Wes Ferguson: LINDEN — Whatever happened to Billy Ray Johnson?
For years, the middle-aged, mentally challenged black man was a familiar face around town. But on a September night in 2003, four young white men gave Johnson beer at a pasture party and told him to dance while they laughed and used racial slurs. Then one of them beat him.
The beating and dumping of Johnson’s unconscious body and the town’s reaction drew national outrage.
“Old South racism lives in Texas town,” read one headline in the Chicago Tribune. High-powered civil rights lawyer Morris Dees took up Johnson’s case, and in April 2007, a civil jury awarded Johnson $9 million.
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