The First and Only Time I Stood in an Execution Chamber - Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty

In this Chapter

Introduction by Henderson Hill
About this Project
North Carolina’s Modern Death Penalty is the Fruit of a Racist Past
The First and Only Time I Stood in an Execution Chamber

The first and only time I stood in an execution chamber
all I heard was stillness and the soft
symphony of breath. We were a congregation
of lowered heads and sunken shoulders trying
to understand what gave this country the right
to kill someone in our name. The table was long
and blue, its leather upholstery covering
a thin layer of foam padding. There were seven
discolored brown and blue straps that stretched
across the width of the bed, each of them locked
and pulled tight. There was a small pillow at the top
of the table where the condemned was meant
to lay their head, and another set of straps that came
down over their shoulders. About a foot below
the pillow on either side of the bed was the place
where the soon-to-be-executed lay their arms.
On each of these arm-length extensions was a leather
strap meant to be tightened near the person’s elbow,
a faded blend of grey and brown, taut leather
that had cracked with age. The straps, and their
procession of small notches, dangled below the table.
At the foot of the table were two shackles, their silver
metal glimmering under the florescent lights.
I think of those sentenced to die by juries who looked
nothing like them. I think of those sentenced to die
who left their families behind. I think of those sentenced
to die for something they were too young to understand.
I think of those sentenced to die who did not do
what they have been told they did. I think of all
the ways this country failed them before they ended
up in this room. I feel the hot rush of blood behind my
ears, the shame of being alive in a room built to kill.

Watch North Carolina Rep. Vernetta Alston, a former capital defense lawyer, reading Clint Smith’s poem:

Clint Smith is a poet and scholar who works as a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent, and a forthcoming non-fiction book, How the Word Is Passed, which explores how different historical sites reckon with, or fail to reckon with, the history of slavery.

Next – Slavery, Lynching, and the Era of Public Hangings (1619-1910)

Capital punishment arrived in the colony of North Carolina as part of English common law. Even misdemeanors warranted harsh corporal punishment and a long list of felonies qualified for the death penalty. People were executed not only for murder but also rape, theft, arson, and assault.

White colonists quickly began using this “sanguinary code,” as the British called it, to enforce the institution of slavery. Colonial lawmakers created laws that applied only to the enslaved, and special courts, run by enslavers, ordered executions. For a time, the law even provided monetary compensation to enslavers whose chattel had been executed.

In antebellum North Carolina, people could be executed for helping an enslaved person escape or joining an anti-slavery rebellion, among many other things.

According to death penalty historian Seth Kotch, in less than 50 years during the 1700s, North Carolina executed more than a hundred enslaved people. Meanwhile, the law empowered whites to punish their human “property” however they saw fit, while bands of white men patrolled for runaways.

In the century following American independence, many Northern states abolished the death penalty. But Southern states, focused on maintaining slavery, retained and expanded harshly punitive criminal codes. In antebellum North Carolina, people could be executed for helping an enslaved person escape or joining an anti-slavery rebellion, among many other things.

Emancipation and Reconstruction offered brief hope that African Americans would be allowed full citizenship. But after the federal government withdrew its protection, white supremacists seized political power using mob violence, lynchings, and the death penalty. In fact, lynchings and executions were often nearly indistinguishable.

Most lynching victims were Black, as were most of those executed. Lynchings were often ...