On the date of June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr. died by decapitation after his head hit a ditch culvert after being dragged by White supremacists in Jasper, TX.

My stomach still turns as I write that statement. It’s astonishing that event happened only nine years ago this past weekend. It’s even more astonishing that this abomination happened a full 135 years after the Emancipation Proclomation, 43 years after Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in Montgomery, AL, and 35 years after the March on Washington. We are so far removed from those historic events and yet it seems like we’re still up to our eyeballs in the same pile of $#*! and MAN does it stink!

I was raised in Jasper, Texas and lived there after my birth all the way until I left home for college. I laugh inside when people (of all races) call Jasper a “racist” town, call James Byrd’s perpetrators “animals”, or tell me they step on their accelerators a little harder as they drive through Jasper County. Part of me laughs because I know Jasper is a harmless little town that presents no real threat to anyone particularly visitors from out of town. I also laugh because people actually have the nerve to believe that the safe havens where they rest their collective heads at night are somehow exempt from the monsters that dare do physical harm to someone based on their ethnicity. Not to sound like a crazy left-wing conspiracy theorist, but we live in a country that has killed millions of innocent people (foreigners AND Americans) in the name of justice, freedom, and what is right. I’ll roll with the fact that many foreign countries have severe terror issues and threats that need to be policed but who “polices” the police. Colin Powell admitted over the weekend we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq based on information we have today ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=FejQH_VCB24) about WMD’s but all that’s neither here nor there. The fact is that the James Byrd tragedy could have occurred in ANY city in America or the world, period. It just happened to make everyone feel comfortable that it happened “over there” in that little, small country town down in Texas where the people are uncivilized and think marrying relatives is sometimes what you gotta do. You know, those Southerners that sleep with their granpappy’s Confederate flag and army attire over their beds at night to protect ol’ Dixie’s virtue. What many of us new-age, progressive, anti-Liberal but also anti-Conservative Americans don’t realize is that Jim Crow left his country home a long time ago, moved to an upscale, Midtown loft(he calls it Midtown because Freedman’s Land sounds too “ethnic”), and is a practicing civil defense law for a firm with a lot of “diversity” that he loves. Jim Crow also likes to go by James Crow III and drives an Acura TL, but don’t get it twisted; he still dons his Ku Klux Klan regalia on the weekend. A matter of fact, according to the Anti-Defamation League the original KKK has experienced a surprising and troubling resurgence during the past year due to the successful exploitation of hot-button topics such as immigration, gay marriage, and urban crime.

During that hot summer of 1998, I had the good fortune of experiencing Quanell X and the New Black Panthers marching through the streets of Jasper, Texas with guns held in full glory for the world to see. Then, of course, the KKK applied for parade credentials to hold a march but they were denied. I saw the effects of the tragedy on Mr. & Mrs. Byrd and their family along with my church family with the zenith being the funeral itself. The Nation of Islam & FOI attendees who pulled up in their white limos, the Bush family, Maxine Waters, Jesse, the casket Rodman paid for, US Marshals, media crews…then it was all over. Of course, there was a movie, some books, and documentaries on how and what went down. Then Jasper had the chance to go back to being the racist, little town it always was. The place where the Black educator makes roughly $10K less than White educators of equal experience/tenure on average around 6 years AFTER the James Byrd tragedy. Surprisingly, no one came back to march when that little tidbit was released unwittingly to some school district employees. I suppose because there’s no real “shock” value in marching for teachers.

No one could have prevented James Byrd from happening. As stated before, it would’ve happened somewhere else somehow eventually. What I find difficult is, if there is such vehement racial discord in these little hick towns then why not set up a government agency that targets policy and racial equality in small towns? If Jasper was such a landmark event why not make the town a landmark for change? If James Byrd’s life was more precious than to die in such an inhumane way why disgrace him with a march, a hug, and a casket? When will someone help cause change in a community after the interviews are over? I know there are millions of us out there thriving for a change in our global society and how peoples of color are treated. And there won’t be a “Moses” who comes to unify us all and take us to the “Promised Land”. It starts with me and you educating each other and others on events that are happening in our world and not allowing perpetrators of terror to brandish their WMD’s on our blocks at home or abroad.