It’s been 28 years since 20-year-old US Air Force Airman Daniel Shersty drove his black Chevy Cavalier to the desert on the northwest edge of the Las Vegas Valley late in the evening of July 3, 1998, with his close friend, 24-year-old Lin “Spit” Newborn, and two girls they’d met earlier that day. What they expected was a little pre-Independence Day partying. What they found instead was an ambush by armed neo-Nazi skinheads, who, according to testimony, opened fire moments after greetings were exchanged. Shersty died from multiple gunshot wounds. Newborn managed to run but was also shot to death a short distance away.
The deaths of these two anti-racist activists reverberated far beyond their local Las Vegas community. Civil rights activists and anti-hate organizations across the United States and around the globe spread the news and felt the impacts. As their murder case worked its way through the criminal justice system, a rally was organized in the summer of 1999, more than a year after the killings, which drew members of the Anti-Racist Action and other activists from around the country to the suburbs of Las Vegas to demand an end to racist violence.
One of the organizers who traveled from Portland, Oregon to the middle of the Mojave Desert was Eric Ward, a longtime civil rights strategist, philanthropic leader and cultural activist who today serves as executive vice president of Race Forward and is a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ward came up in the Los Angeles and Pacific Northwest ska and punk scenes. He says that Newborn–as well as the Las Vegas Unity Skins with which he was associated–was “known” among the broader skinhead community, so it’s no surprise their murders made waves.
“The murders of Spit and Dan are important because they actually symbolize the skinhead movement at that time: Black and white, side by side,” Ward said. “I think their murders, together, for many of us, hit hard because of that. It was a direct attack on that symbol of anti-racism.”
Based on testimony and evidence, Newborn–an outspoken Black punk rocker, poet and organizer–was the primary target of the conspiracy concocted by members of violent white supremacy groups. Although Shersty was also an outspoken anti-racist skinhead, he just happened to be the friend who was with Newborn at the time. But the fact that he was taken out just as mercilessly–despite being white, despite being a member of the Armed Forces–makes his unintentional sacrifice all the more meaningful.
“I think Dan sometimes gets forgotten,” Ward said. “And so do those white folks who oppose racism because they actually wanted to live in a multiracial society. I think it’s important to remember what we are fighting for. We’re not fighting for a segregated society. We’re fighting for a society that moves us all forward together.”