Another small victory in the struggle

On September 28, 2003, Billy Ray Johnson, a mentally handicapped black man, was at the Country Store in his hometown of Linden, Texas. A local teenager invited him to an outdoor party - where, it developed, he was to be the entertainment for the partying whites, dancing a jig, being called names.

It was when the party had wound down to just a handful that things turned ugly. Johnson was attacked, knocked out, tossed in the back of a truck, and taken to a deserted road where he was dumped, bleeding and still unconscious, on a fire ant hill.

The next morning, two of the four young white men involved found him still unconscious and called police.

Johnson, now 46, has not recovered from a blow to his skull and will need nursing home care the rest of his life. ...

He can barely speak and when he does, he is mostly unintelligible.

The young men's story of self-defense quickly broke down and all four were arrested and charged. And convicted, despite the fact the the county prosecutor couldn't even be bothered to attend, leaving it to a deputy. Two of the defendants were convicted of "injury to a disabled person," the other two on other minor charges. Three of them got 30 days, one got 60 days. You read that right.

And not so long ago and in too many places still, that would have been the end of it. But not this time.

Civil rights lawyer Morris Dees then helped Johnson sue the assailants in civil court. Last week, a mostly white jury here awarded Johnson $9 million in damages. Jurors say they stood up to racism in Linden and surrounding Cass County. ...

"I was amazed" by the jury's decision, says the Rev. Ronald Wright, president of the Dallas chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights group. "It was a passionate group, a group that stands for justice. That sent out a real good message that East Texas needs to change the way it thinks."

"I think the verdict says the moral majority has spoken," says Marvin Weems, a white lawyer in Atlanta, Texas, a Cass County town 12 miles from Linden. "This is the way that most people in Cass County looked at what happened."

Tommy Thompson, a black resident who owns a barbecue restaurant, says that "a lot of people were dissatisfied with the outcome of the criminal trials," and were happy with the jury award to Johnson — even if it was so large that he'll "never get (all of it) anyway."

Let's hope those words, words themselves of hope, prove to be more than, well, than just words. Let's hope that the good citizens of Linden and the surrounding area who insist that things are better than they used to be and there is no more racism there than anywhere else are not products of willful self-delusion. But history is a heavy weight:

In 1994, a black man who had been dating a white woman was found shot dead. The incident was ruled a hunting accident. In 2001, a black man who had been dating a white woman was found hanging from a tree. It was ruled a suicide. ...

In Paris, about 105 miles northeast of Linden, the U.S. Department of Education is investigating complaints that black students in public schools are disciplined more often and more harshly than whites.

Shaquanda Cotton, 14, a black high school freshman, was sentenced last spring to seven years in jail after she shoved a hall monitor and was convicted of "assault on a public servant." Three months earlier, the same judge had sentenced a white girl to probation after she was convicted of arson for burning down her parents' house. Cotton was released last month after a public outcry.

Linden is about 150 miles north of Jasper County, which received worldwide attention in 1998 after the slaying of James Byrd. He was chained to a pickup by three white men and dragged to his death down a country road.

And then there's the fact that Linden's mayor at the time, one Wilford Penny, called the attack on Johnson "very unfortunate and senseless" - before adding "the black boy was somewhere he shouldn't have been."

But still, but still - two of the defendants had already settled by the time the civil trial opened and a third put up no defense. And the jury reached its verdict in less than four hours. It was a victory. A small one, yes, but a victory. And we have few enough of those to celebrate, so we should take or joys where we can find them.

Footnote: One juror said that one of the things that drove their verdict was the fact that one of the defendants, who mounted his own defense, referred to Johnson as "it" during the trial. The community may be learning something - but clearly he isn't.