Even listening to Dylan himself, you can hear the song tearing itself free of its roots. The bootleg recordings I've heard from his 2005 and 2006 gigs use an arrangement much like the one Alex Ross described in Portland, but with Dylan delivering the lyrics in a very mannered, distancing way. The tune's pretty enough, but Dylan seems entirely removed from Carroll's plight, injecting the same fake pout into his voice we use to mock a small child's complaints. It's as though he's already begun letting go of the song's history, handing its more earnest aspects over to the younger singers who've adopted it for themselves.
Eight months after his death, Zantzinger continues to raise strong emotions on folk music message boards.
One of the most striking posts came in May this year, when Talya Carroll joined a William Zantzinger thread on Mudcat's forum:
“I would like for you all to know that the Carroll family did not get the justice we deserved in that trial. I am the great grand-daughter of Hattie Carroll, and I witness fallout between members of our family, and also her children are dying by the years. During that time, many of her 13 children moved out of the Baltimore area and have not been in contact with the others, leaving our family broken. I would honestly love to meet William Zantzinger, granted that he's still alive. If not, I would like to spit on his grave and hope he does not get eternal peace!” (44)
We have to inject a slight note of caution here, because Mudcat's board allows any guest to post with no membership or proof of identity. As we'll see in a moment, though, the post does match how Hattie Carroll's old friends recall the family's fate. If we assume that really is Hattie's great grand-daughter talking, then her remarks are potent testimony that the pain Zantzinger caused her family has barely begun to heal.
In closing, let's return to that 2004 Mother Jones article. Frazier went to Carroll's old church in Baltimore, where he found two parishioners who still remembered her. Dorothy Johnson and Mildred Jessup described Carroll as a quiet, well-dressed woman who took a very active role in Gillis Memorial's life.
“I remember Hattie went to work at the hotel that day, and later word came back that she'd been struck with a cane,” Johnson said. “And right after that, we heard that she had died. Everybody in the church was very upset, It was a terrible blow. [...] Hattie's family suffered so after she died. They don't go to this church anymore. Four of them, I think became Muslims. One daughter ended up in a mental institution. But whatever you cause by word or by deed, it's all coming back to you.”
Frazier closed the conversation by asking both women if they, personally, could ever forgive Zantzinger for what he'd done. Johnson thought she could, but Jessup hesitated. “For myself, I don't know,” she said. “Things may be possible for God that are not possible for me. But I will tell you one thing: because of what happened to Hattie Carroll, I have a phobia about canes to this day.”
Special thanks to Michael Stevens at Baltimore County Public Library for supplying clippings from The Afro-American's 1963 coverage of Zantzinger's trial.
Sources
1) The Afro-American, July 6, 1963.
2) Broadside, July 20, 1964.
3) Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin (Constable & Robinson, 2009)
4) Behind The Shades: Take Two, by Clinton Heylin (Penguin, 2001)
5) Time, February 22, 1963.
6) The Afro-American, June 29, 1963.
7) The Afro-American, March 23, 1963.
8) Mudcat thread: mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=47133#701557
9) The Afro-American, December 14, 1963.
10) The Afro-American, February 16, 1963.
11) The Baltimore Sun, February 10, 1963.
12) The Afro-American, February 23, 1963.
13) www.findagrave.com.
14) US Dept. of Veterans' Affairs (www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/baltimore.asp)
15) The Afro-American, March 16, 1963.
16) The Afro-American, March 23, 1953.
17) Broadside 20-23, February and March 1963 (http://broadsidemagazine.com/?page_id=11).
18) Broadside 23, March 1963.
19) Washington Post, April 9, 1949.
20) Hearings Regarding Communism in The District of Columbia, Harvard College Library (www.archive.org/stream/hearingsregarding02unit/hearingsregarding02unit_djvu.txt).
21) Before The Hurricane Begins: Bob Dylan 1963, by Olof Bjorner (www.bjorner.com/63.htm#_Toc514077521).
22) New York Times, June 28, 1963.
23) The Afro-American, September 7, 1963.
24) A Regular Old Southern Maryland Boy, by Peter Carlson. (Washington Post magazine, August 4, 1991.
25) The Afro-American, October 26, 1963.
26) Down The Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, by Howard Sounes (Doubleday 2001).
27) The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, by Bob Dylan.
28) The New Yorker, January 26 2009.
29) Broadside 48, July 1964.
30) Bob Dylan's Dalliance With Mafia Chic, by Lester Bangs. Available in Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste (Serpent's Tail, 2003).
31) The Afro-American, October 31, 1964.
32) New York Times, March 24, 1968.
33) Chronicles, by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster, 2004).
34) Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_in_the_American_Civil_War).
35) Washington Post, June 7, 1991.
36) Legacy of a Lonesome Death, by Ian Frazier (Mother Jones, November/December 2004).
37) Washington Post, January 4, 1992.
38) Washington Post, August 7, 1992.
39) The Times, January 12, 2009.
40) St Mary's Today (http://www.stmarystoday.com).
41) Three Panel Soul, November 15, 2006 (www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2006-11-15).
42) Guitar World Acoustic, February 2006.
43) The 20 Greatest Dylan Songs, Mojo. (http://www.mojo4music.com/blog/2009/06/the_20_greatest_dylan_songs.html).
44) Whatever Happened top William Zantzinger, Mudcat Cafe forum (http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=47133&messages=50#2637709).