Broken Necks/A Nigger Who Was Hanged

After I had talked to him awhile in his cell I realized that he owed his impending death to his sideburns and his van dyke. They had crystalized the fatal illusion of his greatness.

A nigger about to be hanged is as a rule less interesting than a white man in a similar predicament. Mystery and terror seem not to denude the black of his character, but merely to accentuate it. Under their influence he grows mystical and tuneful. Emotion does not twist his face into dramatic awkwardness. Awaiting death he becomes like a child, graceful, poignant and expectant.

With the white man, the character changes are more vivid. He is wrenched out of the materialistic, surfaces within which he lives and plunged into a character foreign to him. Terror and death are things he forgot ages ago. He finds no subtle affinity with his fate. Until the moment he drops through the gallows trap he struggles pitifully in a nightmare.

When I left the black in his cell I wondered if he were insane. Yet to label illusion insanity is a wholesale evasion. The man had been educated in American schools. He had started out to be a physician. His soul had not kept pace with his intellect. In a curious way he had become awed of himself, of his learning and of the sideburns and van dyke that decorated his black face.

Gradually a duality had developed. He had begun referring to himself in the third person. He felt fearful and puzzled of this thing that was in his head—thought. His soul was like a naive face peering out of a dark and familiar wilderness. It watched this other thing striding authoritatively through a strange world. It watched men become respectful to this thing. It noted how there was a voice and a manner, a miraculous collection of words and ideas which the world deferentially greeted as Dr. Samuel Williams.

Nothing would have happened had it not been for this naive face peering out of the dark. But when Dr. Williams attired himself in a frock coat and a stiff white shirt and patent leather shoes, and when he turned his keen eyes and aristocratic beard to the mirror, the naive one in a transport of adulation began to whisper.

The adulation was too much for Dr. Williams. At first he was content to pose and preen before this awed and murmuring one. But slowly a curious thing happened. The soul of Dr. Williams tip-toed out of its exile and took possession of the frock coat, the van dyke and the strange thing in his head—thought. And there was no longer a separate Dr. Williams—a clever, shrewd and learned man. There was instead a gibbering and exultant noise behind an incongruous exterior. The noise proclaimed, "I am Prince Mulbo of Abyssinia, a man of royal blood. I will lead my people back to the dark and familiar place where I belong."

Things happened rapidly after this. Dr. Samuel Williams, who had been a convincing exterior, vanished rather swiftly. In his place walked an Abyssinian Prince, exuding opulent phrases and making regal gestures with the frock coat, the sideburns and the van dyke.

The doctor’s friends were not unduly surprised. A few negro business and professional men shook their heads dubiously. But the others responded excitedly to the transformation. They pointed out that Dr. Williams was merely using his great learning and genius for leadership in a new way. And thousands of them exultantly enrolled under his banner—for he had a banner—a colored bit of bunting which he identified as the flag of Abyssinia.

It was while marching under this banner in South State street that the trouble happened. The Prince was riding on a horse and to the frock coat he had added other regalia—medals, ribbons and royal haberdashery. A group of U.S. marines appeared. The police had received instruction to break up the parade. Fanaticism was considered dangerous in the neighborhood.

It was the Prince who started the firing. Astride his horse and giving vent to mysterious and exultant war cries he blazed away at the uniforms of the enemy. There were several killed.

I watched the Prince of Abyssinia when they led him into the towering, slot-like chamber of the County Jail in which the scaffold is from time to time erected. He was dressed in his frock coat. His van dyke had been carefully trimmed. He wore no collar—a necessary physiological formality.

When he walked up the steps to the scaffold I noted that he seemed somewhat surprised. His eyes looked with a certain naive questioning at the scene.

His manner was restrained and apologetic as if he were an interloper. He regarded the sheriff with polite curiosity and when anyone whispered near him he turned quickly and stared at the person.

It was obvious that there was no Dr. Williams, nor even an Abyssinian Prince. The soul of the man that had been masquerading under the awesome exterior of the frock coat and van dyke had fled back to its origin. And now it was again peering naively out of the dark and familiar place in which it lived. It was watching something happen, something with which it had no connection. They were doing something to the awesome one who used long words and made magnificent gestures. They were fixing a rope about his neck.

"Have you anything you wish to say?" inquired the sheriff.

The naive and bewildered one retreated still further. They were not addressing him. They were merely talking to the frock coat and the sideburns. And the frock coat and the sideburns grew somewhat puzzled. They turned around and seemed to be looking for someone—a familiar. But the familiar had fled. The sheriff was nervous.

"Anything you wish to say?" he repeated, stammering.

"No . . . not at this time," the frock coat answered. The puzzled, questioning eyes of Dr. Williams opened for an instant to an incomprehensible scene and then vanished behind a white hood.