[“Speaking Truth to Empower”‘
James Byrd Jr. murdered by White supremacy…
Photo: Facebook screenshot
Wednesday avowed White supremacist murderer John William King was executed for the heinous hate-filled chain-lynching truck-dragging death of African-American James Byrd Jr., in Texas, in 1998.
King’s execution should sober us to our current racist reality—where White supremacy is active.
The Donald Trump Presidency encourages White supremacists, like those “very fine people” who were planning to commit mass murder in Charlottesville, Virginia. As American demographics change, rabid racism is rising—increasing the likelihood of racial murders against non-Whites.
Is White supremacy now seeing violence as its final solution to save American “Whiteness?”
On Wednesday night, John William King, 44, was executed by lethal injection for the June 7, 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., in Jasper Texas. King was pronounced dead after 7:00 p.m. at the Texas State Penitentiary, in Huntsville. When asked if he had any last words, King replied “no.” However, King wrote a final note saying, “capital punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.”
King, an avowed racist, stated the was an Exalted Cyclops of the White supremacist group the Confederate Knights of America (CKA). King’s body depicted tattooed symbols of his hatred like a lynching scene, a Nazi sign, and a CKA sign. He also had the words “Aryan Pride” tattooed to his torso. During his trial, King wrote “regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history and shall die proudly remembered if need be…. Much Aryan love, respect, and honor, my brother in arms.”
King showed no remorse for the murder of Byrd, a fact Byrd’s sister, Clara Taylor, pointed out.
“Today, we witnessed the peaceful and dignified execution of John King for the savage, brutal and inhumane murder of James…really a modern-day lynching,” Taylor said. “King showed no remorse then and showed no remorse tonight. This execution tonight was just punishment for his actions.”
The murder of Byrd was a horrific crime that made national, and international news. It was a 21 Century lynching done by three White supremacists: William King, Lawrence Brewer and Shawn Berry. An unrepentant Lawrence Brewer, executed by lethal injection, on September 21, 2011, said of murdering Byrd “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth.”
Of the three White supremacist murderers, Shawn Berry is the only one now living. Unlike King and Brewer, he was sentenced to life in prison—and is eligible for parole in June 2038. Berry testified Brewer and King were the culprits of the murder. Brewer testified Berry cut Byrd’s throat before he was chained to the truck. However, the forensic evidence contradicts Brewer’s claim—especially, since Byrd was alive for some time as he was being dragged to his death.
This malevolent murder precipitated when a hitchhiking Byrd, who was somewhat acquainted with Berry, accepted a ride from him. Instead of driving him home, Berry, King and Brewer took Byrd to an isolated area outside town brutally beating and torturing him—including urinating and defecating on him. They proceeded to chain Byrd’s ankles to the back of the truck and drove off dragging him for three miles.
Byrd died after his right hand was torn—and his head was decapitated—from his body. Byrd’s body was ripped to shreds. The killers then dumped his remains in front of a Black church cemetery.
Byrd’s despicable murder was parodied during the 1998 Broad Channel’s Labor Day parade, in New York. Members of the NYPD and FDNY, living in Broad Channel, were among those dressed up in Afro wigs, and Blackface—on a float titled “Black to The Future.”
Many will agree the James Byrd killing was a monstrous murder committed by White racists. However, far too many will comfort themselves into believing the perpetrators of this crime only represent a “fringe” element. That thinking is seriously misguided, and dangerous.
Most will accept the White supremacist connection between John King and Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African-Americans inside the Emanuel AME Church, on June 17, 2015. But how many will realize the connection between King, Roof, and these two men: Robert Stamm and Daniel Morley? Who are they?
Robert Stamm, 36, was a police sergeant for the Virginia Division of Capitol Police. He was fired last week after he was unmasked as a “Ghost Skin,” an FBI term for a law enforcement official who has membership in White supremacist groups. The FBI has warned that “Ghost Skins” are covert White supremacists who have been “infiltrating law enforcement communities” as “undercover White power warriors.”
In Stamm’s case, he was a member of the Asatru Folk Assembly, a racist quasi-religious organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) calls them “perhaps this country’s largest neo-Völkisch hate group.” SPLC says the “adherents base their spirituality on the survival of those descended from White Europeans.”
Daniel Morley, 31, was a police officer assigned to patrol the L.C. Bird High School in Chesterfield, Virginia. He was recently fired when his connection was revealed, as member and organizer, for the White nationalist Identity Evropa—a neo-Nazi group that started in 2016. In 2009, Morley said “I consider myself a White Nationalist.”
The fact that Stramm and Morley were Virginia police officers is significant in recalling a story Dr. Cornel West told, in a Democracy Now interview, with Amy Goodman, regarding the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville in August, 2017.
“You had a number of the courageous students, of all colors, at the University of Virginia who were protesting against the neo-fascists themselves,” West said. “The neo-fascists had their own ammunition. And this is very important to keep in mind, because the police, for the most part, pulled back. The next day, for example, those 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the antifascists who approached…they saved our lives, actually.”
Dr. West is telling us these White supremacists nearly perpetrated mass murder—and that the “police, for the most part, pulled back.” West admits Antifa prevented a massacre.
There are other White supremacists we know of who have infiltrated law enforcement. In September 2015, Louisiana Detective Raymond Mott was fired by the Lake Arthur Town Council after a picture revealed him to be a KKK member. In the picture, Mott is shown wearing KKK regalia and giving the Nazi salute, at an anti-immigration rally.
By 2014, three officers from the Fruitland Park Police Department, in Florida, were forced to leave their policing duties after their connection to the KKK were exposed. The officers were: Deputy Chief David Borst, Cpl. George Hunnewell and officer James Elkins. Elkins was the first to come under scrutiny after a photo from his secret Klan initiation ceremony surfaced—with him surrounded by white hooded KKK members.
Sadly, the mainstream media gatekeepers are not giving this serious situation any in-depth coverage. The FBI was so worried about White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement that they updated their original 2006 “Ghost Skins” report, in 2015.
Currently, racism has been given license to come again into the light from the dark shadows. Trump’s “take our country back” mantra is an appeal to White racist anxiety about where the country is heading. His bigoted Birther attacks against President Barack Obama—the absurd notion he isn’t really an American citizen—was the starting point of his enticement to racial resentment.
Trump was supported by many Republican voters because he indoctrinated them with the nostalgia of a past prejudiced America, where “White was right.” White supremacy that is.
