HEMPHILL, TX—On November 25, 2013, the battered and mutilated black body of 28-year-old Alfred Wright was found by family and friends who were searching in a wooded area of Hemphill, Texas. This adds to the lengthy list of young Africans recently murdered or suspected to have been murdered by either police or white nationalist thugs.
His eyes had been gouged out, his tongue cut out, his throat cut, one ear cut off and his teeth knocked out.
Many in this area believe Wright was lynched because an African man married to a white woman in East Texas is taboo and subject to good ole boy southern justice. Wright's wife Lauren is white, and they had two little boys.
Official autopsy results by the Sabine County Coroner and supported by sheriff Tom Maddox ruled the murder an “accidental drug overdose.” This autopsy ruled out homicide, and stated there was no trauma to the body.
They claim the coroner found cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamine in Wright's body. Wright's wife, family, and friends, however vehemently deny the notion that he used drugs at any time.
It is not uncommon for the police and media to link drugs to African people like they linked marijuana to Trayvon Martin, after he was chased down and murdered.
It was only after the family hired an independent pathologist, Dr. Lee Ann Grossberg from Houston to conduct a second autopsy that the family and the public learned of the most vicious way Wright had been murdered.
A little case history
Alfred was reported missing by his wife, Lauren, and his parents, Douglas and Rosalind Wright, on the night of November 7, 2013, following a phone call from Alfred, reporting his truck had broken down in Hemphill.
Hemphill is a small, East Texas town about a 30 minute drive from Alfred's hometown of Jasper, Texas. Jasper is the infamous town where James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death after being kidnapped and chained behind a pickup truck by three white nationalist terrorists on June 7, 1998.
In the nearly three weeks between the time Wright was reported missing and the time he was found, his body had not decomposed, nor had it been mutilated by animals or insects.
The area where his body was found, only a hundred yards or so from where some of his clothing was found no more than two days after he went missing, had supposedly been searched, including ground and air searches and cadaver dogs by sheriff Maddox and his crew.
The sheriff sent the Texas EquuSearch personnel packing and called off the search after three days, claiming he was out of resources.
As of this writing, sheriff officials have yet to question searchers who found Wright’s body.
The family says that no officials have come out to check Wright's vehicle for fingerprints, and accusations have flared that there was a possible relationship between the sheriff's daughter and Wright. Both were healthcare workers and knew each other.
A grisly murder and cover-up
Recently Africans in the United States have expressed outrage at white vigilante murders of young African men such as Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.
Their murderers were let off for their murders in U.S. courtrooms the same way the white nationalists who murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 were acquitted, despite overwhelming evidence and eyewitness testimony that clearly showed their guilt.
In the case of Alfred Wright, however, those who administer white power, colonialist justice are intenton never even bringing Wright’s murderers to trial.
This is no new "justice" for Africans colonized here in the United States. Most of our history in this country does not include courtroom justice.
Justice for our people was served up as we see in the Alfred Wright case. Alfred, like so many of us, never make it to a courtroom. A report produced by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement last year showed that at least one African is murdered every 28 hours in the U.S. by extrajudicial means by police, security guards or white nationalist, vigilante forces.
Those responsible for the Wright lynching could very well include members of the sheriff's department itself.
The first district attorney assigned to this case, Kevin Dutton, has recused himself on grounds of conflict of interest, stating that sheriff Maddox is a personal friend of his.
Upon learning the findings of the second autopsy report, the Wright family immediately began to call for protest demonstrations and go to other government agencies demanding that the investigation be taken out of the hands of sheriff Maddox.
Following the district attorney's bowing out, the Texas Rangers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were called into the investigation.
Not satisfied with the Texas Rangers and the FBI, the family called on congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee who in turn called in the U.S. justice department which is, at present, leading the investigation.
So far the U.S. justice department is silent on the matter.
Justice will be won in the streets!
Rallies in Jasper, for the most part, have been led by local people, while street demonstrations in Hemphil have included members from the New Black Panther Party who were openly armed. These actions brought out anti-African, white nationalist, klan-type forces into the streets.
According to the March 11, 2014 Forward Times, a longtime African newspaper published in Houston, “After the Jasper rally, over 80 cars traveled to Hemphill, Texas where a demonstration was taking place at the same time the Jasper rally was concluding.”
Also at attendance at the Hemphill demonstration was Quannell X, an African from Houston who is mostly known for getting Africans to turn themselves in to him so he can turn them in to the police, under the pretext that it's to keep the police from killing them.
The Texas Rangers had to separate Quannell X from face-to-face confrontations with white nationalists at the demonstration.
The march down to the convenience store where Wright's truck broke down revealed that all the cameras, inside and out, had been removed and provided no video of the night Wright was kidnapped.
It is clear that the African working class inside the U.S. is poised for struggle. All stripes of the petty bourgeoisie are forever present, attempting to block our people from reaching revolutionary conclusions.
James Byrd Jr.'s sister, Betty Byrd Boatner, was at the Jasper rally where she cried out to God for peace and justice for the family before falling to her knees to pray for and embrace Alfred's mother Rosalind and the rest of the family.
Just as in the cases of Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, justice for Alfred Wright won't be won in a courtroom. It will have to be won in the streets.
The revolution is foremost the African working class armed with revolutionary theory and won to the revolution. Our people armed and won to the revolution is what will bring justice to all of us who have been scarred by colonialism.
Our people must be clear that the U.S. Justice Department is the police and that the police will not police the police or colonial violence.
Even as those of us who lead struggle demand that the murderers of Alfred Wright be brought to trial and convicted, our work is to win the people to the revolution, the only solution.
We must ask ourselves, “to what end do we struggle?” Power in our own hands won through revolution must be to what end we struggle.
Otherwise we just hold massive demonstrations every 28 hours.
Justice for Alfred Wright!
Join the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement!
Smash Colonial Violence!
