Cisse Cameron as Miss False Eyelashes (credited as Cissie Colpitts).

Howard Hesseman as Howard (credited as Don Sturdy).

As Billy is driven away in handcuffs, a large crowd of supporters raise their fists as a show of defiance and support. After a climactic shootout with the police and pleading from Jean, Billy Jack surrenders to the authorities in exchange for a decade-long guarantee that the school will be allowed to continue to run with Jean as its head.

Billy confronts Bernard, whom he catches in bed with a 13-year-old girl, and sustains a gunshot wound before killing him with a hand strike to the throat. Later, Jean is raped by Bernard, who also murders a Native American student. Following an incident involving Jean, Billy gives Bernard a choice of either receiving a dislocated elbow, or driving his Corvette into the lake Bernard does the latter. Meanwhile, Barbara loses her unborn child, when the horse she was riding stumbles on a rock, causing her to fall off the horse. Billy goes through a Navajo initiation where he gets bitten purposely by a deadly rattlesnake, so that he would become the blood brother to the snake, which he does survive. This prompts a violent outburst by Billy. One of the troubled youths is a girl named Barbara, who became pregnant and was abused by her father.Ī group of children of various races from the school go to town for ice cream and are refused service and then abused and humiliated by Bernard Posner (David Roya), the son of the county's corrupt political boss Stuart Posner ( Bert Freed), and his gang. The school is organized by its director, Jean Roberts ( Delores Taylor). Jack defends the hippie-themed Freedom School (inspired by Prescott College) and students from townspeople who do not understand or like the counterculture students. (These categories are covered by a federal hate crimes law enacted in 2015.) A vigil is held in Billy Jack Gaither’s memory on the Alabama Capitol steps in Montgomery each year.Billy Jack is a ' mixed-race' Navajo, a Green Beret Vietnam War veteran, and a hapkido master. The media coverage of Billy Jack Gaither’s death led many to call for changes to Alabama’s 1994 hate crimes law, which did not mention sexual orientation or gender identity. His murder was widely covered in the state and national press, and his story was featured on the PBS news program Frontline in an episode called “Assault on Gay America: The Life and Death of Billy Jack Gaither,” aired near the anniversary of his death in February 2000. Both were sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1999.Ī memorial service after Gaither’s death in 1999 at Covenant Metropolitan Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, drew over five hundred people from numerous religious congregations and local community organizations, according to the church’s pastor, Reverend Marge Ragona. Mullins and Butler confirmed that Gaither’s sexual orientation motivated the crime. The men beat him with an axe handle, cut his throat, and burned his body on a pile of tires soaked with kerosene. He left in his car with two men-Steven Mullins and Charles Monroe Butler. The night of his murder, he visited a local bar called The Tavern. Gaither, remembered by family and friends as a quiet and easygoing person, lived in Sylacauga with his parents, caring for them, and worked as a computer operator at the Russell Athletics apparel company near the small town. Billy Jack Gaither, a thirty-nine-year-old gay man, was murdered on February 19, 1999, near Sylacauga, Alabama.

Billy jack