‘I chose not to run; I chose to stand up for myself’
“I had just washed my car and was finishing waxing it under a big oak tree in my yard. It was so shiny, a 1982 Pontiac Grand Prix LJ model, fully loaded. It was a classic. Two white guys and a white girl had moved in across from my house. They were renting an upstairs garage apartment. At the time, they were in the street tossing a 5-gallon bucket cover like a Frisbee. It didn’t bother me. Until, with my back turned, that big, old thing hit the side of my car and scratched it. The cover landed in my yard, and those guys didn’t come to get it. I turned around and looked at them, and they looked at me. I wasn’t real happy, but I was polite about it. I picked up the cover, walked over to them, and said, ‘Look, fellas. I just finished waxing my car, and this lid just put a mark on it. I don’t care if y’all play in the street. But let’s see to it that it doesn’t come and damage my car again.’ They didn’t say a thing. I guess they didn’t like what I said.
“Around 2:30 the next morning, me, my wife and our three kids were asleep. But I guess I wasn’t sleeping that heavy because I woke up and saw this reflection in the window. I got up, pulled the blind, and saw this big cross lit up across the street, facing our house. It was one of those Ku Klux Klan crosses, about 7 feet tall. I figured it was those people who did it. So I put on some clothes, grabbed my rifle, and headed out the front door. I leaned the rifle up against the house, so I didn’t have far to go if I needed it. I walked to the corner, and all three of them were right there with that cross. I said, ‘Don’t y’all know that you can’t be doing this?’ And they just looked at me and didn’t say a word. So I thought, you know what, I’ve got to go down to the police station. I’ve got to report this right now.
“They were trying to scare me, get me to move or something. Only problem was, some of us have it in us, we don’t have that fear. I didn’t have that fear in me. I was good and strong, and I wasn’t scared. I’ve faced other situations before, growing up in Louisiana and after moving to Texas. I’ve always known I’m not invincible. I’ve known I could get hurt or even die. I can’t eat bullets. I ain’t Superman. But as I’ve evolved through the years, I’ve stood up to a lot of people. Sometimes I’ve gotten hurt and sometimes I’ve hurt others defending myself. But the thing is, I didn’t run. I chose not to run. I chose to stand up for myself.”
— Albert Jack
According to Albert, although the burning cross was dismantled by the time the police arrived on the scene, remnants of it were still visible. The people behind the incident were not arrested, but their landlord evicted them from the apartment.
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