The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South [Hardcover]

Gilbert King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

On May 3, 1946, a seventeen-year-old boy was scheduled to die by the electric chair inside of a tiny red brick jail in picturesque St. Martinsville, Louisiana. Young Willie Francis had been charged with the murder of a local pharmacist. The electric chair-three hundred pounds of oak and metal- had been dubbed “Gruesome Gertie” and was moved from one jailhouse to another throughout the state of Louisiana. The switch would be thrown at 12:08 P.M., but Willie Francis did not die. Miraculously, having survived this less than cordial encounter with death, Willie was soon informed that the state would try to kill him again in six days. Letters began pouring into St. Martinsville from across the country-Americans of all colors and classes were transfixed by the fate of this young man. A Cajun lawyer just returned from WWII, Bertrand DeBlanc would take on Willie’s case-in the face of overwhelming local resistance. DeBlanc would argue the case all the way from the Bayou to the U.S. Supreme Court. In deciding Willie’s fate the courts and the country would be forced to ask questions about capital punishment that remain unresolved today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

I AM N-N-NOT DYING! screamed Willie Francis, a 17-year-old African-American convicted of murder by an all-white Louisiana jury in 1946, during the failed electrocution that kicks off this tale of justice gone awry in the segregated American South. As told in a sometimes repetitious avalanche of detail by King (Woman, Child for Sale), Francis's story is emblematic of the time and place—a prominent white man in a Cajun town was gunned down, and soon Francis was picked up and, under duress and without an attorney, confessed to the crime. Despite no eyewitnesses and scant physical evidence, Francis was convicted and sentenced to death. After surviving the first execution attempt, he waited in prison nearly a year while the battle over his fate went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. After a page-turning start with the ill-fated execution attempt described in gripping detail, King runs out of steam. What's of interest is the horrifying botched execution and the fact, revealed late in the narrative, that Francis never denied committing the murder. While his eventual execution is tragic, this account doesn't add much to our understanding of U.S. race relations. 16 page b&w insert not seen by PW. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

In 1946 in the small town of St. Martinsville, Louisiana, 17-year-old Willie Francis was arrested for the murder of the town pharmacist. The town, located in the southwest region of the state, was a place like no other, said to have been cursed by a man hung in 1891 for a crime he did not commit. It was a town also famous for corruption and unequal justice, with black citizens such as Francis convicted and generally hung on the flimsiest of accusations. By the 1940s, the town was making use of the portable electric chair known as Gruesome Gertie. But on May 3, when Francis was scheduled to be electrocuted, the procedure failed, and the state scheduled a follow-up six days later. But a Cajun lawyer fresh from fighting World War II took Francis’ case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, King offers a compelling page-turner that examines American racism and justice in the region featured in the book and movie Dead Man Walking. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books; First Edition edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046500265X
• ISBN-13: 978-0465002658
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #529,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The story of Willie Francis will outrage and sadden you., May 8, 2008

By 

Paul Tognetti "The real world is so much more... (Cranston, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South (Hardcover)

Everytime I read a book like "The Execution of Willie Francis" I wonder aloud why I had never come across anything about this incident before. American history is replete with long forgotten and fascinating tales like this one and author Gilbert King has come up with a real winner here. "The Execution of Willie Francis" is a riveting book that paints a vivid portrait of life in the Louisiana bayou in the 1940's. And for the most part the picture is not a very pretty one.

Willie Francis was just 16 years old when he was charged with the murder of popular St. Martinville druggist Andrew Thomas. Willie did not deny that he had killed Thomas. The preponderance of evidence would seem to confirm it. But were there extenuating circumstances here? Willie had worked for Andrew Thomas at the drugstore doing odd jobs. In his written confession Willie Francis makes an extremely curious statement recalling that "it was a secret about him and me." Yet at his trial, which most objective observers would consider to be an absolute travesty of justice, his court appointed attorneys failed to mount any sort of defense at all on behalf of their client. Young Willie Francis was sentenced to die in the electric chair. On May 3, 1946 Willie Francis was strapped into the portable electric chair known as Gruesome Gertie and the switch was thrown. Remarkably, Willie Francis did not die! The execution had been badly botched and Willie Francis would live to see another day. At this point a young Cajun attorney named Bertrand LeBlanc would get involved in this case. LeBlanc's ancestors had been heavily involved in the white supremacy movement in Louisiana but young Bertrand rejected this way of thinking. Like so many other young men who had served alongside Negroes in World War II the war had changed his thinking on the subject of race. Much like Aticus Finch in Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "To Kill A Mockingbird", Bertrand LeBlanc would incur the wrath of his community to defend this young black man. Over the next year this story would take numerous twists and turns as the state of Louisiana sought to return Willie Francis to the chair a second time. In fact, Bertrand LeBlanc would succeed in taking this case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and the fate of Willie Francis would become a national story.

While Gilbert King certainly does a workmanlike job of presenting the facts surrounding the trial and subsequent execution of Willie Francis "The Execution of Willie Francis" turns out to be about so much more. This book examines the sad state of race relations in the South during this period. At the same time King presents in clear and concise language the complex legal issues that surrounded this most unusual situation. Finally, readers catch a somewhat unflattering glimpse of how the U.S. Supreme Court handled this particular case. I must tell you that "The Execution of Willie Francis" had this reader mesmorized throughout. I simply could not put this one down. It is a story that you will never forget. Very highly recommended!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting read about class, color, crime and the unfairness of the old south, May 11, 2008

By 

Susanna Hutcheson "Copywriting for the Discri... (Midwest U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South (Hardcover)

This is a well-written account of a crime committed in the forties by a young black man against a white man. It takes the reader into the unfair conditions of race in the forties. One feels a bit uncomfortable with the truth of it.

The death penalty is at the center. It's always been hard to know if the death penalty is fair or not. It's easy to see the reason on both sides. At any rate, this book offers a look into a story in history that most of us haven't known about and it's well worth the read.

Highly recommended.

-Susanna K. Hutcheson

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting account of a great injustice, April 19, 2008

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South (Hardcover)

Willie Francis was a sixteen-year-old black boy with a third grade education who was convicted of the murder of a white man in St. Martinsville, Louisiana in 1946. After being strapped into the electric chair--dubbed "Gruesome Gertie" by prisoners--a strange thing happened. Although cranked up to its full voltage, the switch thrown, and his body twitching horribly, Willie Francis did not die.

Many people believed that God had intervened to save Willie Francis's life and that therefore he should not be electrocuted a second time. A local white attorney named Bertrand DeBlanc believed that to put Francis in the electric chair a second time would constitute cruel and unusual punishment and place him in double jeopardy. So, against the wishes of most of the Cajun parish in which he lived, and at some considerable danger to his life and career, DeBlanc took the case and tried to save Francis's life.

Gilbert King makes it clear that it was highly unlikely that Willie Francis could have committed this crime, even if he had wanted to, and further that his appointed defense lawyers presented no defense at all to the charges. King shows how the "confession" was probably coerced from Willie Francis by Sheriff Gilbert Ozenne and his colleagues who had spent a considerable part of their lives terrifying and brutalizing black people and others who would stick up for them. As has been documented in innumerable books, people like Ozenne and his sidekick Gus "Killer" Walker believed that their job was to "keep the nigras down" by whatever means, and especially to deny them their civil rights, in particular the right to vote.

The larger horrific drama, of which the Willie Francis case is just one sorry example, played prominently throughout the South after the Civil War (and continues in more muted tones today), but was most obvious in places like St. Martinsville where people were mostly poor and uneducated. The savage brutality was first of all a way of effectively maintaining something close to slavery, and second a revenge upon the North for winning the war and attempting to deprive the South of its cheap source of labor. In another sense this sordid record of murder and something close to genocide or ethnic cleansing (before such terms were much used), stemmed from an attempt by beaten southern white males, in most particular the semi-educated and ignorant ones, to reestablish their deluded notion of manhood.

But this is also a chapter in the story of how gradually the South changed; how Afro-Americans with incredible patience and Sisyphean labors over many decades, while suffering enormous pain and loss of life, managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve something close to equality with whites. It is a story of great courage and determination.

Gilbert King's account is a vivid and compelling chapter in this uniquely American tale. The book is meticulously researched, amply documented with numerous endnotes, beautifully written, and powerfully engaged. In short, The Execution of Willie Francis is a outstanding work of journalism and a much welcome addition to an important literature. We have to face what we have done so that it might be a bit more difficult for others to do the same; and there, by increments, we might become more human.