Ode to James Byrd Jr.
Court’s production of East Texas Hot Links is dedicated to James Byrd Jr. (1949–1998). On June 7, 1998, Byrd—a Black man—was brutally murdered by three white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. He was viciously beaten and dragged from a truck, and his body was abandoned in front of a church. Byrd was 49. Byrd was a father and a beloved member of his community in East Texas. His lynching-by-dragging led to the passing of the first hate crime law in Texas and inspired hate crime legislation around the country, which is further explained below.
We mourn James Byrd Jr. and honor his memory.
Ode to James Byrd Jr.
In the midst of all this chaos
We live in today
The Injustice, The Killing, The Hate, The Life,
The Love
Some are chosen, some are claimed, some are
sacrificed.
Blamed….
Like The Burghers of Calais
We represent,
The lives, the people, souls lost…
Please… relent…
Let’s stop with the Guns, for Chrissakes!!!
The killing, the hate, all the recklessness, the
endless debate
Please let’s find a better way…
to communicate
Everywhere… the stakes…are too high…
Peace
Ron OJ Parson
Continuing the Conversation
Often on stage, and always in life, there are no simple protagonists and antagonists. Sometimes we are both or neither, but we rarely know exactly where we stand while we are in the middle of things. Even when there’s no clear-cut right or wrong, however, we can often identify justice and injustice.That identification and acknowledgment is a crucial first step towards progress, so—with this production —we name the violence in East Texas Hot Links as a hate crime rooted in white supremacy. We acknowledge that hate crimes were legally recognized as a distinct act of horrific violence only a short time ago, long after the action of this play.
Ron OJ Parson has dedicated this production to James Byrd Jr., a Black man who was lynched by white supremacists in Jasper, Texas in 1998. That same year, Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in a homophobic hate crime. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanding existing federal hate crime legislation.
Naming this legislation after both Byrd and Shepard speaks to the interconnectedness of oppression, the role of violence in its brutal enforcement, and the necessity of being united in our fights for liberation. This season, as we travel from the piney woods of East Texas; to New York City at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic; to redlined Chicago in the waning years of the Great Migration; and finally, to Germany during the rise of Nazism, we’d be remiss to ignore the connections between these stories.
Below are some links that continue the conversation in which East Texas Hot Links is situated, around hate crimes, domestic terrorism, and state-sanctioned violence. We will provide similar resources pertaining to each production throughout the season. Here are some places to get started:
- Equal Justice Initiative: The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.
- Southern Poverty Law Center: The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.