Stagolee

Author: Julius Lester

Time Period: 1851 CE–1900 CE

Country or Culture: African American; North America

Genre: Folktale

Overview

Over the past century, Stagolee has become an astonishingly popular “badman” folk hero in African American oral traditions. A gambler, womanizer, and gunslinger who often displays supernatural powers, Stagolee becomes known for his chief exploit: his murder of a man named Billy Lyons for knocking off Stagolee’s Stetson hat. The many versions of the tale present different consequences for this crime, and the Stagolee hero has evolved from early ballads, toasts, folktales, and rhythm and blues songs to rap versions in more recent years.

Julius Lester’s 1969 folktale version introduces Stagolee as an outlaw from the age of five when he leaves home with nothing but a guitar, a deck of cards, and a .44 revolver. An infamous gambler and murderer feared even by white people, Stagolee plays cards with Billy Lyons, who becomes angry over his loss, so he knocks off Stagolee’s Stetson hat and spits in it. Stagolee promptly shoots Billy and moves in with his wife. Then, he comically evades two white sheriffs who attempt to bring him to justice, killing the first and using his superhuman strength to survive the second sheriff’s lynching rope. Because he escapes death for so long, Stagolee finally draws the attention of St. Peter and the Lord, who send Death, a disgruntled employee, to take Stagolee’s life. Yet when the hero fends off even Death, the Lord must take matters into his own hands and strikes him with his thunderbolt. Honored with a lavish funeral, Stagolee flouts his final judgment and visits heaven, where he discovers that even the afterlife is segregated. With most blacks barred from heaven because of their propensity to sing the blues, Stagolee happily proceeds to hell, whose gate boasts a Black Power sign. He reunites with friends in a festive, air-conditioned hell and even challenges a forlorn Devil to a duel. When the Devil declines, Stagolee crowns himself the new chief of hell.

The tale of Stagolee enjoyed a long history prior to Lester’s entertaining account. In fact, the story began as a legend based on the nineteenth-century murder of a man named William Lyons by a pimp named Lee Shelton, which may partly account for the story’s subsequent popularity. Yet Stagolee is the most popular example of a character type; numerous other “badman” heroes developed in nineteenth-century African American folklore have been celebrated for their total disregard for society’s morals and laws, many of which guaranteed the oppression of African Americans. Indeed, Stagolee and his counterparts are the prototypes for the modern outlaw figure of the gangster rapper, and many extremely violent and disturbing Stagolee narratives emerged during the twentieth century. Stagolee’s role as a culture hero who nonetheless fuels negative stereotypes about black men has thus created ambivalence about his meaning and value. How might the heroism of this outlaw be understood in the context of American culture and history? A cultural analysis examines how Julius Lester’s Stagolee narrative incorporates features of the early legends and alters the story’s problematic details to offer an entertaining portrait of Stagolee’s “badness” that was current in 1969 and continues to resonate with audiences.

Summary

Julius Lester’s version of Stagolee introduces the protagonist as “undoubtedly and without question, the baddest nigger that ever lived” (172), so bad that flies avoid his head in the summer and snow refuses to fall on his house in winter. Born on a Georgia plantation, Stagolee decides at the age of two that he will not waste his life picking cotton and working for white people, and so at age five, he runs away carrying only a guitar, a deck of cards, and a .44 revolver. He plans to play cards for money, play the blues on his guitar to win any woman he wants, and use his gun “whenever somebody tri[es] to mess with him” (172). As he grows up, Stack, as Stagolee is often referred to, wins fame by killing men over card games and using their bodies as tables or chairs. He is so bad that “even white folks [don’t] mess with Stagolee” (173).

“Stack said, ‘Well, that’s all right. The Lawd’ll take care of your children. I’ll take care of your wife.’ And with that, Stagolee blowed Billy Lyons away. Stagolee looked at the body for a minute and then went off to Billy Lyons’s house and told Mrs. Billy that her husband was dead and he was moving in. And that’s just what he did, too. Moved in.”

Stagolee plays cards with a man named Billy Lyons, who thinks he is better than others because he has “a little education, and that stuff can really mess your mind up” (Lester 173). Billy gets angry when Stagolee keeps winning, so he knocks Stagolee’s Stetson hat off his head and spits into it. Naturally, Stagolee pulls his gun, and Billy immediately restores the hat and begs for his life, invoking pity for his wife and two children. Stagolee replies, “The Lawd’ll take care of your children. I’ll take care of your wife” (173), promptly shoots Billy, and moves in with Billy’s wife. A new white sheriff in town hears of the murder and informs his deputies that they will arrest Stagolee, but the deputies fear Stagolee so much that they actually defend him, telling the sheriff that killing an occasional man is good for one’s health. The sheriff agrees to this for a white man but not for Stagolee because “this is a nigger” (173). The deputies then reprimand the sheriff for his racial slur because they say that Stagolee is a community leader and “one of our better citizens” (174). When the sheriff accuses them of cowardice, the deputies explain that they have reached an understanding with Stagolee that guarantees all their safety. The sheriff persists, so the deputies lay down their guns, tell him to do the job alone, and proceed to the undertaker to make arrangements for the sheriff’s funeral.

Stagolee hears that the sheriff is looking for him, and “being a gentleman,” he goes out to meet him in a bar (Lester 174). The sheriff confronts Stagolee, firing shots in the air, but when Stagolee ignores him, the sheriff tells him, “I’m the sheriff, and I’m white. Ain’t you afraid?” (174). Stagolee replies with “you ain’t Stagolee. Now deal with that” (174). When the sheriff tries to arrest him, Stagolee promptly kills him. The next day, he attends both the funerals of Billy and the sheriff before returning to Mrs. Billy. At this point, Stagolee is described as good looking and “always respectful to women” (175). His one fault is his tendency to drink himself into oblivion. The new sheriff waits until Stagolee gets too drunk to walk and then, accompanied by the “Ku Klux Klan Alumni Association” (175), breaks into his house with a lynching rope. But when the rope touches Stagolee’s neck, he suddenly becomes sober and wide awake, prompting the white people to run in terror. Calmly stretching, Stagolee asks to get the lynching over with so he can “get on back to bed” (175). Stagolee magically causes the rope to fail and mocks his would-be murderers, who eventually give up and release him.

With his superhuman strength, Stagolee lives longer than he is supposed to, attracting the attention of St. Peter in heaven, who notes that Stagolee should “have died thirty years before” (Lester 176). St. Peter consults the Lord, who calls on Death to pay a visit to Stagolee. Overworked from “so many trips to Vietnam,” Death is unhappy about receiving another assignment and cannot understand “why dying couldn’t be systematized” with an organized structure that would utilize assistants (176). But the Lord will have none of it, so Death gets on his horse and meets the Lord, who upbraids his servant for neglecting to bring Stagolee on time. Death starts to complain about his working conditions, but the Lord cuts him off. So Death proceeds to find Stagolee but is completely flummoxed when Stagolee flatly refuses to die, threatening instead to shoot him. Death then consults his Death Manual but finds no solution. When Stagolee fires a shot that narrowly misses him, Death returns to heaven and tells the Lord that he must get Stagolee himself. The Lord then has St. Peter “tell the work crew” of angels to bring him his “giant death thunderbolt” (178). St. Peter helps him to spell correctly as he writes Stagolee’s name on the thunderbolt, and the Lord then casts his eye on the world, marveling at the killing in Vietnam and sinful deeds elsewhere. St. Peter helps the Lord to locate Stagolee and strike him dead with the thunderbolt.

The final part of the story recounts Stagolee’s funeral and journey to the afterlife. His lavish funeral goes on for days and is attended by people “from all over the country” (Lester 179), some of whom place messages in his pocket for their relatives in hell. Musicians honor him, while women of all ages worship and weep. Stagolee is buried in his own private cemetery, but naturally, he rises three days after death and decides to visit heaven on his own, unable to stomach the idea of being judged by a white man. Hearing hymns and harp music, Stagolee concludes that he must go to another side of heaven to find “the black part” (180), but instead he discovers St. Peter playing bridge. St. Peter tells Stagolee that because all the black people sang the blues, most were sent to hell. Stagolee then informs St. Peter that he “messed up” (180) because he is actually in hell, not heaven. Approaching hell, Stagolee smells barbecue cooking, hears jukeboxes, and sees a Black Power sign on the gate. Entering, he meets his friends and finds that hell has been renovated and is air-conditioned. Stagolee then asks if there are any “white folks down here” and is told, “Just the hip ones, and ain’t too many of them” (181). He then notices an old man sitting alone and covering his ears. His friends tell him that this is the Devil, who cannot “get himself together” because he does not yet know “how to deal with niggers” (181). Stagolee invites the Devil to take up his pitchfork and “go one round” (181) with him. When the Devil simply looks sadly at Stagolee, the hero dismisses him and declares, “‘I’m gon’ rule Hell by myself!’ And that’s just what he did, too” (181).

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