DEATH PENALTY PAID
BY NEGRO MURDERER.
CLAUD BROOKS HANGED AT THE
COUNTY JAIL YESTERDAY.
With a smile and a "Good-by everybody," Claud Brooks stepped into eternity. He made the scaffold his stage, and for a few brief seconds seemed to enjoy being enough of a spectacle to cause fifty men and boys, all white, to crowd to see him.
In fourteen minutes after 9:15, when Marshal Joel B. Mayes sprang the trap, he had been pronounced dead. The law had taken its vengeance for the death of Sidney Herndon, struck down in cold blood eighteen months ago.
Brooks taunted one of the deputies with being nervous and asked another not to tie him so tight, as he would not attempt to resist. A few moments later he dropped to his death.
With appetite Brooks at breakfast ate the catfish which had been provided for him according to his wish. Then he asked for whisky, which also was given him. And then for two hours the Rev. E. S. Willett, Rev. J. W. Hurst, Rev. S. W. Bacote and Rev. J. C. Dickson prayed and sang with him. Half an hour before the execution he was given the sacrament. And then the nervousness, if he previously felt any, vanished.
Into the room where the gallows stand there was admitted a motley crowd of some fifty. There were policemen by the fives. There were boys who looked barely over 17. There were men of many types, not to mention several well known in the business life of the town.
Outside, crowds threatened to storm the jail to gain entrance. Marshal Mayes asked the police to protect the entrance into the jail wagon yard, which the crowd appeared to take by storm. Some half a hundred got into the criminal court room, from which the gallows was shut off by brick walls.
Still others stood outside, waiting to catch a fleeting glimpse of what was once a human being. Children of tender years and women with the imprint of respectability were among the number.
Eighteen months ago Brooks killed Sidney Herndon, owner of the Navarro flats at Twelfth and Baltimore, four feet of stature and crippled. He killed him with a hammer. The motive was robbery. The negro got more than $100. Out of this he bought a suit of clothes and hired a carriage to take him to the Union depot so he could escape. The rest he lost gambling and gave away. He was tried, convicted, his sentence affirmed by the supreme court and not considered otherwise than proper by the governor.
