A Lesson Before Dying March 3, 2011

Romulus Linney's powerful adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines prize-winning novel, a young man, Jefferson, is about to be executed for a murder he probably didn't commit. At the trial his lawyer, trying to save his life, called him no more a human being than a hog. In prison, he acts like one, insisting he will be dragged like that hog to his death in the electric chair. His Godmother asks a schoolteacher to teach him to die like a man. The teacher faces both Jefferson and himself as execution day arrives. In 1948 Louisiana, the question is not whether or not young Jefferson will be executed, but how he will face his fate.