10 years later ~ James Byrd Jr.

[cheerful_deviant]

JASPER, Texas - Ten years after James Byrd Jr. was dragged to death down a three-mile stretch of country road simply because he was black, some things have changed in Jasper.

Black and white teenagers can be seen playing basketball together at James Byrd Jr. Memorial Park. Blacks now 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 utter brutality and unvarnished racism, still casts a shadow over this timber town in deep East Texas. And many folks here think it always will.

Full Article

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It's hard to believe it's been a decade since this horrific crime against one man, a race and even an entire nation of ideas was commited, but has. Has the nation changed since then? Have we moved forward or slid back? I like to think we have progressed but sometimes it's hard to tell.

Perhaps on this somber 10 year anniversary a reminder of what raw hatred and bigotry can do will help us all to work that much harder to insure something like this can never happen again.

 

[Guest]

This is so sad. And the article said his grave had been defaced?

I still can't quite wrap my mind around the horror of someone being dragged to their death. It's the stuff of nightmares.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

This is so sad. And the article said his grave had been defaced?

I still can't quite wrap my mind around the horror of someone being dragged to their death. It's the stuff of nightmares.

It takes a special kind of cold hearted hatred and calousness to not only kill man, but torture him to death in the most brutal of way based on something so petty as the color of his skin. It can be frightening to see just how savage and beastial humans can really be at times even in a 'civilized' country such as ours.