He was like the protective brother. We had a very close relationship,
because he was the first boy and I’m the last of the youngest.
He wasn’t a perfect person, but he struggled to do better.
I looked up to him, and I knew if he was around that nothing would happen.
He was a son. He was a brother. He was a father and a friend.
And I don’t think that comes out too much in anybody’s conversation as to who he really was.
I met James in the ninth grade when I went to high school.
He loved playing in the band. He loved being friendly and meeting friends.
He didn’t do any harm to anybody. The harm that he did, I guess, drinking — he did it to himself.
A 49-year-old father is murdered in a shocking crime.
Police say he was tied to a truck and dragged until he died in a hate-crime killing.
And I just imagine that night, James probably just couldn’t believe this actually finna happen to him.
He can talk his way out of anything and at one point,
he had to realize that it’s not going to happen this time.
That someone took matters into their own hands and said,
your loved one is not important enough to live.
So we gonna take him away because he was born Black.
If he was a white man that day, he’d be still alive, be 70-something years old by now.
When you go to the cemetery, you still feel like he’s not free because he is in a cage.
Because of hate — hate killed him and hate is still causing him not to be free as he lay in peace.
That grave has been desecrated twice. Maybe one day, we’ll feel safe to take the fence down.
It’s a difficult subject. But I think it’s one we need to come to terms with.
One of the main arguments we try to make in this field of study
is that lynching was not an aberration in the South,
that it was seeded into the society and that it was common.
Between 1882 and 1901, there were at least 100 people lynched every year,
which means it was in the paper constantly as a reminder
of white, Black, Hispanic and other people what could happen.
With James Byrd, it’s a little bit different. By the 1980s, lynching had largely ended.
It harkened back to an earlier era in American history.
But East Texas was the most violent place in Texas,
largely because it was a historical recreation of the South.
So the deep-seated racism from the earlier era of Texas history
has continued into modern Texas.
Systemic racism, the legacies are many.
I was a radio personality on KJAS radio station in Jasper, Texas.
KJAS radio news.
A listener of mine called and told myself, they had found a part of a human body.
Billy Rowles approached our home and knocked on the door. And usually when a police officer
you’ve never seen before comes to your door on your side of town, it’s nothing good.
And we can see it in his face, he said, we found out that the body was your son, James Byrd Jr.
When I heard on the radio about finding a body on the Huff Creek Road, there was something about
it that just didn’t sound right. As I was going in, I could see these marks in the road.
If you can picture somebody behind the boat skiing, and the boat turns left, and then the skier will go right.
As the curve went to the left, the body came around to the right, went off the road,
hit in a culvert and the body was, the left shoulder and the head came off there.
And they continued dragging the body. It was well over 2 miles that we walked following this thing.
What really really keys in is how long that was. How long that trail was.
Sheriff Rowles, he’s one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. If you’re just general public, you saw
him on the news, say yeah that’s Billy Rowles, he’s got his Tabasco tie and his cowboy hat.
But he brought in the federal intervention, state intervention and said hey, we need some help.
That’s when Chief Billy Rowles came in. And he told us the details.
The chain came off and they had opportunity to say, “You know what? This is, enough is enough.
He’s still alive, let’s just go.” But they were so determined that they rechained him up.
And elbows was all the way to the bone trying to protect his arm. I mean, he was still fighting,
and the only way to recognize it was James because of his dentures.
I guess when the cameras was there, I was proud of Jasper to come together.
People from white communities would bring us food. But when the cameras left,
they all went back to their corner like it was before.
And a lot of people were afraid. Because in Jasper we don’t have, or we didn’t have, transportation
like we do in the city. A lot of the people there had to walk. And so, if I get caught
out there by myself what’s going to happen? Am I going to be another statistic as James Byrd was?
They wanted justice. They wanted James Byrd to have justice for what was done to him.
We got justice.
Black people don’t get justice. And even justice don’t heal.
So just to put things in perspective it’s not only Jasper it’s everywhere.
People say if you don’t talk about it it didn’t happen and so now we have a new generation in Jasper
that probably never heard the words James Byrd.
I understand people have their own lives and things like that.
I don’t expect them to, you know, change dramatically but it seemed like the town
stepped back and let people find their own way.
And I didn’t see any participants far as trying to keep this town together like it was that day.
At first I didn’t talk at all, my sisters was talking because I didn’t know how to process it.
Sometimes you don’t have the words to say to anybody because it hurt so deeply.
And then one person asked me the question, she said, “You don't want to talk?
You don’t want to talk for James because his voice is silent now, you the only voice he has.”
And that rang the bell that James can’t talk. I know he could. He would talk for me.