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The Lynching of "Toe"
By Meg Langford
“I believe I can fly. . .”
A sacred routine had been broken.
Grover Thomas, eighty-one, was sitting on his porch, watching the stream of people, black and white, bearing casseroles, baked chicken, cakes, pies, the usual fare, as they strolled into a neighbor’s open front door. This was a special occasion.
But the routine had been broken.
Because every morning, that neighbor would walk up Grover’s steps to the front porch with a plate of biscuits, a box of dominoes, or perhaps an offer to mow the lawn--always something friendly and selfless.
This morning ritual had been going on for decades now, since James was a boy and Grover Thomas was a much younger man. When Jimmy didn’t show up on that sad morning, Grover Thomas knew that somehow, he never would again.
Nobody called him Jimmy or even James though; his friends and family playfully nicknamed him “Toe,” because of a childhood accident that that had caused him to lose a toe. “Toe” was a black man, forty-nine years old, the third of eight children born to Stella, a Sunday school teacher, and James, a dry cleaner. When Toe was a boy, his family’s life revolved around the Greater New Bethel Baptist Church, a few blocks from their home, where Stella taught the children and her husband was a deacon.
“When the church doors opened on Sunday, we were there,” said Mrs. Taylor, fifty-one, who teaches eighth-grade science in the Houston public schools. “There was school in the morning, then services, then Baptist Training Union, then church again at night. You knew what you’d be doing on Sundays.”
As a boy, Toe was known in church more for his passion for piano playing and singing than his faith. He could pick out any tune on the keyboard before he was ten, and was particularly adept at belting out spirituals and hymns, especially “Walk With Me, Lord,” and, more recently, the pop hit “I Believe I Can Fly.” He was the lead trumpeter in the band at Rowe Elementary School, and also did an excellent imitation of Al Green.
Toe--James--grew up to be a man who was proud with good reason of his three children. You could tell that though divorced, he had done something mighty right by way of being a father. His beautiful daughter Jamie was sixteen and living with her mom Lufkin, Texas, just a few miles down the road. His oldest daughter Renee was twenty-seven, serving her country in the United States Army. His son, Ross, twenty, was an Army private stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, with orders to deploy to South Korea.
*************
It was a horrified local resident who found James’s severed head. The police found parts of James Byrd in eighty-one other spots along that country road, in addition to what was left of his torso. The fact that so much of his body was found all over the road, and that James Byrd was alive for much of the agonizing ordeal, tells us all too much about how much this poor human being must have suffered.
The loving family described above was torn asunder when three white men, two white supremacists and one cowardly driver, picked up James Byrd, offering him a lift. Byrd knew the driver, and trusted the offer of a ride home. But instead, these three monsters took their victim to a secluded country road, beat him severely, urinated on him, sprayed black spray paint on his face, tied chains to him, and dragged him for several miles. Forensic evidence suggests that Byrd died after his right arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert, resulting in Byrd’s decapitation.
Killers John William King, Shawn Allen Berry, and Lawrence Russell Brewer dumped their victim’s mutilated remains in front of an African American cemetery, and then without missing a beat, they went to a big family barbecue.
*************
HIS FINAL MOMENTS
Excerpted from Reuters, February 23rd, 1999:
“James Byrd was alive and writhing in pain until he struck a culvert that decapitated him,” an expert witness testified in the trial of white supremacist John William King. Forensic pathologist Tommy Brown said James Byrd, forty-nine years of age, “fought to survive while he was chained by his ankles to a truck and dragged more than two miles along a paved country road” in what prosecutors described as a racist gang initiation.
“He was attempting to keep his head off of the pavement. He was conscious,” said Brown, who performed the official autopsy on Byrd a day after the June 7th murder. “Byrd’s elbows and knees were ground to the bone as he tried to prop himself up,” Brown said.
“He would have been very tired, very worn out trying to do a lot of things, trying to survive,” Brown testified. “He would probably swap one portion of his body ... trying to get pressure off other areas.”
“Byrd’s head and right arm and shoulder were torn from his torso when he struck a concrete drainage culvert as the truck swerved from side to side”, the pathologist said. “It’s my opinion that he was alive up to that point.” Brown added.
End Excerpt.
Or, to put it in the words of one participant, driver Shawn Berry said this of his two friends:
“They were having fun. They were acting like they were just having a good old time.”
Berry remembered even more details, as police questioning continued:
“Russell looked back and started laughing and said, ‘Look, he’s rolling!’ and ‘He’s bouncing around all over the place!’ And then Russell giggled hysterically.”
“I believe I can fly. . .”
A sacred routine had been broken.
Grover Thomas, eighty-one, was sitting on his porch, watching the stream of people, black and white, bearing casseroles, baked chicken, cakes, pies, the usual fare, as they strolled into a neighbor’s open front door. This was a special occasion.
But the routine had been broken.
Because every morning, that neighbor would walk up Grover’s steps to the front porch with a plate of biscuits, a box of dominoes, or perhaps an offer to mow the lawn--always something friendly and selfless.
This morning ritual had been going on for decades now, since James was a boy and Grover Thomas was a much younger man. When Jimmy didn’t show up on that sad morning, Grover Thomas knew that somehow, he never would again.
Nobody called him Jimmy or even James though; his friends and family playfully nicknamed him “Toe,” because of a childhood accident that that had caused him to lose a toe. “Toe” was a black man, forty-nine years old, the third of eight children born to Stella, a Sunday school teacher, and James, a dry cleaner. When Toe was a boy, his family’s life revolved around the Greater New Bethel Baptist Church, a few blocks from their home, where Stella taught the children and her husband was a deacon.
“When the church doors opened on Sunday, we were there,” said Mrs. Taylor, fifty-one, who teaches eighth-grade science in the Houston public schools. “There was school in the morning, then services, then Baptist Training Union, then church again at night. You knew what you’d be doing on Sundays.”
As a boy, Toe was known in church more for his passion for piano playing and singing than his faith. He could pick out any tune on the keyboard before he was ten, and was particularly adept at belting out spirituals and hymns, especially “Walk With Me, Lord,” and, more recently, the pop hit “I Believe I Can Fly.” He was the lead trumpeter in the band at Rowe Elementary School, and also did an excellent imitation of Al Green.
Toe--James--grew up to be a man who was proud with good reason of his three children. You could tell that though divorced, he had done something mighty right by way of being a father. His beautiful daughter Jamie was sixteen and living with her mom Lufkin, Texas, just a few miles down the road. His oldest daughter Renee was twenty-seven, serving her country in the United States Army. His son, Ross, twenty, was an Army private stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, with orders to deploy to South Korea.
*************
It was a horrified local resident who found James’s severed head. The police found parts of James Byrd in eighty-one other spots along that country road, in addition to what was left of his torso. The fact that so much of his body was found all over the road, and that James Byrd was alive for much of the agonizing ordeal, tells us all too much about how much this poor human being must have suffered.
The loving family described above was torn asunder when three white men, two white supremacists and one cowardly driver, picked up James Byrd, offering him a lift. Byrd knew the driver, and trusted the offer of a ride home. But instead, these three monsters took their victim to a secluded country road, beat him severely, urinated on him, sprayed black spray paint on his face, tied chains to him, and dragged him for several miles. Forensic evidence suggests that Byrd died after his right arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert, resulting in Byrd’s decapitation.
Killers John William King, Shawn Allen Berry, and Lawrence Russell Brewer dumped their victim’s mutilated remains in front of an African American cemetery, and then without missing a beat, they went to a big family barbecue.
*************
HIS FINAL MOMENTS
Excerpted from Reuters, February 23rd, 1999:
“James Byrd was alive and writhing in pain until he struck a culvert that decapitated him,” an expert witness testified in the trial of white supremacist John William King. Forensic pathologist Tommy Brown said James Byrd, forty-nine years of age, “fought to survive while he was chained by his ankles to a truck and dragged more than two miles along a paved country road” in what prosecutors described as a racist gang initiation.
“He was attempting to keep his head off of the pavement. He was conscious,” said Brown, who performed the official autopsy on Byrd a day after the June 7th murder. “Byrd’s elbows and knees were ground to the bone as he tried to prop himself up,” Brown said.
“He would have been very tired, very worn out trying to do a lot of things, trying to survive,” Brown testified. “He would probably swap one portion of his body ... trying to get pressure off other areas.”
“Byrd’s head and right arm and shoulder were torn from his torso when he struck a concrete drainage culvert as the truck swerved from side to side”, the pathologist said. “It’s my opinion that he was alive up to that point.” Brown added.
End Excerpt.
Or, to put it in the words of one participant, driver Shawn Berry said this of his two friends:
“They were having fun. They were acting like they were just having a good old time.”
Berry remembered even more details, as police questioning continued:
“Russell looked back and started laughing and said, ‘Look, he’s rolling!’ and ‘He’s bouncing around all over the place!’ And then Russell giggled hysterically.”
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Shawn Allen Berry is serving life in prison; he has a daughter with a woman he married by proxy. He was the only one of the three who did not receive the death penalty, because he was not a known white supremacist. He was only the driver, and he claimed during the trial that he had no idea what King and Brewer’s real agenda was, and that when he tried to intervene, they frightened him into submission by saying, “The same thing can happen to a nigger lover.”
John William King is sitting on death row. On the day he was sentenced, as he was leaving the courthouse, he was asked by a reporter if he had anything to say to the Byrd family. “Yeah,” he said, glancing at them. “Suck my dick.” In the official document, “Court of Criminal Appeals: Texas v. John William King”, we are provided with some revealing tidbits about King’s body art:
“Among the tattoos covering the appellant's body were a woodpecker in a Ku Klux Klansman’s uniform making an obscene gesture; a patch incorporating KKK, a swastika, the words ‘Aryan Pride’, and a black man with a noose around his neck hanging from a tree. Appellant had on occasion displayed these tattoos to people and had been heard to remark, ‘See my little nigger hanging from a tree.’ ”
King also wrote in letters that he believes white ladies who date black gentlemen should be swinging on trees along side of them.
Russell Brewer also received the death penalty. In a letter produced during Brewer’s trial, Brewer confessed, “Well, I did it. It was a rush, and no longer am I a virgin. I am licking my lips for more.”
Brewer was executed on September 21, 2011. The day before his execution, Brewer told KHOU 11 News in Houston: “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth.”
Brewer is so vile, he even ruined it for everyone else sitting on death row. Just for spite, he ordered a “last meal” that included two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a large bowl of fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream, and a slab of peanut butter fudge with lots of crushed peanuts. However he did not eat any of it, and the meal was discarded, prompting Texas prison officials to end the eighty-seven year old tradition of giving special last meals to condemned inmates.
Now, for your last meal on this earth, you just get what everybody else in the cell block is having.
And all of this because three white men decided to give a black man a lift home.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, the citizens of Jasper, Texas, most of whom we can assume were decent, hard-working citizens, saw their property taxes skyrocket by 8 percent--although some officials said it ended up being closer to 12 percent.
And then, there is the matter of that thing which we cannot put a price upon: a human being’s life. In this case, the life of a conscious man dragged for three and a half miles, fully alert, in agony, struggling to save himself until he was decapitated by a culvert
James “Toe” Byrd’s crime: hitching a ride.
This is hate. This is the spirit of pure evil.
***************
Part of what makes the Byrd murder so horrifying, so unbelievable, is that this nightmare did not occur in the post Civil War South. It did not occur early in the century, when bitter memories of north-south or black-white relations were overpoweringly hateful. Nor did this unspeakable crime occur during the regional insanity of the civil rights movements of the 1950’s and 60’s.
No, this murder was committed in a time and in a country that we like to consider “civilized.” A time during which the South sought to paint itself as “The New South”, a place where all Americans were welcome to come and raise their families in peaceful, integrated communities.
Specifically, the year was 1998: the first Harry Potter book had just been released, “Titanic” was flooding the theatres like a tsunami, “Seinfeld” was (alas) ending, Clinton was finally admitting the Lewinsky affair, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both chased the home run record set by Roger Maris in 1961, and in the end, both broke it, with 70 and 66 home runs respectively. And good old John Glenn returned to space.
But in spite of all this progress, white supremacists were still preying on blacks, torturing and slaughtering their own neighbors.
**************
Basketball icon Dennis Rodman paid for James Byrd’s funeral and gave the family $25,000. Fight promoter Don King gave the family $100,000 for the education of Byrd’s children. They used this money to found the James Byrd Jr. Foundation for Racial Healing.
Ross Byrd, the only son of James Byrd, has been involved with Murder Victim’s Families for Reconciliation, an organization that opposes capital punishment.
He has even campaigned to spare the lives of those who murdered his father, and he appears briefly in the documentary Deadline about the death penalty in Illinois.
At the very least, Toe has left one hell of a legacy.
Rest in Peace, James. “I believe I can fly.”
We believe it too, Byrd. Fly to a better place.
JASPER, TEXAS, 1998
by Lucille Clinton
i am a man’s head hunched in the road.
i was chosen to speak by the members
of my body. the arm as it pulled away
pointed toward me, the hand opened once
and was gone.
why and why and why
should i call a white man brother?
who is the human in this place,
the thing that is dragged or the dragger?
what does my daughter say?
the sun is a blister overhead.
if i were alive i could not bear it.
the townsfolk sing we shall overcome
while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth
into the dirt that covers us all.
i am done with this dust. i am done.
***********************
ACHILLES IN JASPER, TEXAS
by Jeffrey Thomson
I know this: a man walked home drunk
along the corduroy of pines
in west Texas, the bronze duff and
the dust and the late light that fell
on him. Three men gave him a lift
that afternoon and raised him
with their fists and lowered
him with their nigger this and
nigger that and after a while,
when all the fun they could have
with him leaked out into
the ruts of a logging cut,
they tied him to the boat
hitch of their truck and pulled
away. I know he kept his head up
awhile because his elbows were
ground to the bone; I know enough
was finally enough, and his head
left his body behind,
but I don’t know what to do
with this, America, this rage
like Achilles twitching
Hector behind his chariot
for 12 days until even
the gods were ashamed.
--Jeffrey Thomson
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