Jasper
What happens to a town identified with one of the worst hate crimes in American history?
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"Whites thought we could talk about racism and make it go away overnight," said Lewis. "But this runs deep. Maybe our children, or our children's children, will have better luck than we've had." Our time together was almost over, and he offered to drive me out to Huff Creek Road. It was a beautiful afternoon, and as we made our way into the woods, sunlight filtered through the pine trees above. Five miles from town, we turned onto a thin ribbon of road, which passed over a low-water crossing and then meandered into the woods. The road was solitary and peaceful. No cars passed in either direction. As Lewis drove, it was impossible to not look at the pavement that rolled by, unspooling beneath us. The only sound was the hum of tires against pavement. "When you're driving this road, it seems like you're never going to get there," Lewis said, after a silence. "It just goes on and on. They dragged him all this way." Finally, we reached the spot where Byrd's body had been unchained. There were no reminders of what had taken place here—no historical markers, no bronze plaques. There was only an old cemetery, blanketed in pine needles the color of rust. "We need to remember what happened here," Lewis said, his face solemn. "Everyone wants to forget."
"I KNOW THAT I MAY BE ONE of the very last people that you want to hear from, but please take the time to read my letter," began a note that James Byrd Jr.'s children received in February. "The whole world knows me as a racist that took part in one of the worst crimes that has ever happened, but that's not me at all. And most people will never believe different. But those people are not the ones that I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about you. I know in my heart that you would see me for who I really am if we could just talk for a little while. . . . Please know that I am truly sorry about the things that happened to your father and I am sorry that I didn't do more to try to prevent it. I wish you the very best that life has to offer. May God bless you and keep you always." The letter was signed "Shawn A. Berry."
Berry, now 28, is serving out a life term in the Ramsey I Unit, south of Houston, where the nature of his crime requires that he be kept isolated from other inmates for his protection. Restricted to a six- by ten-foot cell for all but one hour a day, he has had ample time to think about the night of June 6, 1998, and what he might have done differently. "I've accepted my fate," Berry told me when I went to see him in September. "But I wanted the opportunity to look Mr. Byrd's children in the eye and to let them look me in the eye, so I could tell them what happened and they could judge for themselves." Byrd's 24-year-old son, Ross, responded to Berry's letter, and in March they sat down to talk. Although Ross was raised with his two sisters in Lufkin and saw little of his father while growing up, he had always longed to know him better. They had grown closer in the year leading up to the murder, when James made a renewed effort to see him and invited Ross to visit him during the summer. Instead, Ross had gone to Jasper to attend his father's funeral. Ever since then, he has struggled with losing a father he was finally getting to know. "I wanted to understand what happened that night," Ross said. "I had to hear it. I was willing and Berry was willing, so we put it in God's hands."
Berry began with a prayer for guidance and understanding and then related the details of the crime as he saw them. Just as he had done when he took the stand in his own defense, Berry cast himself as a passive observer immobilized by fear, who was so frightened by what he saw that night that he had wet his pants. In his sympathetic rendering of his role, Berry decides out of kindheartedness to offer Byrd a ride. King and Brewer become incensed that he has stopped to help a black man and turn on him. When Berry tries to stop the two men from beating Byrd, he is warned that "the same thing could happen to a nigger lover." Fearing that he will be seen as an accessory to the crime, Berry later hoses down his truck and keeps quiet. Because he does not believe that he participated in the murder, Berry did not apologize for it during his nearly two-hour conversation with Ross. "Remorse is feeling sorry for something you did, so I couldn't say I felt remorse for what happened that night," Berry told me. "I am sorry I didn't do more to prevent it." Although Ross appreciated Berry's willingness to talk about the murder, he was unsure what to believe. "He seemed sincere, but not everything adds up," Ross said. "Besides my father, there are only three people who know what happened that night, and God."
As I listened to Berry's side of the story, I wanted to believe him. It was easier to see him as a hapless bystander than as an agent of evil. Berry is as pleasant and ordinary as they come; with his regulation haircut and good manners, he would be far more convincing as a military recruit than as a convicted murderer. As we talked, Berry argued the finer points of his case, citing defense arguments about blood spatters and footprints that both a jury and an appellate court have rejected. He heatedly denied ever making the statement "They wanted to fuck with a nigger, and it got out of hand" to Sheriff Rowles before his confession, arguing that the sheriff was "a liar." But his story had rung false to me before then, starting at the beginning, when he claimed to have driven Byrd five miles into the woods, with two known racists, for no other purpose than to drink beer. Huff Creek Road was on the way to nowhere and not easy to find in the pitch darkness of a Saturday night. "Five miles out of town?" scoffed Guy James Gray when I later asked him for his thoughts. "This wasn't a beer-drinking party. Berry knew that. He said they kicked Byrd, but he had blood on his boots and pants. He was up close and personal."
Berry's involvement still chafes the former district attorney. "I knew this boy," said Gray. "He'd been in my house before. I'd hunted with his granddaddy. He was friends with one of my boys. I didn't want to believe he was this bad." Gray had initially believed Berry and offered him a plea agreement; he withdrew the offer when DNA testing of the blood on Berry's clothes came back. "He gave us six or seven statements, and he kept changing his lies," said Gray. But around Jasper, some still argue that Berry was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike King and Brewer—who now await execution—Berry has always been seen as a hometown boy. Where some see evil, others see only the familiar face of a man who was once their neighbor and friend. As with the cemetery fence, the view depends on where you're standing.
WHEN SHERIFF ROWLES LOOKS BACK on the biggest case of his career, he is thankful that Jasper persevered. There were no riots, no violence, no further acts of bloodshed. He takes satisfaction in the fact that the three killers were—contrary to what was expected at the time—arrested, charged, and convicted of capital murder, with two sent to death row. "Back then, we were fighting for our survival," Rowles observed. "The good Lord took care of us. We're healing real good now."
Rowles is retiring next year, after a 35-year career in law enforcement, and though he no longer needs to do any politicking, he still enjoys pressing the flesh. As he took care of business around Jasper County one afternoon this fall, he stopped to talk to his constituents, rolling down his window to shout out greetings over the hum of his pickup: "What're you doing, pardner?" "Hey, girl!" "Staying out of trouble?" (Over his shoulder, he always called in parting, "Be good!") Rowles is conscious now of making an extra effort toward the black community, through gestures big and small, and as he made his rounds that afternoon, he paid a call on an elderly black woman who had just returned home from the hospital. As she and Rowles made conversation ("Sister Mae, you look good!"), her four-year-old grandson sat opposite them, studying the sheriff intently. The boy finally darted into the next room, then returned wearing a white Western hat—a miniature version of Rowles's Resistol. The boy resumed his examination of the sheriff, adjusting his own hat until it sat just like Rowles's. It was a scene unimaginable more than a generation ago, when a visit from the sheriff meant nothing good. Nowadays, Rowles is trying to make new memories.
That is how Jasper would like to be remembered—as a place of hope and change. Still, one Friday night this August, when the Jasper Bulldogs played their season opener against the Port Neches-Groves Indians, another, more complicated picture emerged. The evening was no different from any other game night: The Jasper High School stadium was brilliantly lit under a darkening sky as the Bulldogs dashed onto the field to the sounds of foot-stomping and drumrolls and roaring applause. Cheerleaders with sun-bleached hair beamed at the crowd as they stood in formation, waving pom-poms to cries of "Go, Big Red!" Long-limbed teenagers stood talking in clusters by the concession stand, and kids ran underfoot, their hands sticky with Dr Pepper and Pixie Stix.
And, as was true of every game night, the spectators who sat in the bleachers had segregated themselves according to race. The reserved section, along the fifty-yard line, was entirely white. The general-admission sections on either side were all black. So dramatic was the division that it appeared, at first glance, to be by design, as if the past half-century had folded back on itself and the days of mandated segregation had returned. Change comes slowly, even in a place with the best of intentions. When I commented on the seating arrangements to the black woman standing next to me, she glanced across the bleachers for a moment, as if she had forgotten herself how peculiar the view was. She shrugged and said, "That's the way it's always been, I guess."
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