The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Work status:

• Lyrics first published in Broadside #43.
• First copyright date: 1964-03-03

Trivia:

• Hattie Carroll was a 51-year old african-american waitress at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, MD, USA. On February 9, 1963, she was brutally beaten in the head, shoulder, and neck with a toy cane by William Devereux Zantzinger while he was attending the Spinsters’ Ball at the Emerson Hotel. She died a few hours later as a result of her injuries.
• William Devereux Zantzinger was a 24 year old owner of a 600-acre tobacco farm. He was convicted of manslaughter on August 28, 1963 (the same day that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington), and sentenced to six months in jail and a fine of $500. However, his time in jail was deferred until September 15 to give Zantzinger time to harvest his tobacco crop. In a 2001 interview with Howard Sounes, Zantzinger had only this to say about Dylan and this song, "He's a no-account son of a bitch, he's just like a scum of a scum bag of the earth, I should have sued him and put him in jail."