This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Warning: This video contains some upsetting scenes.
On a Saturday night in a small Texas town, three white men offered James Byrd Jr a ride home. The next morning, a little boy found Byrd's body. He'd been beaten, chained to the back of a truck and dragged alive until he was decapitated - all because he was black.
The BBC went to Jasper, Texas to see how the brutal murder in 1998 changed the Byrd family - and the town.
Video by Angélica M Casas and Chelsea Bailey
Special thanks to KFDM News for archival material


Africana55 Radio