By 2009, the U.S. Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and Ja…

By 2009, the U.S. Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act as a result of Matthew Shepard being brutally beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming, where he was a university student because he was ________ and James Byrd Jr. who was a ______ man who was murdered in 1998 in Jasper, Texas, by three White men who beat him, urinated on him, tied a chain around his legs, and dragged him behind their truck until his arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert.