Henry Hays was executed by the State of Alabama for the murder of Michael Donald
According to court documents Henry Hays was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and he and another member would attack nineteen year old Michael Donald because of the color of his skin. Michael Donald was kidnapped, beaten, stabbed and strangled before his body was hung from a tree
Henry Hays would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Henry Hays would be executed by way of the electric chair on June 6 1997
Donald’s mother would sue the KKK which ended with the organization having to declare bankruptcy
Henry Hays Photos
Henry Hays Case
A former Ku Klux Klansman whose killing of a black teenager ultimately bankrupted the KKK faction suspected of ordering the crime was executed in the state’s electric chair early today.
Henry Francis Hays, 42, was pronounced dead at 12:18 a.m. local time in Alabama’s first execution for a white-on-black crime since 1913.
Hays was convicted in the 1981 slaying of Michael Donald, a 19-year-old black man who was abducted at random from a Mobile street by two men, then beaten, cut and strangled. His body was strung up in a tree by the curb.
Gov. Fob James Jr. had refused to grant Hays clemency.
Prosecutors said the slaying was ordered by Klan leaders, including Hays’s father, “to show Klan strength in Alabama.”
Instead of emboldening racists, the slaying wound up financially destroying the United Klans of America in 1987. The Klan was hit with a $7 million wrongful-death verdict in a case brought by Donald’s mother
The Klan had nowhere near that amount in assets. It had to sign over its Tuscaloosa building to Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, who sold it for about $52,000 and bought a house. She has since died.
Prosecutors said the Klan members decided to kill a black person after a jury deadlocked in the trial of a black man charged with killing a white police officer.
James “Tiger” Knowles, then 18, testified that he and Hays picked Donald at random and forced him into a car, then beat him with a tree limb, cut his throat and tightened a noose around his neck. Knowles was given a life sentence in exchange for his testimony.
Hays said he unwillingly joined the United Klans to satisfy his father, an “Exalted Cyclops” controlling the group’s southern Alabama operations. Hays accused Knowles of framing him.
The last time a white person in Alabama was executed for killing a black was 84 years ago: Two whites were hanged in Birmingham for murdering a black who trained fighting cocks