JASPER, Texas — Ten years after James Byrd Jr. was dragged to death down a 3-mile stretch of country road simply because he was black, some things have changed in Jasper.
Black and white teenagers play basketball together at James Byrd Jr. Memorial Park. Blacks make up a majority on the City Council. And an iron fence no longer separates the graves of whites and blacks in the 171-year-old cemetery where Byrd is buried.
But Byrd’s murder, which jolted the nation with its brutality and unvarnished racism, still casts a shadow over this timber town in deep East Texas. And many folks here think it always will.
“It is something we have to live with the rest of our lives,” said Walter Diggles, a black civic leader and executive director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. “It is similar to Dallas, when people think of the JFK assassination, or Memphis, when people think of Martin Luther King’s murder.”
Ever since three white men beat the 49-year-old Byrd, chained him by the ankles to the bumper of a Ford pickup, then pulled him down Huff Creek Road in the early hours of June 7, 1998, Jasper has been almost synonymous with the horrors of racism.
Byrd’s remains were found scattered in 75 places along the twisting path that cuts through a pine forest. His head and right arm were discovered about a mile from his mangled torso.
A decade later, according to Diggles, some people are still afraid to visit Jasper, a town of 8,000 where the main intersection is a cluster of fast-food places and restaurants offering chicken fried steak specials. Some businesses have been reluctant to come to the town, which is badly in need of industry.
However, Diggles and many others say there is a hopeful part of the story too often overlooked: The murder forced the people of Jasper, a town whose population is almost evenly divided between black and white, to confront their prejudices.
Byrd’s murderers were arrested and convicted. John William King and Lawrence Russell Brewer are now on death row. Shawn Allen Berry is serving a life sentence.
Betty Byrd Boatner, Byrd’s younger sister, said that before the killing, she didn’t see whites and blacks playing basketball together. As for the segregated graveyard, the iron fence came down a few years ago.
On Saturday, as they have every year on the anniversary of Byrd’s death, the Byrds will hold a service — not just as a memorial, but also as a challenge to those still shackled by prejudice.
“When you do things that hurt someone else, you need to remember that that person is someone’s child,” Boatner said. “My brother was someone’s child. If it was your family, your brother, your sister, how would you handle it?”
