The Last "Ghoulish Public Event"

It could not possibly be more of a cliche: a black man hanged in front of a crowd for raping a white woman, because prosecutors refused to pursue the murder charge that would have gotten him electrocuted in private.

It was the last public execution in the United States, and it happened 75 years ago today, in Owensboro, Kentucky.

From the Courier:

Bob Howe points to an overgrown, muddy patch of land in a cemetery in Owensboro, gesturing to where the grave of the last man publicly executed in the United States may be.

“I think it was over there,” said Howe, 81, a lifelong Owensboro resident and retired county coroner. “I used to pass it on the way to school. That's what I was told. It was over there somewhere.”

The grave is anonymous and unmarked, like other places associated with Rainey Bethea's hanging on Aug. 14, 1936. With Sunday the 75th anniversary of the execution, it is something some in Owensboro would like history to remember differently.

Bethea, a farmhand and sometime criminal, went to the gallows near the banks of the Ohio River before a throng of people estimated at as many as 20,000. The execution drew national media coverage focused on a black man being executed by a white, female sheriff with the help of a professional hangman.

“It was not a carnival in the end,” insisted James Thompson, 85, the son of then-sheriff Florence Thompson.

Still, Kentucky lawmakers cited the negative publicity surrounding Bethea's hanging in ending public executions in the state in 1938. Kentucky was the last state to do so. Later, Gov. Albert B. “Happy” Chandler expressed regret at having approved the repeal, claiming, “Our streets are no longer safe.”

Read the whole thing.

I remember back in the '70s some opponents of capital punishment called for restoring public executions, the idea being that if people saw the true horror of state-sanctioned murder they would ban it forever.

It might have worked then. For some reason I doubt it would today.