Word: jaspered
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...Southern prosecutors found ways to lose--or not to bring--race cases like this one. The defense presented only three witnesses; its entire case lasted less than an hour. Although the jury had 11 whites and just one black, corrections officer Joe Collins, the sole black, was elected foreman. Jasper's black community hoped for the best but braced for the worst. "Even if you know something is right and that you should get a certain verdict, sometimes you don't get it," says Unav Wade, owner of a beauty salon on the courthouse square. "If it's between races...
Whites joined blacks outside the courthouse to applaud the verdict. Some onlookers shouted "Bye-bye!" and "Rot in hell!" as King was led off to death row. "I hate to say people were happy, but they were," says Jasper Chamber of Commerce president Diane Domenech, who is white. "I feel like we stood together, black and white, and everyone's just as happy as the next one at what happened...
...days since Byrd's death, blacks and whites in Jasper have talked frankly about the killing and racial topics previously not discussed. "One man said he had a granddaughter who was half black," says Walter Diggles, the black executive director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. "He had had a hard time with that, but now he is accepting her." The sense of unity was difficult at first. At a city council meeting in August, Nancy Nicholson, a member who is white, recalls, "You wouldn't have believed how bad it was. The blacks were so angry...
...South, wrote Faulkner, the past isn't dead; it's not even past. That must have seemed all too true when Byrd was buried last June--on the black side of the Jasper City Cemetery, still segregated in 1998. But the truth is that Jasper has progressed a great deal since pre-civil rights days, and Byrd's killing has moved things along even further. Shortly before jury selection, 75 blacks and whites met at the cemetery to cut down the wrought-iron fence that separated the two races even in death. "Give us the power and the strength through...
That small blow for equality could provide a final bit of redemption. If King is executed and returned to Jasper, he could spend eternity, alongside Byrd, in a place that his violent act helped make a little more free. As Walter Diggles noted last week, "It's almost like the Lord was saying we needed to let people see the evil that is out there in the country." And, he added sadly but proudly, "he wanted it to happen in a place that could handle...