James Byrd, Jr.
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James Byrd, Jr. (May 2, 1949 - June 7, 1998) was an African-American murdered in 1998 by Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer, and John William King, in Jasper, Texas.
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[edit] His life
Byrd was born and raised in Jasper, the third of seven children born to James and Stella Byrd. In 1967, Byrd was in the last segregated class to graduate from Jasper's Rowe High School. He married Thelma Adams in 1970 and relocated to Houston and later Dallas; the couple had three children before divorcing in 1993.
From 1969 to 1995 he had been in and out of prison seven times on charges of theft, forgery and parole violations. Byrd "wasn't a bad guy, just one of those people who seems to get into trouble," former Jasper Police Chief Harlan Alexander would later comment.[1]
Unemployed after an arm injury, Byrd, formerly a vacuum cleaner salesman, lived on monthly disability checks and resided in a rent-subsidized apartment. Byrd was well-known around Jasper, and could frequently be seen walking about town, as he did not own a car.
[edit] The murder
On June 7, 1998, Byrd, 49, accepted a ride from Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer, and John William King. Instead of taking him home, however, the three men beat Byrd, tied him to a pickup truck with a chain, and dragged him about three miles. It is not known whether or not he was alive during the dragging. Lawrence Russel Brewer claimed that Byrd's throat had been slashed before he was dragged; however, forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had been attempting to keep his head up, and an autopsy suggested that Byrd was alive for much of the dragging and died only after his right arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert.[2]
King, Berry, and Brewer dumped their victim's mutilated remains in the town's segregated black cemetery, and then went to a barbecue. [3]
State law enforcement officials and Jasper’s District Attorney determined that since King and Brewer were well-known white supremacists, the murder was a hate crime, and decided to bring in the FBI less than 24 hours after the discovery of Byrd’s brutalized remains. [4] One of Byrd's murderers, John King, had a tattoo depicting a black man hanging from a tree, and other tattoos such as Nazi symbols, the words "Aryan Pride," and the patch for the Confederate Knights of America, a gang of white supremacist inmates. [5] In a jailhouse letter to Brewer which was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the crime and said he realized he might have to die for committing it. "Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before dishonor. Sieg Heil!", King wrote. [6]
Brewer and King were sentenced to death. Berry received life in prison.
Numerous aspects of the Byrd murder echo lynching traditions, including mutilation or decapitation, and revelry, such as a barbecue or a picnic, during or after. These are documented by James Allen in his book, film, and exhibit about lynching, Without Sanctuary, which consists of photographs taken from the 1800s through 1960 of white townspeople, including women and young children, picnicking and posing next to the corpses of lynching victims.
[edit] Reactions to the murder
Byrd's murder was strongly condemned by Jesse Jackson and the Martin Luther King Center as an act of vicious racism and focused national attention on the prevalence of white supremacist prison gangs. The three defendants, who were later tried and convicted for the murder, had allegedly joined such gangs while imprisoned in Texas.
The victim's family created the James Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing after his death. In 2003, a movie about the crime, called Jasper, Texas, was produced and shown on Showtime. The same year, a documentary called Two Towns of Jasper, made by filmmakers Marco Williams and Whitney Dow, premiered on PBS's P.O.V. series.
Basketball star Dennis Rodman offered to pay for Byrd's funeral, and donated $25,000 to a fund started to support Byrd's family.
[edit] A campaign issue
Some advocacy groups made an issue of this case during George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2000. They accused him of implicit racism, since as governor, he opposed special hate crime legislation. Because two of the three murderers were sentenced to death and the third to a life term in prison (all charged with and convicted of capital murder, the highest felony level in Texas), Governor Bush maintained that "we don't need tougher laws."
After Governor Rick Perry inherited the rest of George W. Bush's unexpired term, the 77th Texas Legislature passed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act on May 11, 2001.
[edit] See also
- Ken Tillery - victim of 2002 dragging murder, also in Jasper.
[edit] External links
- James Byrd Jr at findagrave
- Texas NAACP, James Byrd Jr at texasnaacp.org
- cnn.com Co-defendant Shawn Berry led police to the chain used to drag James Byrd Jr to death
- Jasper, Texas - Houston Chronicle feature coverage of the murder
- InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse: Stella Byrd television interview with Byrd's mother
- Jasper, Texas television movie
- Politically Correct Murder and Media Bias by Larry Elder, compares media coverage of the Byrd case to a similar one where the race roles were reversed
