Death in Texas A Story of Race, Murder, and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption

Death has a way of making even slow people hurry. It scares them into seeing things the way they are, instead of the way they wish them to be. Even small deaths people don't expect to notice, or welcome deaths, which end hard-luck lives or long, painful illnesses, sweep mourners backwards through rooms they have been avoiding for years. So when the black community in Jasper, Texas, awoke one Sunday morning to hear one of its own had been killed in some awful way on Huff Creek Road, the phones began to ring. Ladies who had come to church early, ahead of the Sunday services, abandoned the hymnals in messy stacks and began counting noses. They called relatives, and friends, and friends of friends to see if their men were home, safe, or whether it might be one of their kin dumped on the side of an old timber road. It was a little after nine a.m. when Sheriff Billy Rowles received the call from the dispatcher about the body. His first thought was a routine hit-and-run-a commonplace accident on the unlit roads on the outskirts of town. Deputy Joe Sterling, a baby-faced officer, had come on the line a little breathless. "It's a bad one, Sheriff."Temple-Raston, Dina is the author of 'Death in Texas A Story of Race, Murder, and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption' with ISBN 9780805066524 and ISBN 0805066527.