A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption

If you thought you knew just about everything there was to know about this horrible crime then you are probably in for a rude awakening. To say that Dina Temple-Raston's research of this crime and the background information is thorough is a major understatement. If you read this book, you will come aways a virtual expert on this incident, and the major players involved. The book is so complete that I couldn't imagine another book coming along presenting anything new, unless it was an update after this book was published. She begins her book simply enough with the discovery of James Byrd's body. You immediately get the feeling of a fuze being lit on a bomb as the word of mouth starts to carry through the entire community. She succinctly traces how the news is passed from citizen to citizen about the torn up body of a black man that has yet to be identified. After the initial discovery, collecting of evidence, and the eventual identification, she then begins to explore the mulitple paths and dimensions that are at first seem very unrelated, but are drawn together in a way that keeps you turning from one chapter to the next. She explores the make-up of Jasper, and its history. Nothing is left out as she goes way back in the past almost to the beginnings of settlement, and explains how prominent families got their fame, how the lumbering industry helped the town grow, and how earlier racial conflicts affected this part of Texas and this town in particular. Fading back to the present we go into the interesting backgrounds of the major players in this sad saga. Interviews, quotes, and background of the most important people are at the heart of this book: members of James Byrd's family, the Sheriff, the minister crucial in the black community, and the perpetrator's family members. However, an added plus are the interviews and perspectives of the seemingly not so important people: the owners of the cafe/inn across from the courthouse, a local journalist, former employers of the perpetrators, etc. It is incredible how she takes the various opinions and perspectives including the very extremes with the Klu Klux Klan, and the New Black Panthers, and yet still weaves them into this tragic story without missing a beat or unduly breaking up the flow of the important sequential events. The murder is followed right through the trials, and the reader is not lacking for any details or other information. She ends her book not with the perpetrators, but appropriately in the community where it all started, and the future of the community - its children. We gain a sense of where the town might be headed from her by how she gives us a picture of the ways in which kids are dealing with this crime that threaten to divide the races even more. After reading this book with all its attention to detail, brute reality, humanism, and the strength of the good people pressing to rise beyond this tragedy which is felt so clearly, I cannot imagine this book being any better than i

Frankly, I wondered whether there was any more I needed or wanted to know about this murder, but there was, and I was quickly hooked. This is a remarkably well reported and well written story, not just of the grisly murder itself but of all the complex events that led up to it and all the contradictory reactions that followed as the East Texas town where it took place tried to smooth over its racial divide and finally failed.What drew me most were the characters, and though the author makes clear there's pure evil at work here, in her capable hands not one of the figures turns out to be the one-dimensional hero or villain I was expecting. Temple-Raston brings the hard-luck town of Jasper convincingly to life and puts the murder and the trials in a larger context that is fascinating. Best of all are the details and the surprises that come from what was obviously a lot of hard digging. Typical is a tiny scene that describes one of her first interviews, with the father of one of the killers, who was so wary of a reporter that he never got out of his car or took his foot off the brake pedal for 45 minutes, as he sat weeping and, against overwhelming evidence, insisting his son could not have done such a horrible thing. An extraordinary read.

When I first heard about this book I didn't think I would want to read it. I thought I knew everything I wanted to know about the James Byrd murder. Then I started reading. This book is really about the state of race relations in this country and the subtle racism that still exists in our day to day lives. People may want to say this could only happen in an isolated town like Jasper, but it could happen anywhere. I expected to just dip into the book and then it sucked me in and I couldn't put it down. It is written like a novel and you end up rooting for characters and actually feeling like you've been to Jasper and the woods when you are done. I highly recommend this book. Even if you are a little reticent to start a book about a terrible murder, you won't be sorry you picked this one up. Five stars!

After the sensational news reports and the inflammatory speeches by those with no personal stake in Jasper have faded into the nearly forgotten past, this book provides a balanced and comprehensive review of the people, places, and events which put Jasper on the map. It was a quick and compelling read, the sort of book which will keep you up past your bedtime. But you come away from it feeling that you know and understand what happened in Jasper, something which the evening newscasts did not accomplish.

The entire nation turned its eyes to Jasper, Texas, during the summer of 1998. James Byrd, Jr.'s horrific death at the hands of three white supremacist shocked us all. How could this happen in 1998, we asked ourselves? How could we live in a society where one is beaten, has his face spray painted black, and his dragged to his death behind the back of a pickup truck just because of the color of his skin?Reporter Dina Temple-Raston has just written what I believe will become the definitive book on Byrd's murder and its aftermath. I'm not sure how an attractive woman reporter from the northeast, with no obvious ties to east Texas was able to capture the essence of our lives, but she did. And she did it brilliantly...with a few exceptions.I have some problems with her geography and basic facts that a good editor should have caught: Houston is NOT the capitol of Texas (p. 39); Sulphur Springs is NOT in central Texas (p. 71)...it's in north east Texas between Dallas and Texarkana; it's located in HOPKINS county, not Delta County (p. 137); and Vidor is SOUTHWEST of Jasper, not northwest (p. 142). These errors will cost the author some credibility, but they don't take away from the essence of the story: Despite the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, we have not put our racist past behind us.We are lucky that Temple-Raston chose to pay more attention to her subject matter and to handle the characters swirling around in the plot with much more care than she paid to her geography. She details the lives of the three killers: Bill King; Russell Brewer; and Shawn Berry with great care. She is honest in her depiction of James Byrd, Jr. as an alcoholic who couldn't keep a job, drove his wife and children away, and even borrowed money from the preacher's elderly mother. Temple-Raston saves her best writing, however, for Sheriff Billy Rowles. By all accounts, Rowles is the main reason Byrd's death did not rip the town of Jasper clean in two. Rowles pulled Jasper's leaders together and kept order as best he could. With much insight and greater human instinct than most law enforcement officers possess, Rowles used Great New Bethel Baptist Church preacher Kenneth Lyons, Deep East Texas Council of Governments Director Walter Diggles, Jasper Police Chief Harlon Alexander and Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray to keep the peace. I read this book in one sitting. Being from east Texas and living through the segregated 50's and 60's, I am saddened that we're still fighting these racial battles today. I am heartened, however, because in the 50's and 60's, this story would have never been told outside Jasper county and the killers would have not faced the death penalty. At least, now the stories are being told and light is being shed on one of America's most difficult issues. This book will be a best seller in Texas, guaranteed. It should be required reading for anyone involved in law enforcement and it should be mandatory for anyone who denies the problem o