[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 6396-6398] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]EXPOSING RACISM ______ HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON of mississippi in the house of representatives Tuesday, April 13, 1999 Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, in my continuing efforts to document and expose racism in America, I submit the following articles into the Congressional Record. Prosecutor: Black Man's Murder Intended to Draw Attention to New Hate Group (By Michael Graczyk) Jasper, TX (AP).--The heinous dragging death of a black man last year was part of a plan to draw attention to a new white supremacist group being organized by his accused white killer, John William King, prosecutors say. ``I do believe he was trying to form his own personal hate group in Jasper, Texas,'' Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray said Tuesday after the first full day of testimony. ``I believe we'll be able to establish that this killing was to promote his own personal agenda.'' King, 24, an unemployed laborer and ex-convict, faces life in prison or death by injection if convicted of the June 7 murder of James Byrd Jr. The 49-year-old East Texas man was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for three miles before his body, minus a head, neck and arm, was left dumped on a road across from a black church and cemetery. Gray, who said DNA evidence would be introduced today, has said he hopes to wrap up his side of the case by the end of the week. Two other men, Lawrence Russell Brewer, 31, and Shawn Allen Berry, 23, are to be tried later on the same charges. In his opening statement Tuesday to the jury of 11 whites and one black, Gray said physical evidence, racist tattoos all over King's body and letters written by King would tie him to Byrd's murder. Correspondence seized by authorities from King's Jasper apartment the day after Byrd's death and entered into evidence late Tuesday included 22 pages of handwritten by- laws and a code of ethics for what King called the ``Confederate Knights of America Texas Rebel Soldiers.'' ``Dear Student,'' King wrote. ``Welcome to the Aryan Institute for Higher Learning . . . Welcome to the dream.'' In one of the documents, he labels himself ``Captain'' of the organization. In another, where he signs himself as ``President,'' he describes his group as working for the ``struggle of our white race'' and complained of ``thousands of organizations working for the interest of minorities.'' ``How many groups stand up for the cultural values and ideals of the white majority?'' he asked. ``We of the Confederate [[Page 6397]] Knights of America are unapologetically committed to the interest, ideas and cultural value of the White Aryan race.'' Prosecutors said other physical evidence includes a lighter engraved with Knight's prison nickname ``Possum'' and a Klu Klux Klan symbol of interlocking three K's found along the bloody route. Byrd's blood also was found on King's shoes, Gray said. Tattoos over more than 65 percent of his body include a black man hanging from a tree, nazi swastikas and a Woody Woodpecker cartoon character wearing a Klan robe and hood. Defense attorney Haden ``Sonny'' Cribbs, who declined an immediate opening statment, objected to the introduction of the written material and photos of King's tattoos, saying such items were protected by the Constitution as freedom of expression. State District Judge Joe Bob Golden overruled the objections. Prosecutors began testimony by laying out the crime scene, with Sheriff Billy Rowles telling how he first thought he had a routine hit-and-run accident. But he said he was puzzled by the lack of parallel tire tracks that should have followed the trail of blood typically left by someone dragged under a vehicle. When investigators found the lighter, ``That's when we started having some bad thoughts,'' the sheriff added. ``I knew somebody had been murdered because he had been black.'' Other items from the crime scene included tools with the name ``Berry'' scratched into the surface. Authorities knew Berry was a mechanic and arrested him on outstanding traffic warrants. When he gave an affidavit that included information identifying King as having the nickname ``Possum,'' ``I know this country boy's in trouble,'' Rowles testified. In love letters he sent from prison to Michele Chapman, a Jasper woman described by King as ``my precious Aryan Princess,'' King used obscenities and vulgarities when referring to blacks and Mexicans. He bragged about what he said was $3,000 worth of tattoo work he received for free all over his body from an inmate tattoo artist. ``White is right!!!'' he wrote in one letter, signing it off: ``. . . Take care and stay white and beautiful.'' Prosecutors also showed jurors photographs of Byrd's remains and introduced into evidence tattered remnants of Byrd's clothing. Several members of Byrd's family began sobbing as the clothing was revealed. ____ Black Marine Beaten, Paralyzed by White Men to Face Attackers (By Michelle Williams) San Diego (AP)--Sitting in a wheelchair with only the slightest movement in his left hand, Lance Cpl. Carlos Colbert still has his voice to describe how five men savagely changed his life at a Memorial Day party. The black Marine, who is paralyzed, today was to face the white men who drunkenly beat him, broke his neck and left him motionless on the ground in what prosecutors say was a racist attack. Colbert was to tell them how his life has changed. He is 21. Jessee Lawson, 20; Trenton Solis, 18; Robert Rio, 23; Jed Jones, 21; and Steven Newark III, 18, pleaded guilty last month to felony assault and avoided potential life sentences at today's hearing. Prosecutor Craig Rooten said Tuesday that Colbert wanted the case to go to trial, but understood the guilty pleas ensured jail time for his attackers. ``There were a lot of people involved and there was a lot of alcohol involved, making it a difficult case to sort out,'' Rooten said. Colbert, of Forestville, MD, was one of just a few blacks who attended a party last May at the home of Tim Bullard, a fellow Camp Pendleton Marine. At least 100 people packed the small house at Santee, a rural community 20 miles northeast of San Diego. When a fight broke out in the front yard, there were no streetlights to illuminate what was happening and most of the people were drunk, Rooten said. Police interviewed about 50 people over four months before making any arrests since few stories were alike. One common denominator was that the attackers punched and kicked Colbert while shouting racial slurs and ``white power,'' Rooten said. Colbert's memory of the attack was that a fellow Marine went outside to help a woman who was hit by a ``skinhead.'' When he heard the commotion, he went outside to see what was happening. ``Out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy coming toward me with brass knuckles,'' Colbert told The San Diego Union- Tribune. ``I felt it on my neck. . . . He came up behind me and broke my neck. I fell flat on my face.'' At a hearing last month, Judge Frederick Link asked Lawson if he beat Colbert because he was black and he tearfully said: ``That is correct.'' Lawson's admission means he faces two to 11 years in prison. The others face five years probation with one year in jail. They will receive credit for jail time already served. Solis has been free on $250,000 bond for a few months, but the others have been jailed since their arrest in September. The parents of some of the attackers recently went on a radio talk show, saying their sons were coerced into confessing that the crime was racially motivated, and it really was just a drunk brawl. A witness called in to say that such hatred isn't created by alcohol, it only enhances it. Colbert spent several months at a Veteran's Administration hospital in Long Beach before moving to a Virginia hospital closer to his family's Maryland home. He was recently moved to a home modified for his wheelchair, Rooten said. ____ Settlement Reached in California Race-Based Admissions Case (By Bob Egelko) San Francisco (AP)--City schools and the NAACP reached a last-minute settlement over race-based admissions on the same day a federal trial was to begin deciding the constitutionality of San Francisco's school desegregation program. The program bars any school from having more than 45 percent of any one racial or ethnic group, a practice the families of three Chinese-American students alleged kept the youngsters out of their preferred schools. U.S. District Judge William Orrick ordered details of Tuesday's agreement between the school district and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People kept confidential until a hearing today. But participant's comments indicated that court-ordered limits on racial and ethnic groups at each school in the 63,000-student district would be repealed. Daniel Girard, lawyer for the three Chinese-American students and their parents, who filed the lawsuit in 1994, said the agreement is ``a balanced resolution'' that achieves the plaintiffs' objectives. ``This is definitely worth the fight,'' said Charlene Loen, whose 14-year-old son, Patrick Wong, was denied admission to elite Lowell High School in 1994 because the school then required higher test scorers from Chinese American than other ethnic groups. That policy has been changed, but the court order still has the effect of curbing Lowell's Chinese-American enrollment, the largest of any group. Wong, 18, now attends the University of California, Irvine. The 1993 order, which resolved a 1978 discrimination suit by the NAACP contained a 45 percent ceiling on any racial or ethnic group at a school. The limit is 40 percent at alternative or ``magnet'' schools. Those include Lowell, which has an entrance exam and counts U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and the late Gov. Pat Brown among its alumni. A draft settlement would prohibit assigning students abased on race or ethnicity but would let the district consider their socioeconomic status, and Patrick Manshardt, a lawyer for the state of Board of Education who saw the draft but was not part of the negotiations. The settlement comes at a time of increasing judicial hostility to race-based admissions. In November, a federal appeals court struck down race as an admissions factor at the prestigious Boston Latin School, a ruling the school board decided not to appeal. The San Francisco settlement will not end desegregation efforts, insisted NAACP lawyer Peter Cohn. He said the agreement would ``continue to protect the educational rights of all children.'' ____ [From the USA Today, February 23, 1999] New Avenues Aiding Hate Group Numbers (By Laura Parker) The number of hate groups operating in the United States increased again last year, spurred by the Internet, white power rock-'n'-roll music and the efforts of fringe groups to attract mainstream followers, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. For the first time, the Council of Conservative Citizens, which has drawn Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., as speakers at meetings, was listed as a hate group in the law center's annual survey of hate and paramilitary groups. The report, to be issued Tuesday, says there were 537 hate groups operating in 1998, up from 474 groups in 1997. That includes the 33 chapters of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which claims 15,000 dues-paying members. The council was listed as hate group after the law center published an expose about the group last year. The CCC, according to the law center, has its roots in the old White Citizens Councils, organized to combat the 1954 Supreme Court ruling outlawing ``separate but equal'' schools. The organization has pushed national issues such as opposition to affirmative action, immigration and school busing. ``But its chief interest remains race,'' the center says in its report. When the involvement of Lott and Barr became public last year, both men disavowed the council's views. The number Ku Klux Klan organizations is also up from 127 chapters in 1997 to 163 chapters, and the number of Internet groups ballooned from 163 in 1997 to 254 last year, the report says. Racist rock-'n'-roll music, by bands with names such as White Terror, is also widely available on the Internet. [[Page 6398]] ``The organized hate movement in this country is quite clearly growing and has been for several years,'' says Mark Potok, the law center's spokesman. But it is difficult to measure whether the rise in hate groups translates into a rise in hate crimes. The FBI has been unable to say whether more hate crimes are being committed or more are merely being reported. The increase in hate groups also coincides with a robust economy. Normally, such activity declines in economic good times. But Potok says the booming economy is not making everyone rich, particularly blue-collar workers. Laborers who once made good wages in heavy industry find themselves in lower paying service-sector jobs, he says, and some are attracted to racist groups.