Not your parents civil rights march

[Anonymous]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... nology-nav

A group of niggers attacked and almost killed a white student. The group of niggers blame an unrelated incident of nooses hanging around a tree earlier. The group of niggers say a 6 on 1 is a fight and not a beating. The group of niggers called another group of niggers who called their nigger friends and they all went down south to march with the niggers who beat up a white kid because they all hate whitey. Fuck the niggers, send them back to Africa.

[Anonymous]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-jena-witt_websep21,0,81850.story?coll=chi-navrailtechnology-nav

A group of niggers attacked and almost killed a white student. The group of niggers blame an unrelated incident of nooses hanging around a tree earlier. The group of niggers say a 6 on 1 is a fight and not a beating. The group of niggers called another group of niggers who called their nigger friends and they all went down south to march with the niggers who beat up a white kid because they all hate whitey. Fuck the niggers, send them back to Africa.

Oh for Christ's sake.  Leave it to some redneck asshole white supremacist to completely twist a story around and use it to promote hate.

[Anonymous]

Black folks these days are more racist than Whites, ironic but true. This was black hate rally more than a protest. They can still get away with it playing the victim card. The use of the "N" word is disgusting.

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All Things Considered, July 30, 2007 · 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.

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.

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NPR.org, September 7, 2007 · The town of Jena, La., is coping with a case of racially motivated violence, even as court proceedings against those involved move forward. The case, centering on a tree at a high school campus that was a favorite meeting place for white students, has exposed racial tensions in the small town.

Earlier this week, a judge threw out one of the two charges against the first black student tried for beating up a white student at Jena High School, saying juveniles cannot be charged with conspiracy in adult court.

But Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. rejected arguments that, for the same reason, he should throw out the aggravated second-degree battery charge on which Mychal Bell also was convicted. The judge's decision means Bell will face at most 15 years in prison, rather than 22.5, when he is sentenced Sept. 20.

The case's beginnings can be traced to a day when a black freshman student at Jena High asked the principal at an assembly if he could sit under a courtyard tree that was known traditionally as a white student hangout. Shortly afterward, three nooses were found hanging from the tree.

That sparked a series of racially charged events, culminating in a schoolyard attack of a white student and the arrest of six black teenagers for the crime.

"The mood of Jena is very, very bad," said the Rev. Brian Moran, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Jena.

Noting that the black students who sat under the tree had asked the principal's permission to do so, Moran said that immediately after they sat there, the nooses appeared.

"It really confuses me why anybody would say that this is not a racist situation," Moran said.

Students accused of placing the nooses on the tree were suspended from school for a short period.

Pastor Eddie Thompson of the Sanctuary Family Worship Center in Jena said national news coverage of the case has led many other white ministers to avoid speaking to the media.

"Their small Southern town has kind of been offered up as a sacrifice for America's national sin," Thompson said.

He said he believes prejudice and bigotry exists in his community and elsewhere in the United States, but "the people are seeing their town portrayed in a way in the national media that is foreign to them, completely."

Moran and Thompson agree that the community's ministers should have maintained a sense of unity regarding the case. Instead, as details of the case emerged and opinions became more enflamed, an initial attempt at an alliance failed.

"Until the trials are settled, there's not going to be much of an opportunity for us to move forward," Thompson said.

The Jena school case drew protests after five of the six teens, dubbed the "Jena Six," were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, carrying sentences of up to 80 years in prison. The sixth was charged in juvenile court.

The beating victim, Justin Barker, 18, was treated for injuries at a hospital and released the same day, and a motive for the alleged Dec. 4 attack at the high school was never established.

Bell was the first of six teens to go to trial. The attempted murder charges were reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, and Bell was convicted.

But Mauffray threw out the conspiracy conviction Tuesday, saying juveniles could not be charged with conspiracy in adult court.

Both sides said they would appeal. Bell's attorneys want the battery charge throw out, as well, and the case returned to juvenile court.

The charges against two of the other teens, Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw, also were reduced Tuesday from attempted second-degree murder to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. Robert Bailey Jr. and Bryant Purvis still face attempted murder charges, and the unidentified juvenile has yet to go to trial.

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The tensions began a few months ago after three white teens were accused of hanging nooses in a tree on their high school grounds. They were suspended from school, but they were not criminally prosecuted.

Later, the six black teens were accused of beating a white classmate. Five of the black teens were initially charged with attempted murder. That charge was reduced to battery for all but one, who has yet to be arraigned; the sixth teen was charged as a juvenile.

Acknowledging the Attack Vicitm

District Attorney Reed Walters has denied that racism was involved in the decision to prosecute the teenagers. He said the suffering of Barker has been largely ignored. The teen was knocked unconscious and his face was badly swollen and bloodied, although he was able to attend a school function that night.

"With all the emphasis on the defendant, the injury done to him and the serious threat to his existence has become a footnote," Walters said of Barker.




Also on hand at Thursday's rally was Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader. Like many of the participants, King said the scene was reminiscent of earlier civil rights struggles.

King at times sounded conciliatory, saying punishment of some sort may be in order for the defendants, but adding "the justice system isn't applied the same to all crimes and all people."

It was a similar scene a few blocks away where the NAACP staged a similar gathering at a local park. Dennis Courtland Hayes, interim president and CEO of the NAACP's national headquarters, compared the outcry over the Jena teens to the controversy that followed racial remarks by radio shock-jock Don Imus.

'We're Not Taking it Any More'

"People are saying, 'That's enough and we're not taking it any more,"' Hayes said.

Tina Cheatham, 24, was among those expected to turn out in support of the six teens. The event was heavily promoted on black Web sites, blogs, radio and publications. Cheatham missed the civil rights marches at Selma and Montgomery, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., but she had no intention of missing another brush with history.

"It was a good chance to be part of something historic since I wasn't around for the civil rights movement," she said. "This is kind of the 21st century version of it."

Critics allege the teens' cases show authorities in the predominantly white town are disproportionately harsh toward blacks.

"This is not about race," Sharpton said Wednesday. "This is not about politics. It's not about black and white. It's about equal justice for all."

Walters denied racism was involved.

"This case has been portrayed by the news media as being about race," Walters said. "And the fact that it takes place in a small southern town lends itself to that portrayal. But it is not and never has been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions."

"I cannot overemphasize what a villainous act that was. The people that did it should be ashamed of what they unleashed on this town," Walters said.

Teen Remains in Jail

He also noted that four defendants in the beating case were of adult age under Louisiana law, and that the only juvenile charged as an adult, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

Bell, who was 16 at the time of the attack, is the only one of the teens to be tried so far. He was convicted on an aggravated second-degree battery count that could have sent him to prison for 15 years, but the conviction was overturned last week when a state appeals court said he should not have been tried as an adult.

Thursday's protest had been planned to coincide with Bell's sentencing, but organizers decided to press ahead after the conviction was thrown out. Bell remains in jail while prosecutors prepare an appeal.

From NPR reports and The Associated Press

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