The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1936-01-30

Allen Foster, little Birmingham,
Ala. black, dressed as an amateur
boxer bound for a golden gloves
tournament, fought hydrocyanic
gas II minutes Friday morning at
the states prison and the common
wealth counted him out.
Though his crime was the name
less wrong to white woman the
spectators, according to w. T. Bost,
writing for the Greensboro Daily
News, who damned in the glass
cage to see him die by poison as
two dogs but few weeks ago died,
felt that he got more than was COM
ing to him. The spectacle Mortified
the cxecutioner, appalled, the ward
en-, made pallid the author of the
act, sickened the coroner, baffied
the doctors and made human the
reporters who turned aside, as
Moses, to, see this great sight.
Mr. Bost says: They got all the
CHASTITY drama that they were look
ing for and more. Fenced in this
httle-spases where eyes could hard
ly be lifted from the gasping devil,
they saw the whole thing through.
They saw the little black freeze
into the chamber unclad but for his
cotton trunks, saw him shiver, not
from fright, but from frigidity,
watched the slow rigging up to the
death chair, and read his inarticu-
late lips. He was moving his fists
as notice to the newspaper boys
that he remembered his boyhood
bout with Joe Louis, heard him say
as his preachers said before him
something about God and Jesus, re-
marked his smile, and wondered if
there isn't yet in civilized state
some way to use courage like that.
The nwith body bound and head
over the pellets of poison, he sat.
There was motion from Execu-
TONER Bridgers. PIP came a little
whitiSh smoke. It went up as sort
of incense from the sanctifed state.
He opened his mouth. This concen-
trated hell went in, his nostrils
were distended, he exhaled, then
inhaled, then painted goodbye" and
merciful minded watchers thought
he was gone.
Details Of Execution
He hadn't started. The bout with
death was minute old, and all the
experts had said the method of
killing is instantaneous. The head
dropped, the eyes bulged, there
was a convulsion, again an effort at
speech, a cough, suffering, a
rope of smoke came from his lungs;
there was a motion as of approach
sleep, then of new torture. Three
minutes went by before anybody
felt certain that insensibility had
reached the dying devils brain.
Through a tube connected with
the stethoscope plastered to his left
side the doctors listened to his
hea&t The organ pumped away.
There was deep breathing, then
shallow, the head wobbled, it drop
ped, the mouth opened in natures
involuntary motion to fight off
death. Ten minutes went by and
still that stout heart beat away. It
had dropped to the normal action
of youth of his age. In 10 minutes
and So seconds the boy was pro-
nounced dead.
North Carolina by unanimous
vote year ago changed the death
penalty fro electrocution to the gas
chamber. ALI the available informa-
tion brought into the hearings sup
ported the contention of DR.. c. A..
Peterson, Mitchell county repre-
sentative, that death by hydrocyan-
ic gas is painless and instantaneous.
Nobody knows, of course, what
the black boy went through. The
kindly face registered little of sem
sible suffering; but it was horrible
thing to look at. A naked negro
youth, tied into a vacuum, bound
to death and forced to breathe poi
son made on this day of zero weth-
er very unsentimental picture.
With accord the witnesses damned
this way of dying.
Newspaper Men Begin Crusade
There was revulsion as was to