This is neither a plea for sympathy for Donald Lang nor

a justification of him. He is in his middle twenties as this

is written and has spent one-fourth of his life behind bars.

He has been accused of two murders and suspected of in-

volvement in others.

"I don t know about The Dummy," a Chicago detec-

tive said during the research for this book, "but every time

he goes through a neighborhood we find a dead broad."

He is a suspect personality.

But Donald Lang is also deaf, mute, illiterate, probably

ineducable now, possibly psychotic and perhaps brain-

damaged by disease and accident in childhood. He is also

an American black, which is considered an infirmity and

a defect by a major segment of the community.

He is nothing and nobody; he will never be anything or

anybody. That may be the

about.

reason he is worth thinking

Given the intelligence, resourcefulness, generosity and

concern of his fellow men, one for the other, Donald

Lang might have beem

That isthe tragedy.