How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

It is difficult to imagine what a person feels in the moments before they are to be executed. Willie’s words provide a small piece of insight into an otherwise unfathomable experience: Everybody was watching me as I walked out. I looked at the Sheriff and he nodded, so I walked across the room and sat down in the chair. He took the handcuffs off and the men began strapping me into the chair. They put one strap around my leg and around my waist and tied my arms down, too. I knew then how real it was to have to die. I had it in my mind deep. It was so quiet in there everybody was looking at me so funny. It was the realest misery I ever knew, to see them watching me. It seemed like they would come close to my eyes and then move away from me. I wished they had kept still because I was already dizzy. I was cold and my hands were all wet. I couldn’t feel my neck and my head but they say I was soaking with perspiration. They kept on fixing the machine and connecting the wires to my head and to my left leg. But the machine Willie was being connected to had been improperly assembled. The prison guard responsible for its assembly, Captain Ephie Foster, along with a prisoner assisting him, had been drunk while setting it up earlier that day. As a result, the electrocution did not kill Willie, but it did torture him. The best way I can describe it is: Whamm! Zst! It felt like a hundred and a thousand needles and pins were pricking in me all over and my left leg felt like somebody was ...