By BOB RAY SANDERS
bobray@star-telegram.com
The morning rain had stopped and the dark clouds surrendered to an extremely bright sun that March day in 1993.
Some saw the change in weather as an approving sign from God for what was to happen in Fort Worth that afternoon.
With sunlight shimmering over the city, a stream of people — many coming by the church bus loads — poured into downtown and began gathering by the Water Gardens for an event unlike any Fort Worth had seen.
The solemnity of the crowd, which eventually grew to more than 10,000, sent an early message that the people had come for serious business. Those in power should be put on notice that it would not be business as usual after that day.
They had come from all over the Metroplex, from all walks of life. Families with babies in strollers, college students, old people, public officials, community leaders and business folk. At least two members of Congress — Pete Geren and Eddie Bernice Johnson — joined the group, as well as Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price and labor leader Pancho Medrano.
Although the outsiders were welcomed in showing their solidarity, local organizers made clear that this was very much a Fort Worth affair that would be done the Fort Worth way. It would not be hijacked by any person or group from another city.
The crowd was predominantly black, but whites and Hispanics joined in what at the time was the largest protest march in the city’s history.
It was billed as the "Silent March of Death" and, except for the sound of African drums beating out a hauntingly mourning cadence, it was indeed silent.
The drummers followed a slow moving white hearse. Behind them came the quiet throng of marchers making their way down Main Street to the Tarrant County Courthouse. They were oblivious to the fact that inside, the sheriff had gathered an army of officers in riot gear ready for combat in case anything went wrong.
But, except for the overreaction by the Sheriff’s Department, nothing would go wrong this day. Everything would go right in addressing a horrible wrong.
The people had come to protest the sentence of a young white man who had been convicted in the death of an Arlington black man, Donald Thomas.
Christopher William Brosky was one of three 16-year-old "skinheads" who conspired to kill Thomas. The black man was shot to death as he sat on a flatbed truck talking and drinking beer with his white neighbors.
Brosky, who was not the shooter, was found guilty of the murder, but the all-white jury gave the 18-year-old a probated sentence that outraged the black community and galvanized black people in the city in a way they had never before come together.
After the march downtown, and over the cries of "double jeopardy" from Brosky’s attorney, the district attorney filed another charge against the teenager: engaging in organized crime with the intention to commit murder.
In a second trial, which was moved to Galveston, Brosky was found guilty and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
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