Warnings about the return to the dark times of racism and lynching, fueled by unfettered rhetoric coming from the Tea party and other right wing parties, might just have been proved right.
Although lynchings in Texas have happened before, and might happen again, the way the lynching of Alfred Wright was dealt with shows that while hatred never does go out of style, complicity from local authorities that should have disappeared a long time ago, may still play a role in places where separations between whites and blacks is still a reality.
Alfred Wright disappeared on November 7th of last year as he was traveling to a physical therapy session. His vehicle apparently broke down, and he found himself on the side of the road. Wright called his wife and asked her to help him, but she was occupied with their sons and declined to go.
He then called back a short while later, seemingly in deep distress. When relatives arrived not long after to try to help Wright, he had vanished. A nearby liquor store employee told the relatives that he had seen Wright outside the store, but that instead of going in, he had started running way in a panic.
A day later, some of Wright's personal items were found not far from where his car broke down, but his body was not found until 18 days later. His body too, was a few yards away from where he had first stopped on the road. More importantly, his body was not decomposed as if it had been exposed to the elements, indicating that he might have been held somewhere and possibly tortured.
What is remarkable from this point on, is the fact that the authorities wrote off his death as an accidental drug overdose, although his corpse was mutilated and his throat cut. The coroner's report even went so far as to detail that there was no 'evidence of severe truama' to the body.
Wright's family, who knew he was not a drug user, immediately suspected that the coroner's report was incorrect, and worse, that the wrong finding was cited to divert public attention to the case.
In addition to a missing ear, the murderers had also severed his tongue and taken out two teeth. He was almost naked, wearing only briefs and his tennis shoes. His cell phone was still on his body, curled between the folds of his remaining sock.
The coroner did however, mention that the missing 'parts' on Wright's body were due to animal feeding on his remains, although no mention was made of his slit throat.
A second coroner's report, obtained after the family of the deceased protested - and paid by the family-, did mention severe head and neck trauma, but did so without being able to make his report without the photographic evidence that was attached tot he first coroner's report, a first evidence of 'stonewalling' on the part of the local authorities.
No investigation had been initiated, nor any search done by authorities to obtain evidence from Wright's truck or from the possible perpetrators of his killing.
Under pressure from the family and the public alike, the Sheriff's office in Wright's locality finally relinquished the files and the case to the Attorney General. The case had been however, under the jurisdiction of the Texas Rangers until then, and they had retained the files of the case.
Due to pressure from the press and other sources, federal investigators have also decided, belatedly, to investigate the case, since it would fall under the umbrella of hate crime cases.
But even with all this untimely mobilization, what indeed did prompt the authorities involved initially with the case to go so far as to try burying Wright's murder?
Enter CNN and Cooper's segment on the same channel on Wright's case, and a Congresswoman from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee. Last Monday, under renewed focus on the case, the US dept of Justice agreed to Federal involvement. But all this was not to be before Congresswoman Lee went to Attorney General Holder to plead her case. She was under the impression, and rightfully so, together with Wright's family and other people concerned with the case, that the County authorities that handled the case not only have botched the case, but that they were purposefully hiding crucial evidence.
In the months since Wright's death, many people have banded together to demonstrate about what they see as a miscarriage of investigative duties.
According to Cooper's report on CNN, a dime was found near Wright's body. Some believe that this was a sign of a vendetta, since dropping a dime is symbolic of someone snitching.
More relevant to Wright's story is a report of a racial attack outside the same store where Wright disappeared. A black man had stopped there only two days before Wright's disappearance, and said that he was attacked by two men who hurled racial slurs at him. However, the Sheriff in the case has already declared that the two cases are unrelated.
More worrisome is the fact, that the severing of the ear of a black man was a practice that clanners used when they went out on a lynching. The severed ear then became a souvenir.
Interestingly too, is the fact that the Sheriff's office asserts that the area in which Wright was found was thoroughly searched, although the father of Wright found his corpse 18 days later with the help of volunteers only 25 yards from where his truck was stopped. The local authorities gave up any search only 4 days into Wright's disappearance.
Some have even suggested that the reason for the 'cover-up' if there is one, is due to some connection with a relative of the Sheriff himself, although that connection does not see to be very clear.
But Jasper, Texas, where Wright died, has a long history of racial violence. In 1998, only 45 minutes from the locality of Wright's murder a man was chained to a pickup truck and dragged until he died, then chopped up in pieces. That case broke however, as a nationwide scandal, fast and loud.
Is the reason for Jasper's authorities reticence, to put it mildly, in investigating this case due to shame? Or is it because authorities are colluding with racist elements of the local population?
If the latter is true, then the US has to examine very closely what changes the polarized political climate has wrought.
It seems that racial violence has increased in some places, like Mississippi, after years of relative quiet. The overt racism and discrimination of the Tea Party seems to have emboldened that segment of the population that has never relinquished its ignorant beliefs and prejudices.
It is time to stop the violent and racist rhetoric, no matter from where it issues. The first amendment cannot be a license to promote racist and divisive ideals. If no one speaks up and condemns the propaganda, the insults, the overt racism of certain political groups, harsh sentiments and violent hatred will no longer be relegated to dark rooms and private chatter: it will spill over onto those black people who they hate, and entitle the racist individuals to act upon those beliefs and thoughts and feelings that should have been wiped out long ago
Even if Wright's case does not turn out to be a case of lynching, and this writer has great doubt of that, it still demonstrates how small local jurisdictions in places where the echoes of Jim Crow still resonate, are willing to derail the course of justice in name of self preservation or the preservation of 'good old boys'.
How can the authorities in the case claim that a man who had no precedents of law infraction, nor a history of drug use, simply claim that a drug overdose is involved? If nothing else their course of action is also very indicative of how the case was handled. Just as many murders of prostitutes take - at best- second place to 'regular people's' murders, so does the intimation or finding that a minority, and especially a black man, is a drug user push the investigation of his demise into the basket of lesser cases, which may or may not even be investigated properly.
Oh, and there's one last teenie weensie detail: Wright was in an interracial marriage.
In Wright's case, then, the 'finding' of accidental overdose, is a frightening example of how a stereotype could have been employed to turn away the attention of the people and the press from an unwelcome case.
That black men in Jasper, Texas, still have to fear living, and walking and of all things being on the side of the road for a broken vehicle, is telling. When, America, will we be done with racism?
Op-Ed
Partial sources: Raw/12 News now/Texas Observer 1.11.14
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