Jasper - Authorities and religious leaders in the Texan town of Jasper yesterday began what they hoped would be "a great healing" in the wake of Saturday's armed stand-off between the Ku Klux Klan and Black Panthers and other militias.
The rival groups had converged on the town, which had been stung three weeks ago by the brutal murder of a black man, James Byrd, by three whites whom authorities say were affiliated to the klan. Byrd was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged 1.2 miles, decapitated and dismembered into 75 pieces.
The high-noon passed off without major incident, not least thanks to the weaponry both sides carried - the stakes being too high for any other outcome.
But it was cold comfort: as the last of the heavily armed black paramilitaries - the Military Fruit of Islam - left town on Saturday night, its "National General" Omar Al-Tariq said: "I am not interested in civil rights." He continued: "They have failed. . . There will come a time when we will take the lives of Caucasian men, women and babies. You will see the black man explode, and we are coming close to that - the day is upon you."
