Former Texas prosecutor Guy James Gray keeps a 20-year-old CD in his desk that documents with graphic photos one of the most vicious hate crimes in history – the day James Byrd Jr. was beaten, stripped naked, tied to the back of a truck by three men from the Ku Klux Klan and dragged down a dirt road until he was dead and decapitated.

“When you handle a case like that and get inside the mind of a real racist, a white supremacist racist, and you see how dangerous those people are to the fabric of our society, you just become more sensitive to racial issues,” Gray said.

In 2009, Byrd became one of the namesakes for The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal law expanding hate crime legislation to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.

But just 100 hate crimes — including 10 in Texas — have been pursued by federal prosecutors between January 2010 and July 2018, according to a News21 analysis of court documents. Half of those cases across the country — and half of those in Texas — involved racially motivated violence against black Americans, more than any other group.

The numbers do not include hundreds of other cases prosecuted in local and state courts. No single agency tracks those arrests or cases, although incidents are supposed to be reported to the FBI by state and local police. Since 1995, black Americans have been the victims of 66 percent of all racially motivated hate crimes, according to FBI data collected from local law enforcement agencies.

“You still see it all over, in all the cities and in the rural places, it’s still with us,” said Gray, who is now an attorney in Kerrville.

While black Americans have long been targets of hate, advocacy groups and victims told News21 the 2016 presidential campaign and the election of President Donald Trump may have encouraged more people to express their intolerance toward black Americans.

“When this president campaigned, it was a campaign of division and bigotry,” said Richard Rose, president of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP. “And so, those people who believe in discrimination of any kind gravitated to that campaign. After the election, they feel emboldened to act out these statements that have racial overtones in them.”

Christina Crowder was driving down the interstate in Houston with her two biracial daughters in the backseat last year when a car pulled up next to her and the driver opened his windows. He started shouting phrases like “go back to [expletive] Africa” and “Trump should build a wall for you n****rs,” then began to swerve toward her, she said.

“I’ve been living in Houston for my whole life and I hadn’t experienced things like that,” Crowder said. “There are different looks that even my children get since Trump became president.”

“It has always been that way,” said Booker T. Hunter, 89, the founder and president of the NAACP in Jasper for the past 40 years. “The history of (Byrd’s) death, people never, never gonna forget about it. We really haven’t healed from that since. It’s still going on.”

Targeted in most violent crimes

For those 50 federal hate crimes targeting black Americans, News21 reviewed hundreds of court documents and indictments to determine just how often perpetrators were prosecuted under federal hate crimes statutes. Many perpetrators had affiliations with white supremacist groups or invoked “white power” during acts of violence and verbal harassment.

During a Bible study meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, three years ago, a young white supremacist shot and killed nine black parishioners. Dylann Roof was convicted on 33 federal hate crime charges and sentenced to death for the attack.

In Dubuque, Iowa, that same year, charges were brought against a white man with a swastika tattoo who assaulted a black American man and repeatedly kicked and jumped on his head until he was unconscious, according to federal court records.

In June 2011, a group of white teenagers drove around Jackson, Mississippi, harassing black Americans. They found 48-year-old James Craig Anderson in a motel parking lot and attacked him, shouting “white power.”

Security footage shows that when Anderson tried to stand up after the attack, they ran him over with a pickup truck and killed him. Three were convicted of one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the Shepard-Byrd Act.

State Sen. Barbara Blackmon, a Democrat from Mississippi, said Anderson’s killing made her “wonder just how far we’ve come.”

“I am aware of that James Byrd incident, and each time something like that occurs, whether it’s in Mississippi or in any place across this country, if you are a student of history, if you have any kind of conscience, then those kinds of horrific things should make you feel very uncomfortable,” Blackmon said.

Intolerance against black Americans has existed since they were forced into slavery, targeted for racial lynchings and denied equal rights. Despite the passage of hate crime legislation and civil rights protections, black Americans disproportionately face acts of intimidation, extremist rhetoric and life-threatening violence.

She said the country has “not yet overcome that history.”

Reliving history of hate

In early 2016, Jordan Williams found the n-word written twice in black permanent marker on the wall outside his apartment in Denton.

“My parents experienced this in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and we talked about how we could be judged for the color of our skin,” he said. “All these years later, they took it really hard to hear what happened to me. I don’t think they expected it to happen to me.”…..More Here