Sunday Heart

A year ago, the state of Louisiana tried to kill Willie Francis. The stuttering, roundheaded Negro boy had killed a man in a $4 holdup. But something went wrong with the state's portable electric chair. The current "only tickled" Willie. He got up, the only man on record to walk away from Louisiana's electric chair after the switch had been thrown.

Willie Francis never quite understood all the hubbub that followed--the appeals to the Louisiana courts, the pleas to the State Pardon Board, the sob stories in the press. When he heard that the Supreme Court had ruled against him, he was just surprised that "one Negro boy could get all those big men" to talk about him.

His world was the narrow cell in the New Iberia jail, where he waited for the talk to end. Finally it did. Willie had to go back to the chair. His lawyer came to tell him that he thought he could still get another stay, but Willie said: "No, leave it alone. Thank you, but leave it alone. I'm ready."

In Style. Willie had his plan. "I'm wearing my Sunday pants and my Sunday heart to the chair. Ain't going to wear no beat-up pants to see the Lord. Been busy talking my way into heaven for this past year. Them folks expecting me to come in style."

Before dawn one morning last week, Willie was ready, dressed in his newly pressed Sunday pants. He ate a last meal of catfish and potatoes. At noon the cell door opened. Said Father Charles Hannigan: "We've been practicing walking the way he wants to walk the last mile. Willie says he's going to walk it steady."

Willie did. In a crowded little room stood the same portable electric chair. Willie smiled. He wiped his palms on his pants and sat down. He had nothing to say. He might have remembered the last time. (Last time, "everything begun to look dazey. ... It was like the white folks watching was in a big swing, and they'd swing away and back and then right up close.") In the silence the sheriff pulled the switch. This time Willie was carried away from the portable electric chair.

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