James Harris Jackson, a white man, openly confessed to police detectives about how he used a Roman-style short sword to stab Timothy Caughman, solely because he was a Black man.
28-year-old Jackson would go on to detail the 2017 stabbing was “practice” for a planned attack to kill as many Black men as he could that he saw with white women. Today, his mother, Pat Jackson, refers to her son as “evil” and also shared that he hid his hatred from everyone.
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“He’s not your typical white supremacist,” she said.
His mother’s description was accurate as he would walk up to two dozen officers in Times Square searching for him, shed his coat that had weapons in it and placed it in front of them before stating “I’m the guy you’re looking for” and “There are knives in that coat.”
“I was looking to get black men scared and have them do reciprocal attacks,” Jackson said according to The Washington Post, “and inspire white men to do similar things.”
The aim for Jackson was to start the “Racial World War,” which he detailed in his manifesto as an effort to eliminate Black people from Earth that he believes was ordered by God.
Jackson is a white Army veteran from Baltimore who pled guilty in January to murder as terrorism and murder as a hate crime, leading to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The New York Times details not only did he kill Caughman, but he also spent several days stalking Black men across Manhattan before choosing his target. He spotted the 66-year-old victim going through the trash in search of items for recycling.
The Business Insider spoke with Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, qualifies the statements Jackson’s mother revealing it is “easier than one might think” to hide their views from family and friends.
“People may worry about stigma or negative consequences; white supremacists also face stigma and negative consequences, when they are open about their hateful beliefs. So some choose to hide them or to reveal them only under very controlled or narrow circumstances,” Pitcavage shared.
This is how he hid it from his family- or maybe evolved from the more liberal view that he was raised to respect.
Jackson’s family kept a Barack Obama “Hope” magnet on the refrigerator and his grandfather would help in the desegregation of Louisiana schools. His family also enrolled him in a Friends School of Baltimore, a Quaker school driven by pacifism and peace before joining the US Army.
During his tenure in the army, he spent time in Afghanistan fighting alongside Black soldiers who did not sense any hostility. But something changed.
After an honorable discharge, Jackson researched white supremacy online while residing in Italy visiting hundreds of extremist websites before his killing of Caughman, instead of executing thoughts of his own suicide.
He would soon purchase his murder weapon on Amazon for $56. Jackson told his family he would re-enlist in the Army and would move to Germany, but actually went to New York City and began the steps that led to the killing.
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“Right now there is a photo on our fridge showing our son in Afghanistan, standing next to an African American colleague,” Pat Jackson said to The Post. She also would detail his supremacy thoughts were stored “in his head and on his computer until he lost his mind.”