Good ole boys': Weapons of Black destruction by Andre Coe Special to the NNPA from the Dallas Examiner From BlackPressUSA.com

Billy Ray Johnson photographed in his hospital bed after being assaulted.

LINDEN, Texas (NNPA) – People like to think that America has come so far when it comes to race relations, but those people probably haven’t visited Linden, Texas.

In this small East Texas town, racism has become such a common occurrence that when it does happen, people seldom notice it, let alone do anything about it.

In Linden, Black men and women tell their kids not to walk the streets at night or go out alone.

In Linden, Black residents take pride in not getting upset at being called nigger by some Whites in the town.
In Linden, a Black man can be found hanging from a tree only to have his death ruled a suicide.

In Linden, a White woman can date a Black man only to find out her boyfriend was killed in a “hunting accident.”

In Linden, just about anything can happen to a Black person and no one will blink an eye. One by one, they told their stories in Linden.

Billy Ray Johnson, a 44-year-old Black man with the mind of a 7- or 12-year-old child, was not there. Two years earlier he was beaten nearly to death out in Linden and couldn’t be there that day.

Since Billy Ray could no longer speak up for himself, his true friends were speaking up for him now. That didn’t happen at the trial of Cory Hicks, Dallas Stone, John Wesley Owens and Christopher Amox. Those four men, who claim they were Johnson’s friends, were charged and convicted in May of Billy Ray’s assault.

These four “good ole’ boys” got off only with probation for their roles in the assault on Billy Ray Johnson. An all-White Linden jury recommended suspended sentences and probation as punishment.

“We didn’t deem it necessary to put him in the county jail for a year,” said jury foreman Michael Spencer of Amox after the four men were sentenced to at least 30 days in the county jail; Hicks, the town jailer, received the worse punishment of the four men – which was only 60 days in jail. He was terminated from his position according to published reports.

As has been said, in Linden, just about anything can happen to a Black person and no one will blink an eye.
Depending on who tells the story, Johnson’s beating was not a hate crime. It was just “…a very unfortunate and senseless thing…” as Linden’s former mayor, Wilford Penny, said in a Chicago Tribune article last month.

“But I don’t think there was anything racial about it,” Penny told the Tribune. “These guys were drinking, and this guy [Johnson] liked to dance. I’m not surprised when they get to drinking and use the n-word.
“The Black boy was somewhere he shouldn’t have been, although they brought him out there.”

Today Johnson cannot dance.
He can’t even walk without assistance. And unlike the days before Sept. 27, 2003, the night he was beaten and left for dead, Billy Ray Johnson cannot do much of anything for himself now.

Billy Ray cannot speak up for himself like he was once able to do. Billy Ray gets frustrated now when people cannot understand him, too. Frustrated with his own frustration, Billy Ray just lays in a bed at the nursing home where he lives now and spends much of his waking moments staring at the ceiling now, friends say.

When he feels like it, he looks at pictures of old cars he would one day like to restore.

Like those old cars, Billy Ray would also like for someone to restore him.
And regardless of the good face some town residents want to put on, what happened to Billy Ray Johnson that night may be what Linden, Texas is forever known for, not “Music City Texas” as it says on one town Web site, and definitely not a place that is “…rich for its cultural heritage...”

Linden may forever be known as that place where anything can happen to a Black person and no one will blink an eye.

On a hot day in a small country church off a blacktop gravel road in Linden, one by one people who knew Billy Ray Johnson well came forward and testified to members of the NAACP what they saw when they went to visit their friend in the hospital after that night in the woods.

After days in the hospital, his clothes were covered in blood, they said, some fresh, some dried. Some testified that a nurse on duty wise-cracked that one of his bruises was not from being punched in the head, as some would assume, but from Billy Ray falling after he had been admitted to the hospital, which indicates a lack of care on the hospital’s art and an ignorance on the part of the nurse who made the snide remark.

Billy Ray’s pillowcase was “soaked” in blood, they said. His hair was matted with blood and dirt. Welts were all over parts of his body, welts from fire ants that had feasted on him Sept. 27 for hours until he was “found” on a county road.

“This was on the very last day when I went to see him,” said one woman. “I asked why haven’t any tests been done on him. She said he was just there for observation.” People continued to testify.

Billy Ray wasn’t even in a hospital room, they said. At one point, they put him behind a set of double doors close to the nurse’s station. In the room, they said they could see no IVs, monitors or signs that Billy Ray was being taken care of. They said that after questioning doctors or nurses about Billy Ray’s condition and his treatment they would be questioned about asking questions.

“Are you his family?” People would snap back at them before being “asked” to leave.

“Did you want to leave?” Texas NAACP Branch President Gary Bledsoe asked one woman who responded that no, she did not want to leave and only wanted to know how Billy Ray was doing. “Then you left involuntarily,” he informed her.

Hour after hour, people who knew Billy Ray Johnson came forth at the town hall meeting. They told these investigators what an all-White jury, a White judge and a small, East Texas town had not publicly heard before.

Billy Ray Johnson was led into a blue Dodge pickup truck by five White men (not four) and there were others involved in that “pasture party,” said a woman who saw the men coerce Johnson into their truck followed by another vehicle with young women in it.

Asked by Bledsoe to show these investigators how Johnson was led into the truck, the woman had one man place his arm around her shoulder. As she had seen, she directed the other four men to stand in a half-circle around Johnson, leaving him no exit save for the door of their vehicle.

She said she heard Billy Ray saying, “I want to go home. I want to go home.” She said she even saw Billy Ray try to turn away from these five men, but the men would not let him leave.

She said she definitely recognized one of the women that was there that night, “who was in this little black car.” Her testimony would have been valuable in a court of law, however, she was not called on to testify in court about what she saw at that Linden corner store located on Highway-59, she said.

The District Attorney did not need her testimony she admitted to being told.
Hours after being coerced into that blue Dodge, which one Black Linden resident told The Dallas Examiner its owner traded in for a newer model white Dodge pickup, Johnson was “found” unconscious on the side of the road on a fire-ant mound.

Here is what The Houston Press wrote about how Johnson got to where he was: “…Amox, Hicks, Owens and Stone turned off CR [County Road] 1617 onto CR 1620 and headed to their drop-off point.

They pulled the truck over at a dump site for worn-out tires, dragged Johnson from the truck and dropped him on an anthill about six feet from the shoulder and about 60 feet from a mound of rotten rubber. … About three hours later, Hicks returned to the anthill…Hicks called the sheriff’s department. He said he’d just found a body.”

One man testified about how inhumane it was for Johnson’s attackers to leave him out in the open the way they did.

Wild boars roam that area, he said, and wild boars do not roam alone. They roam in packs. If one of those packs had gotten a hold of Johnson when he was out like that…

That goes against what the men’s defense attorney successfully argued in court, which was that these men laid Johnson out in a safe place – a gesture that jurors reasoned was humane enough to recommend only suspended sentences and probation.

Hour after hour, these people came forth. Hour after hour, these investigators recorded everything that was said and asked questions about everything that was said. Nodding towards a nearby police officer, someone asked Rev. Charles Stovall of Dallas, “Why are those police here?”
Leaning forward in shared secrecy, Stovall replied, “They are here for our protection.”

In fact, they volunteered to drive down from Dallas for “our protection” that day.

According to Bill Glenn, the Northeast Texas NAACP Coordinator, worse things have happened to Black men and women in Linden before and little to nothing was done about their cases.
As a matter of fact, Glenn argues that what happened to Johnson is just the tip of the iceberg.

After Johnson’s assault, Glenn penned “A Linden Profile, Linden Justice Mirrors East Texas” on Dec. 18, 2003. In that three-page, single-spaced letter, Glenn highlights atrocities found in Linden and East Texas and says Linden “exemplifies” the attitude found in East Texas.

“…There is a regional attitude and personality with regards to race in East Texas,” Glenn wrote. “The town that best exemplifies this attitude is Linden, Texas. Linden, located 150 miles east of Dallas, has a population of 2,300. Some cities in the Northeast [Texas] region have suburbs larger than Linden, and yet Linden [has] the majority of serious Civil Rights complaints.”

There was April 2, 2001, when Clarence Otis Cole, a 42-year-old Black man whose fiancée was White, Glenn wrote, was found dead hanging by a 100-foot extension cord from a pine tree in Linden. State Rep. Ron Wilson called on state and federal officials to come to Linden and investigate but Cole’s death was called a suicide since a “note” was found.

In his letter Glenn wrote about the note. “…It is so obvious the suicide note is a fake,” he wrote, before saying, “The authorities last position was it is a suicide unless someone comes forward with new information.”
At Saturday’s church fact-finding session one man said Johnson’s body was dumped near the same spot Cole was “hanged.”

Glenn also wrote of W.L. Givens, another Black man who was also mentally challenged.

He wrote “…W.L. Givens was being stalked by a white ex-cop. The ex-cop has made numerous threats, pulled a gun on Givens and once threw a bottle from his moving truck and hit Givens who was walking in the face.”

So, what happened to Billy Ray Johnson goes on all the time, Glenn says.
“They police themselves up there,” he said Tuesday. “They just don’t get together and say, ‘Here’s how you treat Black people.’ It’s a way of life. … They call their own shots.”