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19981776 Club

Three men chain James Byrd Jr. to a truck and drag him three miles to his death in Jasper, Texas

Berry, Brewer, and King dumped the 49-year-old's remains outside a Black cemetery, then drove to a barbecue.

The night of June 7, 1998, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old African American man, accepted a ride from three acquaintances on the outskirts of Jasper, Texas — a small Deep East Texas city of roughly 8,000 people. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King drove him to a remote county road, beat him severely, chained him by his ankles to their Ford pickup truck, and dragged him for three miles along Huff Creek Road. Byrd died about halfway through the ordeal when his body struck a culvert, severing his right arm and head. His murderers dumped his remains in front of a Black cemetery, then drove to a barbecue…

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More from June 7
1776

Lee rises in Congress and calls the colonies free and independent states; Adams seconds the motion

Five delegations lack instructions to vote, so a decision is delayed three weeks and a drafting committee is named in the meantime.
1942

Dive bombers sink three Japanese carriers in six minutes; a fourth falls before dark

Cryptanalysts cracked Tokyo's naval code and fed the enemy a lie about a water shortage, and Nagumo's flight decks are crowded with fueled, armed planes when the Americans arrive.
1862

Seward and Lyons sign a treaty giving both navies the right to search and seize slave ships

The Senate ratifies unanimously the same day, ending half a century of U.S. resistance to British calls for mutual search rights on African and Cuban waters.
19421776 Club
The 301st Infantry Battalion met almost no resistance on Attu, where the island held 45 Unangax villagers, a radio technician, and his schoolteacher wife.
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Read the full June 7 edition →Everything that happened on June 7 →
More from Modern America
2005

Katrina comes ashore at Buras; hours later, New Orleans is drowning

Fifty-three levee and floodwall breaches put 80 percent of the city underwater by nightfall.
1998

Two Stanford dropouts-in-waiting file the papers; Google is now a company

A hundred-thousand-dollar check written to a firm that didn't legally exist yet just cleared.
2013

A rocket built from retired nukes lifts a moon probe off Wallops Island

Crowds from Maine to South Carolina watch the first Minotaur V carry NASA's LADEE spacecraft into the night sky.
2024

A billionaire-funded crew lifts off before dawn, reaching farther than any astronauts since 1972

Jared Isaacman's privately funded Polaris Dawn leaves Kennedy Space Center carrying a spacewalk suit that has never flown.
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