A Lesson Before Dying

Since 1976, four hundred and ninety four Blacks have been executed in our country. This is more than half the amount of executions of Whites, although Caucasians make up a much greater percentage of our population.

This powerful short novel tells the story of Jefferson, a young Black man, who was sentenced to execution in the Jim Crow days of the 1940s in Cajun Louisiana. Grant Wiggins, one of the few college-educated Blacks in the area, narrates the story.

It opens with a liquor store robbery where Jefferson unfortunately happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Soon an all-White jury convicts the young man, and he is sentenced to the electric chair. Attending the trial are his godmother, Miss Emma, who raised him, and Tante Louise, who brought up Grant and with whom he still lives.