This was very interesting and I've read it about 8 times over the
last few days. And I've shared it another group. I hope that that
is ok. It has always been one of my most favorite songs. And as it
says, the young dylan at the time of writing this song,, he was at/
near the pentacle of his impeccible talent as a songwriter..

This Dylan song gives us so much in return. It is one of his most
important songs ever sung.
..as the article states this very fact, I agree completely.

thanks for sharing it Michael.


ronn./


--- In bringingitallbackhomeclub@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Norville"
<prairiesedge@h...> wrote:
>
> From the first listen, this has always been a favorite. And, now
100
> more listens down the road (depending on the days events) it can
> still bring a tear. Injustice rages on, but at least I'm aware
> of "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", thank you Mr. Dylan!
>
> D0wn by that Highwayside-
>
> -Michael '-/
>
>
> "Be aware of the time passing by,
> they say the end it's the wink of an eye"
>
>
>
>
> Life after a lonesome death
>
> On February 9 1963, William Zantzinger, a rich young farmer, struck
> Hattie Carroll, a black barmaid, with his cane. She died that
night;
> he got six months. Her story lives on in Bob Dylan's brilliant
> protest song - but where is Zantzinger now? And did The Lonesome
> Death of Hattie Carroll really change anything? Ian Frazier reports
>
> Friday February 25, 2005
> The Guardian
>
>
> Do you know the Bob Dylan song The Lonesome Death of Hattie
Carroll?
> Put it on now and listen to it, if you happen to have it on a CD or
> an album. If you don't, or you don't remember it, it's about a
young
> society swell named William Zantzinger who, in 1963, killed a black
> serving woman named Hattie Carroll at a ball at a Baltimore hotel
by
> striking her with a cane. Dylan was just 22 when he wrote it, and
the
> lyrics show him at his high-energy, internal-rhyme-spinning peak:
>
>
> William Zanzinger [sic] killed poor Hattie Carroll
> With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger ...
> [She] Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
> That sailed through the air and came down through the room,
> Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle ...
> Zantzinger's motive, Dylan sings, was that he "just happened to be
> feelin' that way without warnin'". When Zantzinger came to trial,
> charged with first-degree murder, the judge "spoke through his
cloak,
> so deep and distinguished", and gave Zantzinger a six-month
sentence.
> At this last injustice, the song ends:
>
>
> But you who philosophise disgrace
> And criticise all fears,
> Bury the rag deep in your face,
> For now is the time for your tears.
> The song contains errors of fact. Dylan misspells the perpetrator's
> name, omitting the letter T - perhaps deliberately, out of
contempt,
> or perhaps to emphasise the Snidely Whiplash hissing of the Zs. And
> Zantzinger's actual arrest and trial were more complicated than the
> song lets on.
>
> Police arrested him at the ball for disorderly conduct - he was
> wildly drunk - and for assaults on hotel employees not including
> Hattie Carroll, about whom they apparently knew nothing at the
time.
> When Carroll died at Mercy Hospital the following morning,
Zantzinger
> was also charged with homicide. The medical examiner reported that
> Carroll had hardened arteries, an enlarged heart, and high blood
> pressure; that the cane left no mark on her; and that she died of a
> brain haemorrhage brought on by stress caused by Zantzinger's
verbal
> abuse, coupled with the assault. After the report, a tribunal of
> Maryland circuit court judges reduced the homicide charge to
> manslaughter. Zantzinger was found guilty of that, and of assault -
> but not of murder.
>
> The judges probably thought they were being reasonable. They
rejected
> defence claims that Carroll's precarious health made it impossible
to
> say whether her death had been caused, or had simply occurred
> naturally. The judges considered Zantzinger an "immature" young man
> who got drunk and carried away, but they nevertheless held him
> responsible for her death, saying that neither her medical history
> nor his ignorance of it was an excuse. His cane was considered a
> weapon capable of assault, though it was merely a toy one he got at
a
> farm fair.
>
> According to the New York Herald Tribune, the judges kept
> Zantzinger's sentence to only six months because a longer one would
> have required that he serve it in state prison, and they feared the
> enmity of the largely black prison population would mean death for
> him. He served his time in the comparative safety of the Washington
> county jail. The judges also let him wait a couple of weeks before
> beginning his sentence, so he could bring in his tobacco crop. Such
> dispensations were not uncommon, apparently, for offenders who had
> farms.
>
> Nowadays, I like to listen to Dylan's old protest songs. Something
> about them suits a current need, with commercial radio so jingly
and
> dead and Dylan himself doing the music for Victoria's Secret
lingerie
> ads. He must be proud of The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll;
since
> the song came out in 1964, he has included it on a greatest hits CD
> (Biograph) and on a live CD. The song is also part of his touring
> repertoire, an exposure that has brought it many listeners in
recent
> years. On the long and sad list of victims of racial violence, most
> names are forgotten after the news moves on. Dylan's poetry has
> caused Hattie Carroll's name, and the sorrow and true lonesomeness
of
> her death, to stick in some people's minds.
>
> Dylan describes Hattie Carroll as a 51-year-old maid who waited on
> tables, took out garbage, emptied ashtrays and "never sat once at
the
> head of the table". He mentions that she had borne 10 children. Of
> Zantzinger, he says:
>
>
> William Zanzinger, who at 24 years,
> Owns a tobacco farm of 600 acres
> As I listened, I noticed the tense of that verb. The Lonesome Death
> was perhaps Dylan's most journalistic song, nearly contemporary
with
> the events it chronicles. Hattie Carroll died on February 9;
> Zantzinger went to jail on September 15; Dylan recorded the song in
> New York City on October 23, all in 1963. The immediacy of
> that "owns" got me wondering about the actual event, and about its
> consequences working themselves out through time.
>
> For example, William Zantzinger: What happened to him? Does he own
> that farm today? Zantzinger is, it turns out, an amazing guy. In
the
> semi-rural part of Maryland where he still lives, many people know
> his name. If you mention him to someone working in property, the
> antiques business, the legal profession or law enforcement, you get
a
> reaction. People don't want to talk about him, or they do, or they
> want their names left out of it, or they shake their heads and
laugh;
> they never have to be told who he is. Many say he's a wonderful
> person, always polite and smiling, a good friend. Because Dylan's
> song made him a "story", in the news sense, reporters come to
Charles
> County, Maryland every so often to see what Zantzinger is up to
now.
> They are usually surprised, as I was, that he is hard to summarise.
>
> When Zantzinger got out of jail in early 1964, he returned to his
> family and farm. He had a wife and two young boys. (His wife, Jane,
> had been charged with assaulting a policeman at the ball.) The farm
> is called West Hatton. Its main house, a three-story brick mansion,
> has pillars and a porch on the side facing the Wicomico river. A
> veteran of the Revolutionary war built the house in about 1790.
Both
> of Zantzinger's parents also lived on the farm; his father could
> trace his ancestry from the earliest white settlers of Maryland,
and
> his mother from a governor of Maryland. Neighbours of the
Zantzingers
> owned enough land that you could ride to hounds on it. Zantzinger
> loved foxhunting, and some of the 1963 news articles identified him
> as a "huntsman". Yet the Zantzingers were country gentry - he
worked
> his farm alongside his employees, and he drank with the locals,
black
> and white, in the nearby bars.
>
> At some point, Zantzinger sold the farm and got into real estate.
> Notoriety did not pursue him, and his name stayed out of the paper
> until it began to appear regularly in the notices of Charles County
> property owners who were delinquent with their taxes. In 1986,
> because of the back taxes, the county took possession of some
> ramshackle rental houses he owned in a neighbourhood called
Patuxent
> Woods.
>
> What Zantzinger did next got his name back in the news. He knew
that
> the county now owned the properties, but the renters, all poor and
> black, did not know. Counting on a lack of attention all around, he
> simply went on collecting rents as before. Even more enterprising,
> when tenants fell behind on their rent, he filed complaints against
> them and took them to court. The county court, in calm and
> bureaucratic ignorance, heard the cases. And to put the cap on it,
he
> won.
>
> Eventually, local authorities caught up with him. In 1991, a
> sheriff's deputy arrested Zantzinger on charges that included fraud
> and deceptive business practices. A number of newspapers, the
> Washington Post among them, did stories about this latest chapter
in
> the Zantzinger saga. The houses he had been renting were such
> disasters - run-down shacks without plumbing or running water -
that
> they embarrassed the county and gave traction to local fair-housing
> advocates. All the same, a few tenants came forward to speak up for
> Zantzinger, saying that without him they would be living on the
> street. When the judge sentenced him to 18 months on work-release
in
> the county jail, 2,400 hours of community service and about $62,000
> in penalties and fines, there were people in the courtroom who
cried.
>
> Zantzinger reportedly now lives on a farm in neighbouring St Mary's
> County. People say he's had a few health problems; he's a big man,
> 6ft tall and heavy, and he is 65. They say he still owns a lot of
> rental properties, some as run-down as Patuxent Woods. (He doesn't
> talk to reporters, so I never found out for sure.) Candice Quinn
> Kelly, a former housing activist in La Plata, Maryland, told me: "I
> was on the other side from Zantzinger in the Patuxent Woods
> situation. In fact, it was our organisation that uncovered his
fraud
> to begin with. Maybe I've mellowed or sold out, but I don't see
> things as clear-cut as I did then. Billy Zantzinger provides
housing
> to marginal folks nobody's going to give a lease to, because they
> don't have a job or a rent deposit or a bank account or whatever. I
> learned that you can offer people tons of help and they still can't
> get out of poverty. Billy rents to those people anyway. Since
> Patuxent Woods, I've met him and talked to him a couple of times,
and
> I feel strange saying this, but Billy Zantzinger is really a very
> nice man."
>
> In Baltimore, 70 miles to the north, friends and acquaintances of
> Hattie Carroll don't agree. Carroll lived in Cherry Hill, a lower-
> middle-class black neighbourhood, and attended Gillis Memorial
> Christian Community Church. People there remember Hattie as a
quiet,
> well-dressed woman, tall and poised, with good taste in hats. She
> sang in the church's over-45 choir and was a member of the Flower
> Guild, which does floral displays for the altar and other projects
of
> church beautification. Away from work, at least, Hattie Carroll
seems
> not to have fit the picture of the lowly person Dylan described.
Few
> people I talked to at the church knew that her death had been the
> subject of a widely played protest song.
>
> I stopped by the church one day just as the noon service ended. The
> minister, the Reverend Dr Theodore C Jackson Jr, was making some
> final exhortations, boosted by an organ's repeated chords. In the
> parish hall, still glowing from his preaching, he told me that he
had
> been away at a seminary when Hattie Carroll died. Then he
introduced
> me to two longtime parishioners, Dorothy Johnson and Mildred
Jessup.
> Both are preachers - the Reverend Johnson for 30 years, and the
> Reverend Jessup for 28. Both knew Hattie Carroll.
>
> They sat with me for a while in the church's library and talked. "I
> remember that Hattie went to work at the hotel that day, and later
> word came back that she'd been struck with a cane," said
> Johnson. "And right after that we heard that she had died.
Everybody
> in the church was very upset. It was a terrible blow. She had a
huge
> funeral, people filling the church to the doors and hundreds more
> standing on the street. A sad, sad day."
>
> "I wonder what kind of respect did that man have for people? What
> kind of respect did he have for ladies?" asked Jessup. "He wasn't
> thinking about people at all. He was acting under the slave
> mentality."
>
> "Hattie's family suffered so, her children, after she died," added
> Johnson. "They don't go to this church anymore. Four of them, I
> think, became Muslims. One daughter ended up in a mental
institution.
> But whatever you cause by word and by deed, it's all comin' back to
> you."
>
> "If I was that man's nurse - I used to be a nurse at Johns Hopkins -

> I would give him so much prayer to think about that he'd be
> miserable," said Jessup.
>
> I asked the reverends if they thought God would forgive Zantzinger.
>
> "You see, you are not your own," Johnson said. "You belong to God.
> God gives you agape love - deep, unconditional, fatherly love. And
> with God, all things are possible. Didn't he forgive Peter, who
> denied him three times? Now, if the man who killed Hattie Carroll
is
> willing to repent, and if he is really godly sorry for what he did -

> and God knows if you are truly godly sorry - I know God will
forgive."
>
> "How about you?" I asked. "Could you forgive him?"
>
> "Yes, I believe I could," said Johnson. "I've forgiven people that
> did worse than he's done."
>
> "For myself, I don't know about that," said Jessup. "Things may be
> possible for God that are not possible for me. But I will tell you
> one thing. Because of what happened to Hattie Carroll, I have a
> phobia about canes to this day. I don't like to even see 'em, and I
> can't stand when people be foolin' with 'em. Just don't be bringin'
> no canes around me."
>
> According to press accounts of Zantzinger's trial, he and his wife,
> Jane, arrived at the dance, a charity event called the Spinsters'
> Ball, at the Emerson Hotel on Friday evening, February 8 1963. He
was
> in top hat, white tie and tails - attire with which a cane is
> optional. Unlike other guests, Zantzinger didn't check his cane at
> the door because, as he said: "I was having lots of fun with it,
> tapping everybody." Tapping turned to hitting; a bellboy named
George
> Gessell said Zantzinger struck him on the arm, and a waitress named
> Ethel Hill said Zantzinger argued with her and struck her several
> times across the buttocks.
>
> At about 1:30am, he ordered a drink from Hattie Carroll, one of the
> barmaids. When she didn't bring it immediately, he cursed at her.
> Carroll replied: "I'm hurrying as fast as I can." Zantzinger
said: "I
> don't have to take that kind of shit off a nigger," and struck her
on
> the shoulder with the cane. Soon after, Carroll said: "I feel
deathly
> ill, that man has upset me so." She then collapsed and was taken to
> the hospital.
>
> "What makes it hard to bear was that no one at the party challenged
> him, no one stopped him," Jessup said. "He was bold enough to
behave
> like this in the presence of many people, and not one of them
> intervened. Maybe they had connections to him, maybe they came for
> business, or their hands were tied by who he was. But not one of
> those people stood up for her."
>
> I spoke to Bobby Phelps, a friend of Zantzinger's since
> childhood. "Can you imagine waking up from a drunk to find out
you'd
> done something like that?" he asked. We were talking on the front
> porch of the post office in Mount Victoria, a hamlet just up the
road
> from Zantzinger's old farm. "I'd've probably blown my brains out if
> it had been me. And what I really can't understand is, when Billy
> started getting crazy at the party, why somebody didn't just kick
his
> ass for him and throw him out on his ear.
>
> "You think about it and you feel bad for everyone," Phelps went
> on. "Billy is somebody I would trust with my life. Billy didn't
hate
> black people - he used to sit with them here in my bar and drink
with
> them. A coloured woman that used to work for the Zantzingers told
me
> that Mr Zantzinger - Billy's father - was pacing the floor and
> saying, 'How could my boy have done such a thing?' His parents were
> just devastated. What a hell of a sad thing that was, that Hattie
> Carroll killing. You look back and wonder: how in hell did that all
> happen?"
>
> Zantzinger was sentenced on August 28 1963. As it happened, that
was
> the day of the march on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr
> delivered his "I have a dream" speech. The New York Times, the
> Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun all ran brief stories about
> the sentencing; none mentioned that anybody objected to the
lightness
> of the sentence.
>
> All three papers devoted pages and pages to the march; and it is
> striking, to a reader four decades on, how blind (for want of a
> better word) the coverage all was. What comes through in the
stories
> about the march is a vast sense of relief - shared, presumably, by
> the reporters, the papers' management and their readership - that
the
> 200,000 or more assembled "Negroes" hadn't burned Washington to the
> ground. All three papers used the adjective "orderly" in their
> headlines; all reported prominently on President Kennedy's praise
for
> the marchers' politeness and decorum. The Post and the Sun gave
small
> notice to Dr King, and less to what he said. Neither made much of
the
> phrase "I have a dream". Only James Reston of the Times understood
> that he had witnessed a great work of oratory, but even his story
> veered into brow-wiping at the good manners of the marchers.
>
> Listening to The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll today, you can
hear
> Dylan shouting against exactly this blindness. The song he wrote
took
> a one-column, under-the-rug story and played it as big as it
deserved
> to be. Dylan's voice sounds so young, hopeful, unjaded,
> noncommercial - so far from the Victoria's Secret world of today.
> Even the song's title is well chosen: Before I went to Carroll's
> church, I had not quite understood why her death was "lonesome".
But
> of course, as Rev Jessup noted: "Not one of those people stood up
for
> her." In a party full of elegant guests, Hattie Carroll was on her
> own.
>
> If it weren't for television and videotape, we would not know how
> powerful the march on Washington, or Dr King's speech, really was.
> And if it weren't for Dylan, nothing more would have been said
about
> Hattie Carroll.
>
> · Reprinted with permission from Mother Jones magazine, ©
2005,
> Foundation for National Progress.
>
> The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
>
>
> William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
> With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
> At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.
> And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
> As they rode him in custody down to the station
> And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder.
> But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
> Take the rag away from your face.
> Now ain't the time for your tears.
> William Zanzinger, who at 24 years
> Owns a tobacco farm of 600 acres
> With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
> And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,
> Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
> And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling,
> In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking.
> But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
> Take the rag away from your face.
> Now ain't the time for your tears.
> Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
> She was 51 years old and gave birth to 10 children
> Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
> And never sat once at the head of the table
> And didn't even talk to the people at the table
> Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
> And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level,
> Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
> That sailed through the air and came down through the room,
> Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle.
> And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.
> But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
> Take the rag away from your face.
> Now ain't the time for your tears.
> In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
> To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
> And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
> And that even the nobles get properly handled
> Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
> And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom,
> Stared at the person who killed for no reason
> Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'.
> And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
> And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance,
> William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence.
> Oh, but you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
> Bury the rag deep in your face
> For now's the time for your tears.
>
> · By Bob Dylan. © 1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music