Posted on 09/21/2011 6:09:07 PM PDT by Borges
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.
Byrd, 49, was chained to the back of a pickup truck and pulled whip-like to his death along a bumpy asphalt road in one of the most grisly hate crime murders in recent Texas history.
Brewer, 44, was asked if he had any final words, to which he replied: "No. I have no final statement."
He glanced at his parents watching through a nearby window, took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. A single tear hung on the edge of his right eye as he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., 10 minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing into his arms, both covered with intricate black tattoos.
Byrd's sisters also were among the witnesses in an adjacent room.
"Hopefully, today's execution of Brewer can remind all of us that racial hatred and prejudice leads to terrible consequence for the victim, the victim's family, for the perpetrator and for the perpetrator's family," Clara Taylor, one of Byrd's sisters, said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
It was supposedly shot in Anna, IL.
Yep, this was one of those old wives tales many snickered about but no one ever actually saw. It was always at another little town too far away to visit.
Someone posted a NYT link, but even NYT couldn’t produce photo evidence.
Hell, no one would ever go to Vidor if the road didn’t run through it. Maybe its improved by now.
Show us the friggin sign, not some lame Greenville “blackest and whitest”.
Huh. I’d been told that Texas was in Scalia’s district. The word would have come from him.
The only billboard I know of was outside of Greenville, Tx.(East of Dallas) off I-30. Pics exist of that one.
All others are libel and hearsay/non-existant.
I hunt down there in them piney woods sometimes. Nothing but really good people. Help you any way they can, they will.
The towns were NOT in Texas! They were up north, where real bigotry thrived. I posted the well-known Greenville sign because people often wrongly saw it as racist...which it was demonstrably NOT.
Got a good one for you.
I grew up in East Texas and Western Louisiana. NEVER saw such a thing. All of us whites and blacks were in the same boat. Got a job in New Jersey and lived up there for about 5 years. Went to get a fishing licence. I start filling out the form and there was a line asking what race I was. I said out loud, what does a fish care about what race I am? Guy behind the counter tells me to mark “S”. So I ask what is “S”? He tells me “superior”.
This is in New Jersey.
Russell Brewer who got stuck tonight was from Klondike, in Jasper visiting for the weekend. I think Klondike might be in that part of the country...around Sulphur Springs.
I grew up in Jasper. I have never seen or heard of a racist sign here. There was a Klan here decades ago but they all died long ago.
That’s mighty white of them :-)
the blackest land, the whitest people... and the reddest necks? (duck’n & runn’n)
Yeah, they were all supposedly somewhere. But that painted plank sure was cropped down to bear bones, tweren’t it?
Hell, it could be said it was any damn where.
Most likely, it was over a frat house bar, down in the cellar.
How do you get from A to B? Quite a jump there.
Yes, Klondike is not far from Greenville, north of I-30.
I drilled some wells over in Newton County a few years ago and went through Jasper to get to them. Jasper has to be the smallest town I know of that has a Lowe’s.
This is in New Jersey.
I'm old enough to remember that railroads were the primary means to travel from place to place. The "Colored Waiting Room" sign that I recall was in the Baltimore terminal. And Maryland was certainly not a Confederate State.
To tell you the truth, I did see this billboard. My father also saw it, and was appalled.
I’m older than you—and I don’t remember whether I saw it in the 40’s or 50’s.
Actually, now that I look at what I wrote, the town was Vidor—not Jasper. Sorry about that. I had an uncle living in Jasper back then, and somehow got it confused.
There are still some pretty rednecked people living in Vidor......
You mentioned billboards and it reminded me of the Greenville sign...which reminded me that Brewer was from Klondike...in that part of TX.
A....to B....to C.
Thats the sign..
All others are lies/talltales...
I had an old feller offer to help me with a buck once, I told him it was gone, he told me to camp in his yard and we would find him. I would have taken him up on the offer but I had to go to work in Garland the next morning, I gave him my tag and a note for the Game Warden that said he could have it if he could find it...he may have, he had some badass Sounders...( Bayhounds/Sniffers)
It took about 10 years of all their sales tax to pay for all the freebies they got...and they would have come for nothing. We had a dumb crooked city manager!
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