"Two Towns of Jasper" and the invisible veil between the races

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Twenty years ago, three men with ties to white supremacist groups chained a black man, James Byrd Jr., to the back of a pickup truck. They dragged him for miles, strewing his remains along the backroads of Jasper, Texas.

It was a grisly crime that seemed to come out of a different era, when black men could be lynched with impunity. 

But this was 1998, and times had changed. The suspects were soon rounded up by the white sheriff. They were arraigned and put on trial by the white district atto...