Texas city haunted by 'no blacks after dark' past

Yes, I noticed it was 6 years old, but I don't see why that matters. It's a very informative and thought-provoking article and I'm thankful Steven posted it.

It is what you want to accept it to be! No matter who is pitching or receiving!

Racism! its just another word to me, with no meaning.. You get to a point in your life weir the word racism is old over rated so to speak. Whites and blacks that are hateing each other.. I came out of a family that is very diverse we have Indians, white, blacks, and spanish, and philippinos, and chiness. When people see me with my daughter there mouth drop open, cause she is white as snow with beautiful long hair. She looks nothing like me nor her dad.. But she looks alot like my mom, which has pass on.. My point am getting to, is that whites should not be racises cause you could be mix with any thing and never know.. blacks the same they should not be ignorant and racises. Slavery is in the pass its history; and i think that people who bring it up or use it as an excuses to hate whites should just give it a rest.. don't talk about some thing that you have not physically went thru.. And am so sick of people talk about this slavery this slavery that!! The people that went through that are not very racises thats the sad then. They don't go hating whites.. its in the past.. That my opinion.

Slavery was a shameful abomination in our nations history and yes, there were plenty of terrible things done in the name of slavery BUT, this was not the common treatment. Slaves were an expensive 'piece of equipment' for lack of a better term for what they were used for and served to the 'owner'. It would make as much sense to beat, cripple, or kill a slave as it would for a farmer today to shoot his tractor or ram his harvester into a tree. It just did not make financial sense. The simple fact that we held people in slavery was enough to be shameful. Still, the majority of slave-owners in the South worked right alongside their slaves.

When I moved to the South at 16 yrs of age one thing did strike me. People down there were honest enough to admit their racist or bigoted beliefs. Those folks from the North always hide their notions and hatred. In my town they called the Gardner family "American Indians" when in fact we knew that they were of the Negro race. They were our good friends and neighbors and it wasn't until I was older that I figured out that this family was not well liked, I just could not figure out why. When school integration was made mandatory in the South I remember all the adults proclaiming what a good and righteous thing they were doing to stop segregation. Just a few years later when Mass. was told to integrate the schools in those cities with a large black population such as Boston then all these white people who thought it was so proper to force the South to integrate went absolutely crazy that they were told they had to desegregate. They started rioting and attacking blacks and dropping the "N" word all over the darn place! I would rather someone be honest to my face instead of only behind my back. At least I knew where I stood. The South integrated more quickly, (with the exception of the hard-core racist and bigot), as many grew up around and with black folks and played with them when they were younger and did not have themselves filled with all that racist nonsense. I met one of my very best friends in Charlotte, NC where we worked together. We were very close, almost like brothers and when he was killed in Vietnam I immediately went down and enlisted so I could avenge his death. This fine young man, my best friend, also happened to be black. We talked about race quite a bit as all this bigotry was new to me and he taught me quite a bit about the 1950-60's segregated South.

All that movies like this do is anger people and inflame the racial divide that we are trying to bridge.

Let us not, for one moment, believe this is linited to any specific geographical area of the country.Although we have come a long way in this country the items which MarlyB and I brought up occured a recently as the 90's.----Hearts,.minds,ideas and ideals still have to change.

Many chose to keep their heads buried in the sand(see no evil,hear no evil,speak no evil).

Little gas stations in small towns sometimes have 'gate-keepers.' They represent the larger element in a town. They do the notifying.

snhadley's step back into the future took him onto all too familiar territory. There, he encountered vanguards who ensure the town will always be understood in terms of racist murder. They serve as human signposts of terrorism.

It is a long war - since time out of mind. In remote outposts, or maybe next door to you, nothing changes in ten, twenty or two-hundred years. In an East Texas town called Jasper, not far from Vidor, a black man was dragged from a truck until his limbs were separated from his torso.

Some of you here will remember the murder of James Byrd, Jr. It was in 1998.

Black Man Fatally Dragged In a Possible Racial Killing
By CAROL MARIE CROPPER
Published: June 10, 1998

A black man was dragged to his death on Sunday from the back of a pickup truck in a rural section of Texas known for racist and Klan activity, and today three white men were charged with the murder.

The broken body of James Byrd Jr., 49, was discovered on Sunday morning by residents of an area just outside the East Texas town of Jasper, population 8,000. As he walked home from his parents' house on Saturday night, Mr. Byrd was apparently picked up by the men sometime after midnight and taken to woods, where he was beaten, then chained to the truck and dragged for two miles.

Guy James Gray, the Jasper County District Attorney, called the killing ''probably the most brutal I've ever seen'' in 20 years as a prosecutor. Mr. Byrd's torso was found at the edge of a paved road, his head and an arm in a ditch about a mile away, according to an affidavit.

The police charged Shawn A. Berry, 23, Lawrence R. Brewer, 31, and John W. King, 23, with murder. The District Attorney said Mr. Brewer and Mr. King had racist tattoos and were Ku Klux Klan supporters, leading investigators to believe the killing was racially motivated.

The three were apparently roommates in a Jasper apartment.

R. C. Horn, Mayor of Jasper, said the victim came from a ''beautiful family.'' Mr. Byrd's sisters said he had been on disability and did not have a car but often accepted rides from acquaintances or walked around Jasper, where the number of blacks almost equals that of whites.

Mayor Horn said there had been no unusual racial problems in the town, built on the timber industry. ''Jasper is a city that has a strong bind together, both black and white,'' said Mr. Horn, who is black.

But Gary Bledsoe, president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the eastern part of Texas, which includes Jasper, has been considered a problem area and a hotbed of Klan activity for years. He pointed to problems in 1993 integrating a housing project in nearby Vidor, for decades an all-white town, where an avowed white supremacist threatened the first black residents, and teen-agers dressed in sheets confronted black newcomers.

Mr. Bledsoe called for adding kidnapping charges, making the killing a capital crime. He said that he planned to go to Jasper to help the authorities with the investigation and that the N.A.A.C.P. wanted to help organize a community response, like a march or rally.

Mayor Horn said local church leaders were planning a prayer meeting at the courthouse square for Monday night.

According to the police affidavit, items left in the woods and along the dirt logging road where Mr. Byrd was first dragged led officials to the three men charged. One item was a cigarette lighter inscribed with a Klan symbol that the police said they believed belonged to one of the men.

Mr. Berry told the police he had been riding around with the other two men when he saw Mr. Byrd walking and offered him a ride, according to the affidavit. Mr. Byrd and Mr. Berry might have known each other because they had the same parole officer, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Byrd served six years in prison for theft and violating parole. All three suspects have criminal records for offenses including burglary and drug possession and served jail time together.

After Mr. Byrd was picked up, Mr. King became upset and began cursing, Mr. Berry is quoted as saying in the affidavit. The men stopped at a convenience store and then Mr. King drove to the dirt road, saying he was about to scare Mr. Byrd. The other two began to beat the victim, Mr. Berry told the police.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation may charge the three with violating the victim's civil rights, said Al Tribble, an F.B.I. special agent in Houston. The national N.A.A.C.P. is also watching the case, said Jean Hitchcock, acting chief operating officer for the organization, adding, ''We call upon all Americans to stand up and be counted and to condemn this for the heinous crime that it is.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/10/us/black-man-fatally-dragged-in-a...

Bump All!!

I just really believe that I as an American (No matter color, creed,race) should be able to go to any place in United States of America without the possibility of negative behavior from a community, especially from it's police force!