Hate Crime
The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation’s imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching.
In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene and extends into the minds of the young men who so casually ended a man’s life. She takes us inside the prison in which two of them met for the first time, and she shows how it played a major role in shaping their attitudes—racial and otherwise. The result is a deeply engrossing psychological portrait of the accused and a powerful indictment of the American prison system’s ability to reform criminals. Finally, King writes with candor and clarity about how the events of that fateful night have affected her—as a black woman, a native Texan, and a journalist given the agonizing assignment of covering the trials of all three defendants. More than a spectacular true-crime debut, Hate Crime is a breathtaking work of reportage and a searing look at how the question of race continues to shape life in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When William King received the death penalty for the grisly murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Tex., he became the first white man in 150 years to be sent to that state's death row for killing a black man. Broadcast journalist King covered his trial and those of Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry, the two other young white men convicted of dragging Byrd behind a pickup truck on June 7, 1998. Suspecting that she's assigned the story only because she's black, King arrives in Jasper fearful and doubting her journalistic objectivity. The Louisiana native quickly confronts her own biases about the smalltown South, even as she becomes an "international commentator" on a crime that shocked the world. King reports the case from start to finish and deepens her chronicle by investigating King and Brewer's involvement in racist Texas prison gangs, creating a chilling portrait of racism's brutal breeding ground. But her efforts to tally the case's personal toll are less successful. The disjointed narrative provides very little insight into her character, and unskilled prose undercuts the telling. Particularly vexing are frequent dangling modifiers, such as one that turns a description of a bad tire into an accurate (if unintentional) assessment of the killers' characters: "Already beyond salvage, they decided the best insurance was a can of Fix-A-Flat." Though this account fares better as documentary than diary, King's ultimate rapprochement with the white authorities who deliver justice for Byrd rings true: "This case taught me what my own work on... racial tolerance had not. I was harboring my own insecurities about race and my own tendencies to stereotype. Recycling untruths simply made me more like the very people I avoided."
