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During the early morning hours of June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd, Jr., a black man, was chained behind a pick-up truck and dragged to his death. Within twenty-four hours, three white men were arrested regarding the crime. Two of them, Bill King and Russell Brewer, were eventually convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, the third, Shawn Berry, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Dr. Ricardo Ainslie, a psychoanalyst and professor in the Counseling Psychology faculty at the University of Texas in Austin, has written Long Dark Road: Bill King and Murder in Jasper, Texas, focusing particularly on one of the perpetrators of the crime, Bill King. The book is multifaceted: a psycho-history of Bill King, a riveting journalistic account of the events of the murder, the subsequent investigation and trial, and an account of the survival of a community in crisis. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to stay in touch with the more extreme forms of the ongoing violence of North American racism. To understand something of the special interest this book may hold for psychoanalysts, a word is in order about Ainslie's earlier work that leads up to Long Dark Road.
Ainslie's first book, No Dancin' in Anson (Ainslie, 1996), was an account of social change in Anson, Texas, a small town in the western part of the state. Anson had been a predominantly Baptist town; as such, no dancing was allowed within the city limits. In the mid-twentieth century Catholic-Mexican immigrants, who coincidentally loved to dance, settled there. Explored by Ainslie, this is the story of how the community uniquely negotiated the conflicting values and cultures that were set in play.
Ainslie's next project was a documentary film, Crossover, concerning the desegregation process in the midto late-sixties in Hempstead, Texas. In particular, he recorded the complicated history of the transition through personal accounts of those who lived in Hempstead at