ABOVE: Willie Land (far left) and George Adams (right) at the J.H. Rowe School memorial, Jasper,TX, September 16, 2024. Photograph by Alan Govenar.
If you look up the town Jasper, Texas in Wikipedia you’ll discover that this small east Texas town is the “butterfly capital” of that state. And a few more paragraphs down, you’ll see that it is the place where, in June 1998, a 49-year-old Black man, James Byrd, Jr., was lynched by three white men. The murderers tied him with a chain to a truck and dragged him for three miles on an asphalt road. The hate crime made national headlines and a 2003 Showtime tv-movie dramatized it. His murder was one of two that a landmark 2009 piece of federal legislation was named for: The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
“Quiet Voices in a Noisy World: The Struggle for Change in Jasper, Texas” is a new documentary directed by Alan Govenar about how African-American citizens of Jasper have worked hard over many years to try to heal the racial divisions in their town, advance justice and give recognition to the wealth of social achievements by Black Texans in their Jasper.
Byrd’s mother Stella Mae (who died in 2010) talks about the call she received from President Clinton after her son’s murder and her disappointment that James’ grave has been desecrated twice after his burial; there have been improvements but it is a slow process. Other Black seniors from the community proudly give tours of the new monuments, roadside markers and museums that tell the history and accomplishments of Black people in East Texas.
Most interesting is a comparison of the work of a self-taught barber and local Black photographer, Alonzo Jordan, who documented weddings, graduations and dances for thirty years with the work of WPA photographers who took photos of locals and recorded folk and blues songs sung by local farmers.
Willie Land knew one of Byrd’s murderers, Shawn Berry, saying that he seemed like a good fellow who just “fell in with the wrong crowd.” Land and other black residents testified during the trial that they didn’t think he was a racist like the other two perpetrators. (Berry got life imprisonment while the other two were executed.) Willie says we have to stay vigilant but “don’t let [Byrd’s murder] eat you up, it’ll consume you… I just don’t forget it.” Govenar’s film is a hopeful portrait of how the quiet, determined resilience, kindness and hard work of a Black community is conquering hatred one inspired act at a time.
Documentary Arts is the distributor of this film. The organization was founded in 1985, by Alan Govenar, to “initiate social change around diverse cultures and regional heritage.” They will celebrate their 40th anniversary with a film retrospective of Govenar’s earlier docs, with Q&A’s at New York’s Cinema Village, from November 14-20, 2025. Go here for showtimes and ticket information.