Louisiana Protests
Hark Back to '50s, '60s

MARY FOSTER / AP / Tuscaloosa News 20sep2007

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JENA, LA — Drawn by a case tinged with one of the most hated symbols of Old South racism — a hangman's noose tied in an oak tree — thousands of protesters rallied Thursday against what they see as a double standard of prosecution for blacks and whites.

The plight of the so-called Jena Six, a group of black teens — five of whom were initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate — became a flashpoint for one the biggest civil-rights demonstrations in years.

Old-guard lions like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton joined scores of college students bused in from across the nation who said they wanted to make a stand for racial equality just as their parents did in the 1950s and '60s.

"It's not just about Jena, but about inequalities and disparities around the country," said Stephanie Brown, 26, national youth director for the NAACP, who estimated about 2,000 college students were among the throngs of mostly black protesters who overwhelmed this tiny central Louisiana town.

But the teens' case galvanized demonstrators as few legal cases have in recent years.

The cause of Thursday's demonstrations dates to August 2006, when a black Jena High School student asked at a student assembly whether blacks could sit under a shade tree that was a frequent gathering place for whites. He was told yes. But nooses appeared in the tree the next day. Three white students were suspended but not criminally prosecuted. LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said this week he could find no state law covering the act.

Brown said the Jena case resonates with the college-aged crowd because they aren't much older than the six youths charged. Many of the student protesters had been sharing information about the case through Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking Web sites.

Jackson, who led a throng of people three blocks long to the courthouse with an American flag resting on his shoulder, likened the demonstration to the marches on Selma and the Montgomery bus boycott. But even he was not entirely sure why Jena became the focal point.

"You can never quite tell," he said. "Rosa Parks was not the first to sit in the front of the bus. But the sparks hit a dry field."

The noose incident was followed by fights between blacks and whites, culminating in December's attack on white student Justin Barker, who was knocked unconscious. According to court testimony, his face was swollen and bloodied, but he was able to attend a school function that same night.

Six black teens were arrested. Five were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder — charges that have since been reduced for four of them. The sixth was booked as a juvenile on sealed charges.

Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, 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."

People began massing for the demonstrations before dawn Thursday, jamming the two-lane highway leading into town and parking wherever they could. State police estimated the crowd at 15,000 to 20,000. Organizers said they believe it drew as many as 50,000.

Demonstrators gathered at the local courthouse, a park, and the yard at Jena High where the tree once stood (it was cut down in July). At times the town resembled a giant festival, with people setting up tables of food and drink and some dancing while a man beat on a drum.

Sharpton admonished the crowd to remain peaceful, and there were no reports of trouble. State police could be seen chatting amicably with demonstrators at the courthouse.

In Washington, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said he would hold hearings on the case, though he did not set a date or say if the prosecutor would be called to testify.

Walters, the district attorney, has usually declined to discuss the case publicly. But on the eve of the demonstrations, he denied the charges against the teens were race-related and lamented that Barker, the victim of the beating, has been reduced to "a footnote" while protesters generate sympathy for his alleged attackers.

President Bush said he understood the emotions and the FBI was monitoring the situation.

"The events in Louisiana have saddened me," the president told reporters at the White House. "All of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice."

While Jena Six supporters were overwhelmingly black, young whites were also present.

"I think what happened here was disgusting and repulsive to the whole state," said Mallory Flippo, a white college student from Shreveport. "I think it reflected badly on our state and how it makes it seem we view black people. I don't feel that way, so I thought I should be here.'

Many white residents of Jena also expressed anger at the way news organizations portrayed this town of 3,000 people.

"I believe in people standing up for what's right," said resident Ricky Coleman, 46, who is white. "What bothers me is this town being labeled racist. I'm not racist."

Mychal Bell, now 17, is the only one of the defendants to be tried. He was convicted of aggravated second-degree battery, but his conviction was tossed out last week by a state appeals court that said Bell, who was 16 at the time of the beating, could not be tried as an adult on that charge.

He remained in jail pending an appeal by prosecutors. An appellate court on Thursday ordered a hearing to be held within three days on his request for release. The other five defendants are free on bond.

A group of about a dozen white residents and black demonstrators engaged in an animated but not angry exchange during the march. Whites asked blacks if they were aware of Bell's criminal record. Blacks replied that Jena High administrators mishandled the incidents.

Another white resident, Bill Williamson, 59, said he tried to convince visitors that the town was being treated unfairly and that Bell belonged in jail.

"I think we changed one man's mind," he said. "But most of these people don't want to hear."

As she trudged up a hill to a rally at a park, 63-year-old Elizabeth Redding of Willinboro, N.J., remembered marching at Selma, Ala., when she was in her 20s.

"I am a great-grandmother now. I'm doing this for my great-grandchildren," she said.

Alecea Rush, 21, a senior at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, said her grandmother used to tell her stories about the civil rights movement, including one in which she witnessed a lynching in Oklahoma City.

"I thought about every one of those stories being out here today," Rush said. "I never really felt the significance until today."

Associated Press writers Errin Haines in Atlanta and Michael Kunzelman in Jena contributed to this story.

source: 20sep2007

Civil Rights Must be Enforced to be a Movement

GEORGE E CURRY / The Philadelphia Tribune 20sep2007

ATLANTA — The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), celebrating its 50th anniversary for the past week, made a strong case that it is once again a major player on the civil rights stage and strongly defended the need for the continued existence of major civil rights organizations.

Many critics had questioned the need for SCLC, saying the organization had essentially died in 1968 with co-founder Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Immediate past president Fred Shutlesworth, who quit in 2004 after clashing with the SCLC board of directors, said the organization had reached its nadir in 2004, when he stepped down. Now, Shuttlesworth is optimistic about SCLC’s chances for recovery.

Charles Steele, a former Alabama State senator, is widely credited with revitalizing an organization that was moribund and nearly bankrupt. In three years, he has raised more than $7 million and on Monday prepared to move into a new $3 million international headquarters on historic Auburn Avenue.

“As an organization, just a few years ago, people were writing us off as dead. I am an undertaker. I bury dead people, but not dead organizations … we weren’t dead, but we were struggling on life support.” He says that has now turned around.

“I came here tonight to announce that SCLC now has a strong pulse,” Steele continued. “We are out of our sick bed. We walked out of the Intensive Care Unit on our own power. We disconnected the tubes from our arms, we removed the heart monitor, and we unplugged the oxygen tank because now, thank God, we can breathe on our own.”

Conservatives — and some Blacks — try to portray civil rights organizations as having outlived their usefulness. According to their argument, the movement is a victim of its own success because it tore down the barriers of segregation.

“There is no post-civil rights era,” Steele declared. “We’re in a post-civil rights enforcement era,” he said, emphasizing the word enforcement. One common complaint against Bush is that under this administration, civil rights cases are not pursued with vigor, a shift from the practices of the previous president. The Justice Department officially denied that assertion.

But in his speech, Steele cited what he said was proof that we don’t live in a post-civil rights society:

• We’re not living in a post-civil rights era when Don Imus sees accomplished Black women basketball players at Rutgers University as “nappy-headed hos”;
  
  
• It was not just him. We’re not in a post-civil rights era when the chairman of the board of trustees of Roger Williams University in Providence, R.I., a lily-white board, can refer to African-Americans as the N-word;
  
  
• We’re not living in a post-civil rights era when the president of the United States of America can call a news conference on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday to denounce affirmative action;
  
  
• We’re not in a post-civil rights era when a Democratic-controlled Congress refuses to cut off funding for a needless and senseless war;
  
  
• We’re not living in a post-civil rights era when a white person with a prison record is more likely to be called back for a job interview than a qualified Black person without a record.
  
  
• We’re not living in a post-civil rights era when 15-year-old Shaquanda Cotton can be sentenced to seven years in prison for pushing a teacher’s aide in Paris, Texas. Just months earlier, that same judge had given probation to a 14-year-old white girl who had burned down her family’s home;
  
  
• We’re not living in a post-civil rights era when it took the Georgia Supreme Court to throw out the conviction of Marcus Dixon, a 19-year-old African-American, who was serving 10 years in prison for having consensual sex with a white girl;
  
  
• We’re not living in a post-civil rights era when in Douglas County, Ga., 17-year-old Genarlow Wilson faced 10 years in prison on molestation charges because he had consensual sex with a 15-year-old; and
  
  
• We’re certainly not living in a post-civil rights era when — for years — they had a tree near Jena High School in Louisiana under which only white students sat. When Blacks decided to sit there, they later found nooses hanging from tree limbs. Subsequently, a racial fight broke out and six Black teenagers — now called the Jena 6 — were charged with attempted murder after beating a white teenager.

Steele declared, “Judging by the latest Supreme Court ruling involving school districts in Louisville and Seattle, looking at organized efforts by right-wing groups to intimidate universities into eliminating their affirmative action programs and considering the Justice Department has gone after Southern Illinois University because it had a voluntary affirmative action program, we need SCLC now more than ever.”

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.

source: 20sep2007

Police Estimate 60,000 in Jena

The Shreveport Times 20sep2007

JENA – Law enforcement said there have been no problems of “any significance” so far during the rally that brought tens of thousands into the small community. State Police said the crowd was larger than they had expected, with their estimates as high as 60,000.

Many community members were standing outside of their homes watching as the sea of marchers flowed by. The stream of people, most wearing black, seemed to not end.

Marchers were respectful and gracious, many of the homeowners on the march route said.

“For the most part people have been very well mannered,” Misty Ray of Jena said.

While those walking by Ray's home across from the high school shouted chants and waved signs proclaiming “Justice for the Jena Six!” or “Free the Jena Six!” she said she was frustrated because she too wants justice.

“All they say is justice for the ‘Jena Six,’” she said. “What about everyone else?”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, syndicated radio show host Michael Baisden, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III guided Melissa Bell, Mychal Bell’s mother, during the march first to Jena High, where people pointed to the now uprooted tree where the nooses were found hanging.

Marchers then moved onto Jena City Park, up the hill, past Jena Junior High and back to the courthouse.

Those rallying both at the courthouse and marching through the streets of Jena shouted among other things, “Hey, Hey, ho, ho. DA Reed has got to go!”

The Rev. Franklin Richardson with the National Action Network said this is a serious issue and the group wouldn’t give the issue up until the system is just.

Sharpton reminded those gathered that they should respect the community and do nothing harmful in the name of Mychal Bell.

“No violence,” he stressed. “Not even an angry word. They will try to provoke you. You have to stand strong.”

At the park, two Jena residents were in a pickup truck with a confederate flag flying from their antenna.

“It means Southern pride, tradition," said the passenger of the truck who declined to identify herself other than to say she was from Jena. “… (The marchers) are carrying their flags, so I’m going to have mine.”

The woman said she didn’t feel her flag was any more antagonistic than the African flags being carried through the streets by members of the New Black Panther Party.

Earlier, crowds of "Jena Six" supporters, almost all wearing black shirts with different messages of solidarity, were flowing across the major thoroughfares into and out of Jena.

The marchers could be seen packed from the LaSalle Parish Courthouse to U.S. Highway 84 leading into the town, and buses turned La. Highway 8 into a virtual parking lot.

Walking down First Street, vendors were set up out of the backs of cars and buses, with many of the newcomers to Jena standing in the road shooting video and taking snapshots of their bus mates.

Today's rally has been called by national and regional groups in support of the Jena Six, the name given to six black teenagers charged initially with attempted murder in an incident at Jena High School that left a white student unconscious and bleeding.

He later was treated for about three hours at a local emergency room.

source: 20sep2007

Free the Jena Six

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN / Final Call 20sep2007

The recent conviction of Black high school student Mychal Bell in the small rural town of Jena, Louisiana, demonstrates why the struggle for civil rights and equal justice must continue with renewed vigor.

In a vindictive miscarriage of justice, LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters brought the full weight of his office as a prosecutor down on Bell, 17, who may face a 15-year prison term for aggravated second-degree battery for participating in a school fight.

Five other Black students are at risk of similar convictions. These young men, known as the Jena Six, are victims of a double standard too common throughout America where the scales of justice are weighed against African-Americans and other people of color. It is also a disturbing reminder of the increasing criminalization of Black youths and trying them as adults.

The chain of events leading up to the Jena Six arrests began with an old oak known as the “White tree’’ in the middle of the Jena High School campus. According to news accounts, by twisted tradition, the shade of the tree’s spreading branches was reserved for White students only. In September 2006, a Black freshman asked if Black students could sit under the tree. The administrators said that Black students could sit where they liked.

Shortly after the query, several Black students gathered under the tree. The following day, three hangman’s nooses were looped over one of its boughs. There’s no mistaking the symbolism of this act. It recalls warnings of impending violence by the Ku Klux Klan and other vicious White terrorist groups permitted to flourish in the South for more than a century.

Despite the seriousness of their act, the three White students responsible were merely suspended for three days and given a verbal reprimand. The principal’s recommendation of expulsion was overruled by the superintendent of schools who thought that was too harsh a punishment for an adolescent “prank.’’

Tensions escalated in the town of about 3,000 where the number of African-Americans is around 350. Black students tempered their outrage at the nooses and the school superintendent’s lenient treatment of the offending students by staging a peaceful protest at the tree.

Somehow, District Attorney Walters perceived a danger to the public, not in the nooses, but in the protests against them. Instead of attempting to bring the parties together and calming the agitated atmosphere, he made things worse by calling a school assembly accompanied by local law enforcement officials. Directing an ominous threat toward the Black students, he said, “I can be your best friend or worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of a pen.’’

Walters didn’t help matters by winking at White violence like the beating of a Black student attempting to attend a White Friday night party in December 2006—the incident was very much related to the school events. The next day a White Jena graduate confronted a group of Black youths at a convenience store with a shotgun. Fortunately, they wrestled the weapon away from him without injury but were arrested for assault and stealing the gun. The gun owner was not charged with a crime.

The racial tension in the town came to a head on Monday, December 4, when Justin Barker, a White student who was vocally supportive of the noose hangers and called Black students ‘’niggers,’’ was beaten by some Black students. Barker went to the hospital was released the same day and attended a ring ceremony that evening. The six Black youths involved in the incident were arrested and initially charged with attempted murder. None of the Jena Six has a prior police record.

In a July trial that turned justice on its head, Mychal Bell was convicted as an adult of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. He was found guilty by an all-White jury in a trial presided over by a White judge. District Attorney Walters argued that Bell’s tennis shoes were deadly weapons because they were used to kick Barker.

On September 4, Judge J.P. Mauffray threw out the conspiracy conviction against Bell. He also granted a defense motion that trying Bell as an adult was improper and agreed that he should have been tried as a juvenile. But the judge let stand the conviction on aggravated second-degree battery, which means Bell may be condemned to a prison term of up to 15 years at his sentencing hearing on September 20.

Regrettably, what is happening in Jena reminds me of the racial injustices I witnessed as a civil rights attorney in the Deep South during the 1960s. We cannot go back to those times.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, used to say that the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. I believe that. However, those of us who love justice must take a hand in bending the arc faster. We can start by taking action today and calling LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters at (318) 992-8282 and demand justice for the Jena Six.

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund and its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

source: 20sep2007