Hernando Hanging (Concl.)

Fortnight ago the Mississippi Senate passed a bill to permit Clyde Collins, outraged father, to hang three Negroes convicted of attacking his daughter Mildred. Reason for the special privileges was that an appeal by him to a mob had saved the three attackers from lynching (TIME, March 19). Last week as the day for the hanging approached. Father Collins saw his chance of executing personal justice gradually fade. The Mississippi House buried the hanging bill in committee.

In Mississippi hangings are generally held at noon but to avoid a mob scene ten trucks loaded with guardsmen left Jackson before midnight to carry the three prisoners back to Hernando and to death. At 4:30 in the morning the three Negroes stood in the Hernando jail under garish electric lights, praying aloud while the gallows was made ready. Father Collins, a favored spectator, stood beside Sheriff Roscoe Lauderdale. In the hall below the trap through which the bodies would fall were about 150 Hernandoans who did not mind getting up early for such an occasion. As the noose was put around the neck of the first Negro, Isaac Howard, he said: ''Tell others of my kind never to attack none who don't belong to them. I believe in God." Then he began to sing "The Other Shore." The sheriff sprang the trap. Isaac Howard plunged through the floor, his song ended. Said the sheriff: "That bastard won't bother you any more." Said Father Collins, "Hell no!" In the hall below someone said: 'That's Isaac Howard." Said another: "You mean that was Isaac Howard." The crowd laughed. Fifteen minutes later the doctor with his stethoscope pronounced Isaac Howard dead. Another spiritual began above, another body plunged through the trap. A dozen young girls who had been lazy about getting up came in a moment later. "Look how long his neck is," one exclaimed. "That's because it's broken," explained an officer. The girls giggled. The doctor ordered silence so that he could listen for heart beats with his stethoscope. Fourteen minutes later he was still hearing them. "Aw, hell," someone yelled, ''knock him on the head with a hammer." An officer patted his six shooter: "I know a faster way than that." Thus the spectacle went on for over an hour until all three were hanged and dead. Father Collins standing beside the sheriff smiled through it all. Since Hernando Negroes did not want the bodies buried in their cemetery, the guardsmen, followed by the crowd, took the corpses in their trucks to the poor farm where a hole 7 ft. square had been dug. "Throw 'em in," shouted the crowd. Sheriff Lauderdale warned them: "I'm still in charge, and I'm going to see they are buried right." While the dirt was shoveled in some members of the crowd chanted, "I'm Headin' for the Last Round Up," "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal, You," "Bye, Bye, Blackbirds." Finally Hernando went home to breakfast. Same day five other Negroes were executed-- one at Tupelo, Miss, for murder; two at Raleigh, N. C. for murder; one for murder, one for rape, at Milledgeville, Ga.

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