Word: byrds
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Your article "A Life For A Life" about the racial-murder trial in Jasper, Texas, put me on the verge of tears [NATION, March 8]. My heart went out to the families of both dragging victim James Byrd Jr. and his killer John William King. But bravo to the Jasper community for being strong in the face of evil and bigotry. Justice was served with King's being convicted of murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection. This should be a lesson to all hate groups, white and black. Americans want a change. If you want to hate, hate...
...Franken, I've been very disturbed about three very violent acts of hatred we've seen in America. First there was Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old boy who was tied to a fence in Laramie, Wyo. and left to die because he was gay. Then there was James Byrd Jr. of Jasper, Texas, a man who was tied to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death because he was black. And now there is Billy Jack Gaither, a man from Sylacauga, Ala. who was clubbed to death with an ax handle and thrown onto a pyre...
...state of Texas under the old social contract would not have executed the white man King for murdering the black man Byrd. (To have done so, in fact, would have violated the white community's contract with itself.) Whatever misgivings arise from the fact of execution itself, the jury's decision declared a happy change in the social organism. One white juror made the argument that King required the death sentence because the community had to show that the murder was "something we cannot accept." If there was encouragement to be taken from Jasper...
Forty-three years separate the dead bodies of Emmett Till and James Byrd Jr., both black, both outnumbered by the white men who murdered them. Is there holy water to be drawn from this latest atrocity...
What has changed since Emmett Till? There is a greater civility. In Jasper members of the families of the men accused of killing James Byrd have asked forgiveness of Byrd's relatives. One of the dead man's sisters has spoken of reconciliation. And there is cause for relief that a jury of 11 whites and one black in a small Southern town could come to the same moral conclusion, the same definition of justice. In 1955, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were declared not guilty by an all-white jury in less time than it takes to watch...