This Friday, June 7th 2013 is the 15th anniversary of the chain dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. an African-American man, accepted a ride home from three Jasper, Texas white men, one of them knew him from town, and they then stopped on a remote dirt road outside town and proceeded to drag him behind their truck with chains. Byrd lost his life that day to a senseless hate crime.
Fast forward to nearly 15 years later, in the Jasper Police station, where Keyarika Diggles, a 25-year old African-American woman brought in for unpaid traffic tickets, was beaten and slammed into a counter as she was phoning her mother trying to raise the $100 that the officers said she owed.
Her dental work was broken, a tooth chipped, and a mass of hair was pulled out of her head. Diggles claimed that she was in fear of her life. There is video. It's pretty graphic.
Same East Texas town 15 years after the last known racist-inspired murder by know members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
It's Jasper. It's Texas.
Nothing has changed.
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