I remember back in the sixties when all the violence was going on in the Southern states . . . when I heard about it I would sit at my desk till I had written a perfect page. I would show the Bull Connors and the Faubuses, and the Wallaces and the Thurmonds that I could do anything with those twenty-six letters given to them by their ancestors—not mine—but do more with those letters to help not only my race, but also my country, than they could ever do to destroy it.
Many things have changed since then, since Wallace stood in the door of the school, since Bull Connor used his electric cattle prods, hosepipes, and dogs against American black men, women, and children. But there’s still so much more to do.
Jonestown, Guyana. We should be howling still about what happened there. And I should be your leader. For surely it will happen again. Faulkner once said that the thing that will destroy us is our lack of fear. We must be afraid that things like the Guyana suicides can and will happen again, but we’re not afraid. If it happened tomorrow and less than nine hundred people died, it would not make the front page for more than a day. We believe in records. If a 747 jet fell tomorrow and fewer than three hundred people died, it would make the front page only one day. Because, you see, more than three hundred people have died in the crash of a 747 jet before, and two hundred would not be significant enough. Two days, three days later, the story, if it is followed up at all, would end up on page five or six, and maybe continued on page ten.
Back to Guyana . . . I knew many of the people who died there. I knew the beautiful blond young lady from Arizona who was in charge of the old people in San Francisco. For a while they lived in the same apartment house I did. The young lady and I used to talk all the time. When they went to Guyana, the barracks where the old people were quartered was called “Miss Jane Pittman’s Garden.” And that Sunday when I heard what had happened, I was angry, but I did not howl loud enough. I did not howl loud enough or long enough. And because I did not howl as loud as I could, and because I continue to watch certain religious leaders on television, I am certain Guyana will happen all over again. Only it will not be in Guyana, but here. Maybe not with cyanide in Kool-Aid. Maybe it will not affect the physical body at all. But it will be the same. Simply because we do not howl.
You don’t have to be a writer to howl. You can be a student of math, engineering, any of the sciences, law, agronomy, architecture—this world is yours, and it is you who must keep it sane, or surely Guyana will happen again. Next time it may not be nine hundred, but nine million, or ninety million, or nine hundred million. We must howl against the insanity going on around us day after day after day.
We must howl at some of the interpretations of the Constitution. The Constitution is a good piece of work, one of the greatest pieces of work done by man; but there are men who interpret, bend the Constitution for their own selfish needs, interpret it in ways so that certain Americans are not ever likely to appreciate all that America has to offer.
There were men on television who would swear that the Bible tells us that a country like Russia would one day influence a country like Cuba to go out and spread its Communist, anti-Christ views over Africa as well as the Americas. You must reread the Bible. And if it is not there, say it is not there. Because if you don’t, Guyana can happen again—will happen again.
Black students are always asking me, “Why do so many of your young men of vision die in your novels? You seem to kill off the braver ones. Are you trying to discourage us from trying?” I tell them that my young men die because they’re not supposed to have vision. They’re supposed to accept the status quo. They’re supposed to accept that what is will always be, or wait till others change it for them, but not they themselves. The young men in my novels and short stories who die cannot wait until others change the condition, because the condition then may not ever be changed.
I tell the black students who ask me why must my young men die that young men who tried to change conditions have always died. Two thousand years ago a child was born who would be nailed to a tree thirty-three years later for trying to change conditions. Today, so much of what that young man died for has been interpreted so poorly that other young men may have to die in order to get it back in the right direction.
We live in a world of myths. We live by myths daily. You must destroy the old myths, create new ones. John Wayne was a myth. There were only a few cowboys like John Wayne. Most of your cowboys were small men, very, very poor. There were many blacks and Mexicans among the cowboys. It was a tough job, a dirty job, and you did that only when you could not get anything better. It was not nearly as romantic as John Wayne and John Ford would make it seem.
Myths can be changed—but only you can change them. Children can be fed all over the world, and should be fed, but only you can feed the children. Wars must be stopped, but only you can stop wars. Men must live and work together, but only you can make this happen.
Your parents, your ancestors have done so much, yet there’s still so much more to be done. We lead the world in technology—students from the rest of the world come to the United States to be educated—we send a man to the moon, and bring him back safely; we take the heart out of a dead man and put it into another man so that he may live a few years longer. Yet we cannot live side by side, or worship in the same church. Eleven o’clock on Sunday is still the most segregated hour in the United States.
Someone told my generation to make these changes and someone told the generations before mine to do it, and the generation before that. Two thousand years ago a child was born, and he was asked to do it because the others had failed. The Son asked, “Will you be there with me? I am of the flesh, I’m weak.” The Father answered the Son by saying, “Yes, I will be with you.” “Then I will go,” the Son said. “I will do my best.” “That is all I ask of you,” He said to the Son.
WRITING A Lesson Before Dying
I was teaching at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette when I came up with the idea for A Lesson Before Dying. And that would be around 1983 or 1984. Now, the original idea was that the story would occur in the early 1980S. I wrote a letter to the warden at Angola, the state prison here in Louisiana, and informed him who I was—that I was a teacher here at UL, and that I was the author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and several other books, and that I had another novel in mind about a prisoner on death row, and would he, the warden, mind if I asked him a few questions. Question number one: Would it be possible for someone not kin to the condemned man who was not a minister of religion or his legal adviser to visit him on death row? About a week later, I received a letter from the warden’s office informing me that the warden would not be able to guarantee me that kind of security. I immediately wrote a second letter, assuring the warden that I, Ernest J. Gaines, had no intention of visiting Angola on a regular basis, but that I was writing a novel (and I emphasized the word novel), and I was wondering if it was possible that such a person—a teacher, for example—could visit a condemned man. Well, the warden’s office never did answer my second letter, and maybe that was a blessing in disguise.
Being a writer-in-residence on any university campus, you’re constantly being asked how’s the writing coming along, and when can we expect the next book, etc., etc., etc. A Gathering of Old Men had been published in 1983, so between ’83 and ’85 I was between books. That is, I was not writing. When a colleague of mine asked me what I was doing, I told him I had a novel in mind and that I had written the warden at Angola. I told him the results of my second letter. I gave him the general plot of the novel, of a young man being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was charged with murder. Paul Nolan, my colleague, told me that he knew of a case I might be interested in reading about. The case Paul was referring to concerned a young man, a seventeen-year-old boy, who had been sentenced to be electrocuted in the electric chair here in Louisiana. Something happened that day with the chair. It did not work properly, and the boy was not executed, but put back into his cell to await what next
step the governor would take. Paul told me he realized that the two cases didn’t sound the same—sound alike—but I might benefit by reading his case and that he had a lot of material about the case if I would like to do so.
This particular case he spoke of having happened about ’46 or ’47 appeared familiar to me, and around a time I had written about in previous stories—“The Sky Is Gray,” “Three Men”—and the novel Of Love and Dust. Besides that, the case Paul Nolan referred to happened only a few miles from where I was now teaching and no more than seventy miles from where I had lived as a child and the area where most of my previous stories had taken place. There were so many similarities—the work, religion, the food that people ate, everything. The case Paul recommended could have happened in the parish where I grew up. The stories are different, still I would use some of the information from the previous case. Both young men are black. Both nearly illiterate. Both were involved in the murder of a white man. In Paul’s case, the young man confessed to the murder. My young man would maintain his innocence to the end. No defense witnesses were called in either case. Only white men served on the juries. This was the forties, so there were no women and, of course, no blacks on the juries. After reading all the material that Paul had given me, I asked myself, “Why not bring my story back to the forties?” If I put the story in the forties, there was so much material I could use. I could use the plantation as home for my characters. I knew life on the plantation because I had written about it in several other books—The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Of Love and Dust, and the stories in Bloodline. I could use the church school for background, the church where generations of my folks had worshipped and where I had attended school my first six years. I could use the crop as background—when it was planted, when it was harvested. I knew the food the people ate, knew the kind of clothes they wore, knew the kind of songs they sang in the fields and in the church.
So the best thing to do was to bring my story back to the forties, the period I knew and where I was most comfortable. I read everything Paul Nolan gave me to read and all he recommended. His young man would lose and be executed a year and a week from the day when he was first placed in that chair. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in Washington, where it lost by a decision of 5 to 4.
Because I teach creative writing at the university and because I teach at night, I have a chance to draw people from outside the university, and I always get attorneys. I’ve had one or more in each class since I started teaching in the university in 1981. All have a dream of being a Scott Turow or a John Grisham. One of my students had a condemned man on death row. And I would always ask him questions about his client, especially what emotions did he show knowing that he was going to die on a certain date, at a certain hour. I could always tell when my student had visited with his client because of the tired and painful look he brought into the classroom. He was much older than this young man, and through the years he had gotten very close to him. He had gotten too emotionally involved, and he knew it, and it showed.
He, the student of mine, helped me in many ways. He brought me pictures of the state prison, pictures of the electric chair—“Gruesome Gerty.” I asked him more questions. I asked him what kind of wood was the chair made of, how much does the chair weigh, how wide and thick were the straps that went around the arms and legs of the condemned. And I kept a picture of the chair on my desk, especially while writing the last chapters of the novel.
Another colleague of mine knew someone whose father-in-law was the sheriff of a small town. She asked me if I would like to meet the sheriff. I think he was an ex-sheriff by then, but everyone still called him sheriff. When we arrived at the house, I was introduced to the sheriff, to his wife, and to another man. The sheriff’s wife served us coffee. I was served last, and I saw how much her hands shook when she served me. I was certain that she had never served coffee to a black man before, but after all, I had written The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and also knew someone who knew her daughter-in-law. So she, of course, could show some of her Southern hospitality. The sheriff and the other man wanted to know where I came from, did I like the South, how long had I been teaching at the university. I told them I was born and raised about sixty miles from where we now sat, that my people had been there since the time of slavery, and that I had been teaching at the university for about five years, and I liked it very much. That relaxed them a bit, and we finished our coffee. I asked the sheriff the same question I had proposed to the warden in my letter: “Could someone who was not a close relation, a minister of religion, or a legal adviser visit someone on death row?” The sheriff told me that in the case of a parish jail it would be entirely up to the discretion of the sheriff. He told me that the sheriff of the jail was totally in charge and that he made all the decisions. Now, that bit of information was extremely vital. I had to find a reason to pressure the sheriff into allowing someone whom he may not even like into visiting the prisoner.
Some of my colleagues at the university would ask me how the novel was coming along. When I would tell them that I was still trying to get everything straight in my mind, some of them would offer advice. One fellow who considered himself a writer, too, said find something on the sheriff that he would not want people to know about. I told him it sounded like blackmail, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. He told me he had another idea— the sheriff’s wife had had an abortion in the past, and you know how these Southerners felt about that. I told him I didn’t care for that idea either. He said, Well, let’s say the sheriff’s wife had had a relationship with a black man and your character threatens to expose it. By God, that would light his fire—“and more than likely get my character killed before he ever got to the jail. No thanks,” I said.
The original idea of the novel, when I thought the story would take place in the eighties, was that Grant, the narrator, would have been living in California, and he would come to Louisiana one summer to visit his aunt and eventually get involved in visiting the young man on death row. That was the original reason for the questions about whether someone other than a legal adviser or a minister could visit him, because I’m sure the sheriff would not want an outsider, especially someone from the North, interfering with his business. It was not until I decided that the story would take place in the forties that I would make Grant a teacher who had gone away for his education and then returned to teach on the same plantation where he was born and raised and where all of his people had lived for several generations. However, because he was educated, the sheriff still may not have wanted him to be there.
My colleague at the university had given me an idea about how to solve my problem when he mentioned the sheriff’s wife several times. I would not cause her to have an abortion or a black lover, but I would put her in a position where she would pressure her husband into allowing Grant to visit Jefferson in prison.
On the plantation where I was born, my maternal grandmother worked at the big house as cook for many years, and I myself had worked in the yard there on several occasions, collecting eggs from where chickens had laid in the grass, gathering pecans, and picking fruit from the different trees. Now, suppose I made the sheriff’s wife a member of the family where my grandmother had worked all these years. Wouldn’t she, my grandmother, have done favors, extra favors, for members of that family? Would that be enough reason for her to feel that she could go to them for a favor, which I thought would be a better reason—and more convincing to the reader—to get the sheriff to allow the narrator to visit the prisoner? So I created two elderly women. They were Tante Lou, the narrator’s aunt, and Miss Emma, the prisoner’s godmother. And those two would apply the pressure.
I have said that I wanted the story to take place in the eighties and that the narrator, Grant, would come from California. Once I decided that the story would take place in the forties, and that Grant had lived on the plantation all his life, had gone away to be educated, and had returned to teach, all this adds another
element to the story. I didn’t want just another story of someone waiting to be executed; that had been done many times before. To make my story different I had to do something else, and make Grant also a prisoner of his environment. Grant teaches in a church. As I said, I went to a church school the first six years of my education. Grant hates teaching. He hates the South. He hates everything around him. This is the forties, remember, and the professions for blacks to enter were extremely limited. You could be a teacher and teach black children. You could be an undertaker, a barber, an insurance collector from other blacks. You could own a small grocery store or a nightclub. But you could not be an attorney or a doctor. You could not be a banker or a politician and certainly you could not run for political office. Not in a small place like this in the South at that time. Grant wishes to run away. He’s been well educated and he knows there’s a better world somewhere else. But he has an aunt, Tante Lou, and just as she and Miss Emma exert pressure on the sheriff, they do the same to him to keep him in the South. Eventually he would become involved in Jefferson’s plight, and in the end it would benefit both of them. He would teach Jefferson to live for a while and to die with dignity. Jefferson in turn would help him find himself.
In 1986, a young female attorney in my class asked me if I would like to meet the lawyer who had defended the young man whom Paul Nolan had spoken about. I told her I certainly would. She brought the old man to my house—a Cajun fellow, probably in his seventies, bent, frail. My student and I made coffee, and she had brought cookies, and we sat on the porch. It was this man who told me about the traveling electric chair. I had heard about it, read about it, but I had not spoken to anybody who knew about it firsthand. He told me about the generator that accompanied the chair because sometimes our Louisiana weather causes the electricity to be erratic. To avoid that problem, the state prison sent its own generator. We don’t have the electric chair in Louisiana now, but some type of lethal injection is instead used for execution.