William Zantzinger, 69, the tobacco farmer whose beating of a black barmaid was the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s protest song “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” has died.
Brinsfield-Echols Funeral Home in Charlotte Hall, Md., said the family provided no other details. He died Jan. 3.
Zantzinger served six months in jail and was fined $500 for manslaughter in 1963 after striking a 51-year-old barmaid with a cane for taking too long to serve him a drink. The server, Hattie Carroll, died of a stroke eight hours after the incident.
The case inspired Dylan to write the “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” to criticize unequal justice for whites and blacks.
Zantzinger told trial jurors he was “just playing” with Carroll. “I’d been smacking – tapping – waitresses on the tail, and they didn’t say anything,” he testified. “I had no other purpose than to have a good time.”
He didn’t speak about the incident again until 2001, when he talked to Dylan biographer Howard Sounes about the singer. Zantzinger said he “should have sued [Dylan] and put him in jail. [The song is] a total lie.”