11 YEARS IN DEATH CELL = HAS PEN PAL FRIENDSHIP BANNED from Dick Skyers
The almost unbelievable cruelty and intolerance of the deep south was graphically illustrated by a press story last week. A Negro who has been in a Louisiana death row for 11 years has been forbidden to carry on his three-year-old pen pal correspondence with a Swedish woman. The reason = they are not of the same race! Edgar Labat, a 4l-year-old former New Orleans hospital orderly was convicted by an all-white male jury of assisting in a white woman's rape in 1950. He pleaded Not Guilty at his 1953 trial and a series of pleadings and appeals have given him eight stays of execution. If his case hangs on until next March, he will break Caryl Chessman's death row ordeal of 11 years and 11 months.
In Stockholm, Labat's pen-pal, 39-year-old Mrs. Solveig Johansson, wrote to the, prison, saying she was Labat's “adoptive mother." The . ‘ prison authotied reply was typical: “Adoption of a Negro by a white isn't legal in Louisiana."