Jena 6 moms at NKU Tonight

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - Mothers of the “Jena Six” will be speaking in a community forum on Thursday evening at NKU.

The event, which is open to the public, was organized by a number of campus groups.
“There’s a lack of awareness of what’s been going on in Jena,” said junior Eva Roberson, president of Students Together Against Racism, which helped organize the event.

Roberson said she hopes the event helps bring to light some of the issues surrounding the case.A reception begins in the University Center’s second floor lobby at 6 p.m. and the forum begins at 6:45 p.m. in the Otto Budig Theater.

University of Louisville Students Respond To Online Threats

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- After becoming the targets of online threats, some students at the University of Louisville are finding their own way to react.

Comments and threats were posted on a white supremacy website.

The messages were in response to Monday's rally for six African-American teens accused of beating a white classmate in Jena, Louisiana.

Instead of responding to the online posts, the Association of Black Students used them to open a dialog at Thursday night's meeting.

Leaders for the student group said they plan to continue to use the comments as a spring board to discuss race issues.

This from WLKY.com. (with Video)

Bail set for imprisoned ‘Jena 6’ teen

Prosecutor won't fight ruling that sent

black teen’s case to juvenile court

JENA, La. - Bail was set at $45,000 for Mychal Bell, a black teenager once charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate, a LaSalle Parish sheriff’s office official told NBC News.

Also Thursday, District Attorney Reed Walters confirmed that he will no longer seek an adult trial for Bell — one of the group known as the "Jena 6" — as part of a case that drew tens of thousands of protesters to Jena last week.

Reed Walters announcement, Video from CNN (4:00).

Walters credited the prayers of people in this small central Louisiana town with averting a “disaster” during the demonstration. Some critics of Walters considered that a slap against the peaceful marchers.

The conviction in adult court was thrown out this month by the state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, which said Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that particular charge.

The ruling means that Bell, who had faced a maximum of 15 years in prison on his aggravated second-degree battery conviction last month, cannot get anything close to that sentence in the case.

This from MSNBC. (Pundit Video)

Meanwhile: WAVY TV (Norfolk VA) reports: The FBI says it is investigating a Roanoke, Virginia man who posted the personal information of the "Jena 6" students on his website, urging white supremacists to "deliver justice" by lynching them. Bill White calls himself the Commander of the American National Socialist Workers' Party.

After Jena protest, Nooses Found at NorthCarolina School

School Officials Found Two Nooses on a Tree,

One in the Bus Parking Lot

and One on the Flagpole

A day after civil rights figures led a massive protest in Jena, La., where racial tensions flared after nooses were hung from a tree outside Jena High School, more nooses were found on a tree outside another southeastern high school.

A total of four nooses were found Friday around the campus of Andrews High School in High Point, N.C., police said.

Two nooses were hung on a tree in front of the school, one was in a bus loop near the upperclassmen's parking lot, and one red noose was tied to the top of the school flagpole, High Point Police Capt. Margaret Erga said, citing a police report.

Erga said school administrators discovered the nooses around 8:30 a.m. and immediately notified authorities, who officially filed the report at 10:41 Friday morning.

Extra police officers were brought to the campus and security was in force at Andrews High School for the remainder of the day....

This from ABC News.

Black and White Becomes Gray in La. Town

ABC News posted another story on the Jena 6 which fills in more information:

It's got all the elements of a Delta blues ballad from the days of Jim Crow: hangman's nooses dangling from a shade tree; a mysterious fire in the night; swift deliberations by a condemning, all-white jury.

And drawn by this story, which evokes the worst of a nightmarish past, they came by the thousands this past week to Jena, La. to demand justice, to show strength, to beat back the forces of racism as did their parents and grandparents...

...Clearly, something bad occurred in Jena, population 2,971, an old sawmill town in LaSalle Parish that, once upon a time, was Ku Klux Klan country.

And, as most white and black residents readily agree, there is no good reason for embracing what unfolded here.

But what happened, exactly?

The story goes that a year ago, a black student asked at an assembly if he could sit in the shade of a live oak, which, the story goes, was labeled "the white tree" because only white students hung out there. The next day, three nooses dangled from the oak code for "KKK" the handiwork of three white students, who were suspended for just three days.

Much of that is disputed. What happened next is not: Two months later, an arsonist torched a wing of Jena High School. (The case remains unsolved.) Two fights between blacks and whites roiled the town that weekend, culminating in a school-yard brawl on Dec. 4 that led the district attorney to charge the Jena Six with attempted murder.

The lethal weapon he cited to justify the charge: the boys' sneakers.

In July, the first to be tried, Mychal Bell, was convicted after two hours of deliberations by an all-white jury on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit it.

(It was widely reported that Bell, now 17, was an honor student with no prior criminal record. Although he had a high grade-point average, he was, in fact, on probation for at least two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property. In any event, his conviction was overturned because an appeals court ruled he should not have been tried as an adult.) ...

Huey Crockett, 50, lives with his wife, Carla, 45, in a heavily wooded, predominantly black district just beyond Jena's limits, an area known as "The Country." The Crocketts, who are black, have complained to police that Bell and other youngsters were causing trouble in their neighborhood scratching cars with keys, breaking the windows of parked cars, spraying property with paint.

The authorities, Crockett says, were always slow to respond.

"But as soon as he had a run-in with a white boy, they came down on him like a hammer. That's not right. If I call the police for an incident here, it may take them an hour, an hour and half to get out here. But they'll be right out in an instant if a white person calls them." ...

...The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month,and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.

The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up...

A number of other blacks and whites have raised ... questions about the Jena Six episode, particularly the manner in which authorities handled a series of racially charged incidents leading up to it.

Why, they ask, wasn't the noose incident ever reported to police? (A report might have triggered a hate-crime investigation, although federal authorities rarely go after juveniles in such cases.) And when whites and blacks tangled several times before the Jena Six episode, why did authorities charge the whites with misdemeanors or not at all while charging blacks with felonies? ...

This from ABC News.

White students' noose hanging, suggestive of racist lynchings, OK under Louisiana law?

First the story of the Jena 6 from Wade Goodman at NPR:

All Things Considered, July 30, 2007 audio: As at hundreds of other high schools across America, black and white students at Jena High School in Jena, La., rarely sit together. The white students gather under a big shade tree in the courtyard, while black students congregate near the auditorium.

But last year, a few days into the first semester, a new student, a freshman African American, asked the principal at an assembly, if he, too, could sit under the tree. He was told he could sit anywhere he liked.

Three white boys on the rodeo team apparently disagreed. The next morning, there were three nooses hanging from the shade tree in the courtyard.

Anthony Jackson is one of two black teachers at Jena High School. He laughs ruefully, as he recalls watching the nooses swaying in the tree.

"I jokingly said to another teacher, 'One's for you, one's for me. Who's the other one for?'"

Many in Jena's black community wanted the three white students expelled. But when the white superintendent and other school administrators investigated, they decided the nooses were a prank. Instead of expulsion or arrest, the three received in-school suspension.

Blacks called the punishment a double standard.

"White students can do things and receive a slap on the hand," Jackson says. But authorities "want to throw the book at blacks," he adds.

An Incident Escalates

A few of the black athletes, the stars of the football team, took the lead in resisting. The day after the nooses were hung, they reportedly organized a silent protest under the tree.

The school called an assembly and summoned the police and the district attorney. Black students sat on one side, whites on the other. District Attorney Reed Walters warned the students he could be their friend or their worst enemy. He lifted his fountain pen and said, "With one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear."

That evening, black students told their parents that the DA was looking right at them. Walters denies that. Billy Fowler, a member of the school board, doesn't believe it, either.

"He said some pretty strong things," says Fowler, "but I don't think he was directing it to anyone in particular. I think he just wanted people to calm it down."

But things didn't calm down. Some whites felt triumphant; some blacks were resentful. Fights began to break out at the high school. But that year, the football team was having an unusually good season and the black athletes were a major reason why. So while there were fights throughout the fall, nobody wanted to take any action that would hurt the team.

When the season was over, so was the truce. On Nov. 30, somebody burned down Jena High.

Whites thought blacks were responsible, blacks thought the opposite.

Charges and Public Outrage


The next night, 16-year-old Robert Bailey and a few black friends tried to enter a party attended mostly by whites. When Bailey got inside, he was attacked and beaten. The next day, tensions escalated at a local convenience store. Bailey exchanged words with a white student who had been at the party. The white boy ran back to his truck and pulled out a pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran after him and wrestled him for the gun.

After some scuffling, Bailey and his friends took the gun away and brought it home. Bailey was eventually charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who pulled the weapon was not charged at all.

Photo by Bill Haber, AP: Carwin Jones,

(center), talks to his father, John Jenkins,

outside the LaSalle Parish Courthouse in Jena, La.

Jones is one of five black students still facing

attempted second-degree murder charges

for beating Justin Barker, who is white,

last December. Tina Jones, left, is the mother of

Bryant Purvis, another student charged.

A sixth black student has already been

convicted on lesser charges.

The following Monday, Dec.4, a white student named Justin Barker was loudly bragging to friends in the school hallway that Robert Bailey had been whipped by a white man on Friday night. When Barker walked into the courtyard, he was attacked by a group of black students.

The first punch knocked Barker out and he was kicked several times in the head. But the injuries turned out to be superficial. Barker was examined by doctors and released; he went out to a social function later that evening.

Six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated assault. But District Attorney Reed Walters increased the charges to attempted second-degree murder. That provoked a storm of black outrage.

"Jena has always been a racist town," says Bailey's mother, Caseptla Bailey. "We've understood that….It has been that way since I've lived here."

But school board member Billy Fowler disagrees.

As far as racial problems, our community is no different than any other community," Fowler says.

Fowler is one of the few leaders with the school administration or local law enforcement willing to talk to the media. The principal, the school superintendent and the district attorney all declined repeated calls for comment.

Fowler says he is appalled at reports by outside media outlets that he claims portray Jena as a racist community. But he and many other white leaders agree that the charges are unfair.

"I think it's safe to say some punishment has not been passed out fairly and evenly," Fowler says. "I think probably blacks may have gotten a little tougher discipline through the years.

"Our town is not a bunch of bigots. They're Christian, law-abiding citizens that wouldn't mistreat anybody."


But the black students and their families feel mistreated. The first to go to court was Mychal Bell, the team's star running and defensive back. Bell's court-appointed lawyer refused to mount any defense at all, instead resting his case immediately after two days of government presentation. An all-white jury found Bell guilty.


A talented athlete, Bell had a real shot at a Division I football scholarship. He now faces up to 22 years in prison. The other five black students await trial on attempted murder charges.
Over the weekend, Jena High School had the big shade tree in the courtyard chopped into firewood.


This from the Press Association:

School fight case sparks race march

Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled the streets of the little Louisiana town of Jena, in America's Deep South, in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate. (Photo by Damion White, NY Times)

The crowd broke into chants of "Free the Jena Six" as civil rights leader the Rev Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens.

Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said the scene was reminiscent of earlier civil rights struggles. He said punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but "the justice system isn't applied the same to all crimes and all people."

The six teens were charged not long after the local prosecutor declined to charge three white high school students who placed nooses in a tree on their high school grounds - evoking for some the image of lynchings in the old South.

Five of the black teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder, but that charge was reduced to battery for all but one. The sixth teenager was charged as a juvenile.

"This is the most blatant example of disparity in the justice system that we've seen," the Rev Al Sharpton said on US television before arriving in Jena. "You can't have two standards of justice."

"We didn't bring race into it," he said. "Those people who hung up the nooses brought race into it."

The nooses appeared after a black student expressed interest in sitting under a tree where whites usually congregated, and inflamed racial tensions in the town. The charges against the six teenagers further escalated tensions.

The district attorney who is prosecuti[ng] the teenagers, Reed Walters, denied on Wednesday that racism was involved in the charges.

He said he did not charge the white students accused of hanging up the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law under which they could be charged. In the beating case, he said, four of the defendants were of adult age under Louisiana law and the only juvenile charged as an adult, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

From the New York Times: Louisiana Protest Echoes the Civil Rights Era


Eugene Robinson's OpEd in the Washington Post: Drive Time for the 'Jena 6'