Now is the time for your tears

(Props to Don for the headline and the heads up)
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.
-- "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," by Bob Dylan
On Feb. 8, 1963, a young, socially prominent tobacco farmer named William Devereux Zantzinger got drunk at a charity ball in Baltimore and demanded a drink from Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old barmaid with 11 children and a history of high blood pressure. She asked him to wait, and the upstanding gentleman cursed, did not refer to her as ma’am, and rapped her repeatedly with his cane. She served him and walked away, telling co-workers she felt deathly ill. Hours later, she collapsed and died of a stroke, and Zantzinger was charged with homicide, later reduced to manslaughter, based partially on her poor health. In the volatile civil rights climate, this case drew national attention, without the benefit of Fox News commentators to point out the rather significant judicial overreaching. Dylan included "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," on his 1964 album "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Mr. Zantzinger was freed during sentencing to finish harvesting his tobacco crop. He served six months in jail and was fined $500. He would later have another brush with the law in 1991 when he was indicted for collecting $64,000 in rent on rural shacks without indoor plumbing that he had lost for failure to pay taxes 5 years prior. For that crime, he was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail and fined $50,000. Take that statement on Southern justice however you will. Zantzinger died Jan. 3 at the age of 69.