A LESSON BEFORE DYING by ERNEST J. GAINES (1993)

In 1940's Louisiana, Jefferson is a young black man who is sentenced to die for taking part in a robbery and shootout, never mind that he is innocent. During the summation to the jury at the trial, his court-appointed attorney portrays him as less than a man, too weak-minded to have planned the crime, saying, "...this skull here holds no plans....I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this."

With this dramatic beginning, Gaines tells the story of the efforts of Grant Wiggins, the local teacher at the school for black children, to teach Jefferson how to die like a man. It's not a task he wants, but his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade (browbeat, actually) him to try. This is his story as much as it is Jefferson's. He has problems of his own, feeling the futility of his efforts to improve the life of his people or even to exist as a man in a South which continues to consider people of color as less than human. In the end, he learns as much from Jefferson as Jefferson learns from him.

This is a very moving novel, as pertinent now as when it was written. The attitudes portrayed in the 1940's setting are perhaps more camouflaged now, but they still exist, as evidenced by numerous current events. I recommend this novel. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1993.