James Byrd, Jr., was an African American man who, on June 7, 1998, in the small segregated east Texas town of Jasper, was brutally dragged to his death after being chained by the ankles to the back of a pickup truck by three White men (John William King, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and Shawn Allen Berry). Byrd, the third of seven children born to James and Stella Byrd, was born and raised in Jasper. [Source: Encyclopedia of Race and Crime; Byrd, James, Jr. (1949–1998)]
James Byrd, Jr.
people
key people in race and crime