Rodney Pearson Jasper, Texas Town's First Black Police Chief, Sparks Racial Firestorm

Texas Town's First Black Police Chief Sparks Racial Firestorm

On a June morning in 1998, Rodney Pearson, the first black highway patrolman in Jasper, Texas, got a call. He walked along a mile and half of drag marks, skin and blood, and found the spot in the woods where three white supremacists had wrapped a logging chain around James Byrd Jr.'s ankles, hooked it to a pickup truck and dragged the 49-year-old black man to death along an asphalt road.

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