LONG DARK ROAD
In 1998, three white men dragged James Byrd to death behind a pick up truck in Jasper, Texas. Byrd was black, and at least two of his killers were members of a white supremacist prison gang known as the Confederate Knights of America. The racially motivated dragging death was a modern-day lynching. Long Dark Road: Bill King and Murder in Jasper (University of Texas Press, 2004) explores the life and psychology of Bill King, the man who took the lead role in the murder. Ricardo Ainslie spent two-and-a-half years researching the book in Jasper and on Texas’ Death Row, where King is presently housed. Long Dark Road was runner up for Best Non-Fiction for the 2005 Hamilton Book Awards.