King Legacy

We Must Never Forget Hattie Carroll

Hattie Carroll (1911-1963) was a 51-year-old restaurant server who was murdered by a White aristocrat, 24-year-old William Devereux Zantzinger (1939-2009) who struck her with a cane, because she took too long to serve him a drink, during The Spinsters’ Ball, an event at the old Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. Zantzinger’s crime was minimized, and he got a scant six months in jail (not prison) for killing a woman, the mother of at least nine children, who was more than twice his age, and with just a fraction of his power.