So in 1998, in Jasper, Texas, there
was a man by the name of James Byrd Jr. He was going home
after a birthday party.
He was very drunk.
Can people in the back hear me?
Yeah.
Excellent.
He was drunk, and so he was staggering home.
Next to him pulls up a pickup truck.
James Byrd Jr. was a Black man.
Next to him pulls up a pickup truck
filled with three white men.
How many people here are from the South?
Or have family from the South?
So you all probably know that us Northern and Westerners
tend to look at the South as being a place where the Ku Klux
Klan is just driving the street, just with a noose
out their window like a lasso and just catching
like stray Negroes, right?
But what's interesting is, because--
and this is something a lot of Southerners tell me,
and I've seen evidence of it myself--
because racism is such a part of the fabric,
there's actually a really interesting sort of negotiation
around the space of race.
To the extent that my wife, when walking
through a neighborhood, a predominantly
white neighborhood, about 4 o'clock one day,
an old woman on a porch looked at her and said,
honey, don't you think it's about time
you started going home?
And my wife said, yes, ma'am.
I think you're right.
So that becomes a really interesting thing.
So anyway, James Byrd Jr's walking.
It's late.
And this pickup truck pulls up next to him.
In the pickup truck are three men.
Two of them, James Byrd Jr. knew.
One, he didn't.
Two of those men had met the third man in prison
where they were part of a white supremacy gang.
They invited James Byrd Jr. to get into the pickup
truck for a ride home.
The two men who knew him invited him
to do that with the intention to take him home.
The actual intention was to take him home
until the third man looked at them and said,
that's some ho-ass shit, giving a ride to a nigger.
Now what red-blooded hetero man in America, what patriot,
is willing to be called ho-ass?
Ho-ass?
Ho was a term for women, excuse me, and I am a fucking man.
I am a man.
And I am such the man that I will
refuse the idea of taking the nigger home,
because that's ho-ass.
And who would want to be ho-ass?
Instead, I will show this nigger what
a man, a heterosexual white male,
can do to a nigger in America right now patriotically.
And what they did was they decided to try to lynch him.
And their first attempts to lynch him
failed, because he was desperate for his life.
So he kind of fought back.
And they figured, OK, well, we're
too drunk to make a rope anyway.
So I got a better idea.
Let's chain him to the back of the pickup truck
and drag him down the road.
Now many of us heard about this.
I did some research on it, because my assumption,
of course, was that-- let's imagine this lectern is
the back of the pickup truck.
My assumption was that he was chained like this.
Right?
But he wasn't.
He was actually chained like this.
So you might want to stand up, because I
can't get any higher than this.
I can try like this.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, so he's chained like this.
They took him down a stretch of road
called Huff Creek Road near a clump of woods called The Big
Thicket.
And The Big Thicket--
this stretch of road is about six miles long,
and they dragged him behind the pickup truck by a chain.
At one point they testified that he came loose from the chain.
And so in true Warner Brothers cartoon style,
they backed the car up over him-- bump, bump, bump.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha.
Bump, bump, bump, vroom, vroom, OK.
Now rechained him and dragged him along the stretch of road.
The evening ended when, while doing fishtails with
the truck-- which is to make the back end of a vehicle kind
of spread out--
his body was swung into a culvert,
a pipe set into the side of the road to drain the water,
cutting him from here to here and effectively decapitating
him.
People all knew he got beheaded, but he actually
lost an arm as well.
That stretch of forest, Big Thicket,
there's a little rumor about it that when
the season is right for hunting bucks,
you can go to Big Thicket, close your eyes,
pull out a shotgun full of buckshot,
shoot right into the woods, and get yourself a buck.
"Big Thicket, Pastoral."
"To Big Thicket a KRAK is a buckshot.
To Big Thicket, KRAK is a stick broke.
KRAK Headlights, staggering home.
The road kills buck.
KRAK
To Big Thicket we go.
We go to sticks, to stick bucks.
Hot drink, drink heads, light, staggering the road.
Long the trees, long the creek,
KRAK, stick broke.
Light kills.
We go, we go to Big Thicket to home on a kill.
Buckshot, KRAK Staggered by drink.
Head light to Big Thicket, buck on each pick-up, staggering.
What you looking at?
The pick-up headlights, long the road, KRAK Buck broke.
KRAK the white stick, Big Thicket,
long the trees, long the creek, drink, staggered.
What you doing here?
Buck, drink, [INAUDIBLE], broke.
White kill the buck staggering home.
KRAK.
The trees pick up.
We go, we go, we gone to Big Thicket.
What you doing here?
Buck, stick to home.
KRAK, stick broke.
Huffhuffgogo.
White light, breaks the trees, break for home.
Long the road home.
White homing on we huffhuffgogo.
Buckshot.
KRAK, KRAK, KRAK, KRAK.
We go, we go, we gone to Big Thicket.
To long the Huff Creek, the rushes in the drink.
Hothead whites.
What you think you are?
Boot, buck, huff, KRAK, huff, KRAK.
Is fists, boots, bone.
KRAK.
A stick broke.
Buck, stick in the rushes.
Buck back in the rushes.
Put them back on.
Buck head in the rushes.
What you think?
In the rushes.
Put them back on.
To Big Thicket we go, to Huff Creek.
Head, hot, we go to, head, staggering.
Long the trees.
We stagger.
Creek, head, the rushes.
KRAK.
A stick broke.
The creek breaks.
The hot light to Big Thicket, we go,
we go, we gone to white Huff to buckshot to long road.
We go, we go, we gone to Big Thicket,
to Huff Creek Road, of drunk pick-ups.
Rope the staggering buck.
Hot drunk, head lights, rushes, Huff Creek Road, pick-up,
rushes.
Drunk, it's screeching brakes.
Huff Creek road by truck and screeching, lights.
What you, what you, what you, what you, what you.
To Big Thicket we go, we go, gone.
KRAK is a buck shot.
KRAK is fists, boots, bone.
KRAK.
The road kills.
KRAK.
It broke.
Stick, long the staggering creek.
We go, we go on."
[APPLAUSE]