They took him on out behind the jail where the gallows was built. Stagolee got up on the scaffold, and the sheriff dropped the rope around his neck and tightened it. Then the hangman opened up on the trap door, and there was Stack, swinging ten feet in the air, laughing as loud as you ever heard anybody laugh. They let him hang there for a half hour, and Stagolee was still laughing.
“Hey, man! This rope is ticklish.”
The white folks just looked at each other and realized that Stack’s neck just wouldn’t crack. So they cut him down, and Stagolee went back home and went back to bed.
Julius Lester, Black Folktales
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1 comment:
Those guys gave up way too easily. There are many other ways to kill people that they should have tried, such as strangulation, stabbing in the neck, or neck-bludgeoning.
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