“Two Towns of Jasper” and the “invisible veil” between the races

Twenty years ago, three men with ties to white supremacist groups chained 49-year-old 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 by 1998 times had changed. The suspects were rounded up by the white sheriff. They were arraigned by the white district attorney and put on trial. Their cases we...