Once again, adhering to Fair Use Standards will not remotely do this justice so I am just posting snippets to whet your appetite and you MUST go read the whole bit: it's not that long.
Sure, people are already aware of the actual sentencing: that came out a couple days ago: this is about what the judge had to say before passing sentence.
And it is awesome.
Raw Story Posting
The Backstory, for those who don't remember:
On June 26, 2011, Deryl Dedmon, Jr., John Aaron Rice, and Dylan Wade Butler drove into Jackson, Mississippi — which they referred to as “Jafrica” — to “go fuck with some n*ggers.” They came across Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, and assaulted him while yelling “white power.” While Anderson was on the ground, Dedmon ran him over with his truck.
Make the jump.
The Judge is the Honorable Carlton Reeves, one of only 2 black people to serve on the judiciary at this level in Mississippi.
He had something to say before passing sentence.
He recalled the thousands of lynchings America has seen and he whittled it down to Mississippi, indicating that Mississippi has seen more than its share of this ugliness; that half the names inscribed on a Civil Rights Memorial to this national violence are from Mississippi.
“Mississippi soil has been stained with the blood of folk whose names have become synonymous with the civil rights movement like Emmett Till, Willie McGee, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Vernon Dahmer, George W. Lee, Medgar Evers and Mack Charles Parker,” he said.
“On June 26, 2011, four days short of his 49th birthday, the blood of James Anderson was added to Mississippi’s soil.”
- - - -
“This was a 2011 version of the n*gger hunts.”
“What is so disturbing … so shocking … so numbing … is that these n*gger hunts were perpetrated by our children … students who live among us … educated in our public schools … in our private academies … students who played football lined up on the same side of scrimmage line with black teammates … average students and honor students. Kids who worked during school and in the summers; kids who now had full-time jobs and some of whom were even unemployed.”
He then delivered sentences from 7 to 50 years without possibility of parole.
Go read the whole thing.
And Thank you, Judge Reeves