the concern that giving him any longer term of imprisonment would require him to serve his time in a state prison, and this might ruin his life. 

            This was never a major national news story, but a few people—some on the left, and more on the right--were outraged at the lenient treatment of a young white man who had caused the death of entirely innocent black woman, the mother of ten children.   Bob Dylan, then 22 years old, wrote a song about it, a very lucid and specific song entitled “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”.   The song mentions Zantzinger by name, repeatedly, and denounces the sentence in clear terms:

                                  ​;  You who philosophize disgrace

                                    And criticize all fears

                                    Tear the rag away from your face

                                    Now ain’t the time for your tears.

                                &nb​sp;   (and finally, at the sentencing)

                                  ​;  Now is the time for your tears.

I revere Bob Dylan, but is that an awful line, or what?   Who in the hell philosophizes disgrace?  Who does this speak to?   Do you think there is anybody in the world who gets up in the morning and says to himself “I think I’ll go philosophize some disgrace today?”   What does that even mean?  It’s not that it is vague in the sense that Dylan is so often marvellously vague and evocative.   It is more like it is specific and really stupid.   It doesn’t sound good, either; it isn’t graceful or lyrical, and Dylan must repeat this ghastly phrase 40 times during the song. . ..Yoo-who-phil-osophize-dis-grace. . .Yoo-who-phil-osophize-dis-grace. . .You-who-phil-osophize-dis-grace, over and over.  What makes it worse is repeating the You Who sound (yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo.)  It’s oarful.

Anyway, what struck me about this is that Dylan and Johnny Cash were of course very good friends, a 40-year friendship that began when Cash, ten years older than Dylan and an established star, wrote a friendly note to the fledgling songwriter on the back of an air sickness bag.  

            But Dylan, who rarely adopts any comprehensible position except that the world is a cauldron of injustice and we should all feel bad about it, has, in this case, adopted a position which is diametrically opposed to a central theme of Cash’s career:  to wit, that people who commit crimes remain human in spite of their offense, that they remain within the reach of God’s grace, and that, as much as we can, we should treat them with compassion and dignity.

            So who is right, in this case:  Dylan, who argued for a more appropriate sentence, or Cash, who would have liked to go to Zantzinger’s cell and sing him a sad song?  Of course five months is a ridiculous sentence under the circumstances, and the judge who issued the sentence knew this, but was forced to choose between undo leniency and undo harshness.   The case is a liberal dilemma:  do you argue for compassion, or do you argue for justice for Hattie Carroll? 

            I would argue that, in the big picture, the judge who sentenced Zantzinger did the right thing.   What Zantzinger did was dispicable—but it was not murder.   (The blow with the cane was not hard enough to cause a bruise, let alone hard enough to cause death.)    Zantzinger, even drunk, did not intend to cause Hattie Carroll’s death, and he didn’t, really; he was the proximate cause, but not the ultimate cause.   It was wiser to give the young fool a chance to rebuild his life than it would have been to give vent to anger in the guise of justice.

            Zantzinger is still alive at this writing.   He went into the real estate business, wound up renting inexpensive housing mostly to black people.  A young woman who worked as a housing advocate for the poor, many years later, was astonished to discover that Zantzinger—then facing charges for housing code violations--was actually a likeable and decent man who was just trying to do what he could to help poor people find housing that they could afford.   It is always best, I think, to remember that wickedness is human.