Stuart Halliday

Stuart Halliday was an automobile mechanic in Alexandria, Louisiana. In 1941, Jefferson Pinkard drove a truck to Halliday's garage and asked that he install an airtight metal box in its cargo bed. He did so for $225.

Halliday was puzzled by the job especially since Pinkard insisted on having one small hole in the otherwise sealed box. Unbeknownst to Halliday, Pickard ran a pipe from the truck exhaust to the hole allowing the carbon-monoxide to fill the box. This would asphyxiate the blacks in the truck when they were supposedly being transported to another camp, making the population reduction procedure more efficient and less difficult on the guards. Pinkard had been inspired by the suicide of one such guard, Chick Blades who had run a hose from his auto's exhaust to the inside of the vehicle.

While more efficient than shooting blacks, it still tied up trucks that could have been used in the war effort. As Jake Featherston said when informed of the idea "this is part of what we've been looking for ... [but] may not be the final solution".