10 years later, Byrd tragedy still haunts Jasper

Rocket River · Jun 8, 2008

Never Forget

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5823669.html

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The Houston Chronicle said:

10 years later, Byrd tragedy still haunts Jasper
While some residents want to move on and erase the scar left by the heinous, racial attack, his family works to keep the black man's memory alive

By LESLIE CASIMIR
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

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CONVICTED IN THE CASE
John William "Bill" King , 33, of Jasper. An ex-con and white supremacist who was 23 when James Byrd Jr. was killed, King was convicted of capital murder and was sentenced to death. Awaiting execution.
Lawrence Russell Brewer Jr . , 41, of Sulphur Springs. An ex-con and white supremacist who met King in prison. Both joined the Ku Klux Klan and covered their bodies with racist tattoos. The trial for Brewer, 31 at the time of the murder, was moved to Bryan, where he was sentenced to death after being found guilty of capital murder. Awaiting execution.

Shawn Allen Berry , 33, of Jasper. A 23-year-old movie theater manager when the slaying took place, Berry attended high school with King and was the driver of the truck that dragged Byrd. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life. He is segregated from the rest of the general prison population and will be eligible for parole at age 63.

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TIMELINE OF EVENTS
June 7, 1998: James Byrd Jr., 49, a disabled black man from Jasper, is picked up by three white men and then beaten, chained by his ankles to a pickup and dragged three miles to his death. Reason: He was black.
January 1999: John William "Bill" King is the first of three defendants to stand trial in Byrd's death.

February 1999: A jury of 11 whites and one African-American finds King guilty of capital murder and sentences him to death.

May 1999: Capital murder trial for Lawrence Russell Brewer Jr. is moved to Bryan.

September 1999: An all-white jury convicts Brewer of capital murder. He is given the death penalty.

October 1999: Capital murder trial for Shawn Allen Berry begins in Jasper.

November 1999: An all-white jury finds Berry guilty of capital murder and sentences him to life in prison.
October 2000: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholds King's conviction.

May 2001: Gov. Rick Perry signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law, which toughens the penalties for crimes motivated by hate or prejudice against people because of race, religion or sexual preference, among other things.

April 2002: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholds Brewer's conviction.

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Remembering a 'modern-day lynching' Jasper — A look back
JASPER — The faded Ford pickup sits like a pale gray ghost in a shady corner of the impound lot. Shoved between a chain-link fence and a carport, it has been quietly tucked away for 10 years.

The tires, the rims, the infamous chain — all stained with blood and human flesh — were removed long ago and are stored in a security vault. The evidence.

An old barrel of motor oil sits atop the truck's rusty hood, its body entangled in vines and dead branches.

"I don't like to go near it. I never even opened the door of that truck," said Leon Clark, 57, who owns the lot. "I've got to get it out of here for all the trouble it has caused Jasper, Texas."

In the early-morning hours of June 7, 1998, that truck dragged James Byrd Jr., an African-American, to his agonizing death, adding another sordid page to America's painful racial history. Three white men used a logging chain to tie Byrd's ankles to the truck's rear bumper, zigzagging him along bucolic Huff Creek Road for 3.08 miles.

By the time the grisly ride came to a halt, Byrd's head and his right shoulder and arm had been severed. The 49-year-old man's dentures, his apartment keys and his wallet were found strewn along the bloodied path.

The event is something that some in this small East Texas town, shrouded in thick pines, sweet gum, oak and hickory trees, want to forget: It was a modern-day lynching.

But like the pickup truck, the memory of this heinous hate crime is still here, festering in a corner. Jasper is haunted by what happened 10 years ago today. It is here, thick in the air, like the scent of the pine trees that cling to Huff Creek Road, persistent.

There is no memorial along the road to mark Byrd's passing, not even a makeshift cross. But a small park in the black section of town, dotted with wood-frame and trailer homes, bears his name: James Byrd Jr. Memorial Park. Today that park will be the gathering spot for a commemoration.

Fear of association

Depending on who is doing the talking, some Jasper residents want to forget Byrd, who in life was a jovial man known for his love of a drink and the piano and as a doting son, but for not much more.

Now they fear that because of his death, their beloved small town, known as the Jewel of the Forest, will forever be synonymous with Byrd being dragged by that truck.

"We're trying to move on if people would let us and stop associating us for this morbid display," said Liz Street, executive director for the Jasper/Lake Sam Rayburn Area Chamber of Commerce, which also serves as the tourist office. Among the visitors is a trickle of college students researching racial violence, inquiring about directions to Byrd's grave.

"It makes me more defensive of Jasper," Street said.

Yet there are others who want to remember the lynching, to heal and learn from it.

"He died because he was black — not because of the things he did — and people want to coat that, bury that," said Betty Boatner, one of Byrd's sisters, who is one of several siblings working to raise awareness of hate crimes. "But as long as we are alive, the world will always know."

A haunted conscience

The memories torture Steven Scott, the key witness in the three murder trials of John William King, Lawrence Russell Brewer Jr. and Shawn Allen Berry that sent two of them to death row and one to life in prison.

Only 18 at the time, with a love for hip-hop and Master P, Scott was driving home on Martin Luther King Boulevard about 2 that morning 10 years ago when he spotted Byrd stumbling along the street.

Scott had been out dancing at a club in Beaumont. He thought about offering Byrd a ride, but he changed his mind. Byrd appeared to be drunk, and the teen just wanted to get home after the hourlong drive.

When Scott got home, he saw Byrd pass by, sitting in the bed of that primer-gray pickup, slumped over, heading to his death. Scott told police what he saw and was later pivotal in helping authorities crack the case within 48 hours.

"My conscience told me to stop, and the other conscience told me to keep going, and I listened to the devil," said Scott, now 28, unemployed and living in Arkansas. "I could have saved that man's life."

In and out of college with two associate's degrees to his name, Scott said he is waiting to move on from that morning. So far, he can't. After authorities released his name and address on the affidavit of probable cause, the black teen starting getting hate mail laced with death threats, he said. Scott had asked the sheriff's deputies to keep him anonymous.

"I still feel like I'm being watched," Scott said. "I just want to live a normal life."

What happened to Byrd was an extreme act of violence that horrified the world, but what happened after the funeral and during the murder trials shattered Jasper. Media from as far away as Japan descended on this town, population 8,200.

Members of the white-clad Ku Klux Klan and the black-outfitted New Black Panther Party held dueling demonstrations outside the Jasper County Courthouse, where two of the three trials were held.

King and Brewer now sit on death row. Brewer is up for parole when he turns 63 in 2038 and is segregated from the general prison population.

Byrd's grave was desecrated twice. In 2004, his family erected a 4-foot-tall iron fence around the grave in the once-segregated Jasper City Cemetery.

"Even in death, James is still in chains," said another sister, Louvon Harris of Houston.

Signs of healing
For all the turmoil, Jasper has made strides to heal its image. An alliance of black and white ministers was formed and is active in town. Billy Rowles, who was the town's sheriff at the time, realized he didn't have a diverse police force. So he hired six black deputies and dispatchers.

"They portrayed me as a snuff dippin', beer drinkin', redneck East Texas sheriff, and they had it all right — but I wasn't a bigot," said Rowles, 62, who retired four years ago.

The local Wal-Mart, known as the town's mall, reflects the demography of Jasper's working-class residents, almost equally split between black and white, with a growing Latino population. Recently, a white man shopped for groceries with a black woman, their interracial child sitting on the shopping cart.

During an afternoon on Huff Creek Road, an interracial teenage couple sped by on an all-terrain vehicle.

"People are becoming more open-minded," Scott said. "But the problem with Jasper is there are no jobs, no opportunities. Where you going to work? The Jack In The Box?"

Boatner, who never left town, said Jasper is sweet home for her and her parents, Stella Mae Byrd and James Byrd Sr. Several years ago, Stella Byrd, who declined to be interviewed for this article, erected a small museum in the front of her brown wood-framed house on Broad Street, its yard dotted with rosebushes.

Enclosed in a glass case, the museum, which is the size of a closet, contains her son's images and gifts of artwork, plaques and letters from strangers and dignitaries. She wrote a self-published memoir in 2002. She wants the neighbors to be reminded of James Byrd Jr., every day.

Fading memories
In that same house, however, the family's patriarch, James Byrd Sr., can't remember a thing.

A mainstay during the trials, he has suffered from Alzheimer's disease for five years. He passes the time sitting in a wheelchair in the garage out front just a few yards away from the small glass museum.

"You can't interview him because he doesn't remember," Boatner said. "If he could, I think he would love to remember, because he was our strength when this was all going on."

But that was a long time ago, and many of Jasper's next generation, its youth, don't know the legacy of James Byrd Jr.

Children playing games at the Boys & Girl's Clubs — a stone's throw from the county courthouse — said they knew his name but weren't sure why.

"I heard he was a pretty good person, and he also lived in an apartment," said Dayzha Southwell, 11, who wore a T-shirt that read: The World Needs More Love.

"And then he died."
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