William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’.
William Zantzinger, immortalized by Bob Dylan as a racist murderer in “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll“, died this week. In 1963, drunk and rowdy at a Baltimore hotel, he ordered a drink from Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old black woman who worked at the hotel. She wasn’t quick enough, and he repeatedly struck her with his cane. She fled into the kitchen, told her co-workers she felt sick, and died of a stroke the next day.
He was charged with murder, but the charges were reduced to manslaughter based on testimony that his actions did not lead directly to her death. He was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $625.
His obituary in The New York Times today took Dylan to task for taking “some liberties with the truth,” and quotes writer Clinton Heylin, who said Dylan’s portrayal of Zantzinger “borders on the libelous.” But the Times only mentions one error of fact in Dylan’s song, the fact that Hattie Carroll had eleven children, not ten, which as the Times pointed out would not have fit the meter of the line as written.
Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten 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
I think those lines are probably worth the rewrite. He also misspelled Zantzinger’s name, leaving out the “T.”
Heylin, in his book, says Dylan’s song “verges on the libelous, depicting [Zantzinger] as a privileged son who killed a black maid, Hattie Caroll, by striking her with his cane at a Baltimore “society gathering,” escaping with a nominal sentence because of his political connections.” Rather, Heylin says, Zantzinger “got drunk at a party and began tapping people with a wooden carnival cane,” including Carroll, whom he describes as “a 51-year-old barmaid with an enlarged heart and severe hypertension.” He also says that Zantzinger didn’t have much in the way of political connections, although he and the Times disagree on what they were.
Dylan’s song does leave you with the impression that Zantzinger beat her to death with his cane, which was not the case. But Zantzinger did commit a crime. He assaulted and verbally abused an older woman because she didn’t bring him his drink quickly enough. The commission of that crime contributed to her death. It’s not that different from a store owner having a heart attack when a robber points a gun at him and demands money. That robber would be charged with felony murder, and while it might be reduced the way the charges against Zantzinger were, the responsibility remains the same. Heylin’s description is an outrageous understatement of Zantzinger’s behavior, and the six-month sentence was unjustly light. Dylan’s song is not only a brilliant piece of songwriting, it is as factual as one can expect a song to be, verging on journalism.
Zantzinger was a piece of work. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to collecting rent from black families who lived in shanties he didn’t own, shanties without running water or toilets. He did this for years, over the protests of community groups, even taking some of the tenants to court. It took an investigation by The Washington Post to stop it.
1991 Washington Post article
