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HOUSTON -- Bill Simpson was killed the day he left Klan country.
He couldn't take it any more in Vidor, Texas. There had been too many threats, too many nights of wondering if the whites of Vidor would decide to use the darkness as a time to take him out.
So Mr. Simpson left Vidor Wednesday, the last black to stay on in what is known as one of the meanest towns in the South, where the common wisdom for a black man is to be gone by sundown.
He went to nearby Beaumont.And there, as he was standing on the street late Wednesday night, he was gunned down in an apparent act of random violence. Authorities blame suspected black gang members.
All that fear in Vidor, only to have his life end when he thought those long nights of danger were over.
Mr. Simpson was a homeless manual laborer who became a minor celebrity in these parts because of his willingness to move to Vidor, a town that, as far as anyone can remember, had not had a black resident for 70 or more years. It was known as "Bloody Vidor" and had a reputation for...