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William Zantzinger - Echoes of the Old South 1/12/2009 9:59:06 AM
So William Zantzinger has died. The man who passed away on Jan. 3 at the age of 69 would have lived a quiet and probably unnoted life except for one thing. In 1963, at a society ball in Baltimore, this scion of Southern Maryland, described as a rich young tobacco farmer, struck a black barmaid with a cane for not serving him fast enough. The barmaid, Hattie Carroll, 51, a mother of 11 with high blood pressure, died hours later. Zantzinger was charged with manslater and did six months. The incident inspired a young Bob Dylan to write a ballad, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," that immortalized her and demonized him as the worst of the fading Old South.
Some years later, as a reporter for the Washington Post, I went looking for the survivors of Hattie Carroll. I found them in a Baltimore housing project. But that was only half of the story. My search for William Zantzinger took me to his real estate office, a frame house off U.S. Route 301 in Charles County, Maryland, about 30 miles south of Washington, D.C. He was on the phone and asked my indulgence. When he was done, I said I was from the Post. He said he'd already paid his advertising bill. No, I said, I was a reporter and wanted to talk to him about Hattie Carroll. "No comment," he said tersely and then bid me good day. I've been bid a lot worse.
Our paths crossed again a few years later, when, in May 1991, I wrote a long article for the Post about Patuxent Woods, a rural slum of half a dozen ramshackle houses on a dirt road in Charles County. The houses had no indoor plumbing, only a communal water pump. The residents paid rent to William Zantzinger, who'd inherited the properties from an uncle. Only he no longer owned them. Five years before, he'd forfeited them for failing to pay property taxes. The county now held title, but Zantzinger had continued to collect rents, amounting to $64,000, evening raising them, all the while.
Again, I sought comment from Zantzinger. "I have no interest in them," he said of the Patuxent Woods homes, which, strictly speaking, was true. Then, again, with that courtly Southern farewell, he bid me "Good day."
Five months later, Zantzinger pleaded guilty to 50 counts of unfair and deceptive trade practices. He got 18 months in the county jail, a $50,000 fine, and 2,400 hours of community service. At his sentencing, Zantzinger said he'd "never intended to hurt anyone, ever, ever. It's not my nature. It was my mistake. I've learned my lesson, believe me."
Charles County today is not what it was in 1963, or even in 1991. The tobacco plantations are gone, the result of a state buyout program to pay farmers not to grow the noxious crop. The county's narrative, rooted in its slave and sharecropper past, has changed, too. Long dominated by the white planter aristocracy, Charles today has a sizeable and growing black middle and upper middle class population, largely newcomers who live in spacious suburban homes and commute to jobs in the District of Columbia. They are also increasingly running for and getting elected to public office.
There is still racism in Charles County, a subject perhaps for another day and another post, but the time of William Zantzinger is past.
