Texas town still shadowed by dragging death

JASPER, Texas (AP) - 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.

"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."

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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 town, which is badly in need of industry.

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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?"

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