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A Death in Texas by Dina Temple-Raston

© Catten Ely

I was living in Houston in 1998 when I heard about the dragging death in Jasper, 125 miles away in East Texas. That it was a race-related crime was clear, but the aftermath that Jasper's citizens went through rarely even made news in Houston. This book brings it all into sharp focus.

Early the morning of June 7, 1998, 49-year-old James Byrd, Jr. left a friend's house to walk home from a night of partying. "You watch. James Byrd, he's going out in style," Byrd said as he left the party. "The name James Byrd is going to be on everybody's lips."

John William King and Shawn Berry, both age 23, and Lawrence Brewer Jr., age 31, picked up Byrd as he walked and offered to drive him home. They beat him, slit his throat, and chained him behind a pickup truck, dragging him by his heels along a dark, empty road called Martin Luther King Boulevard.

News clips showed a crime scene that stretched for three miles, with bright circles spray-painted around each item. Investigators found Byrd's head and right arm more than a mile from where his torso was dumped in front of a little cemetery.

Investigators established ties between the three white attackers and racist organizations. Byrd was African American. What most of us in Houston didn't know, was that the Black Panthers and the KKK were appearing in Jasper and a town that had remained racially segregated even in the '90s was now trying to appear whole and integrated for the benefit of outsiders.

Temple-Raston, a talented journalist, does an excellent job of keeping to the facts and remaining neutral throughout the book. She covers everything from events up to the killing and through the trial to Bill King's arrival on death row, and leaves no stone unturned in her quest for truth. The book is well written and brings up the issue of what qualifies as racism. She explores how shocked the rest of us were to learn how un-shocked Jasper was to hear about the murder, and she skillfully balances the perspectives of black and white neighbors. In addition, her digressions into local history aren't painful or disruptive, as in other books, because she makes the reader want to know even more.

By the way, King and Brewer were sentenced to death; Berry received a life sentenced. Texas has only executed one white person for killing an African American. That was in 1854.

A Death in Texas

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