Thursday, July 19, 2007

The Past is Now: The Jena Six

The case of the Jena Six is one of those that even I, massive cynic that I am on the state of America's racial progress, thought was a thing of the past. It is reminiscent of nothing more than the "legal lynchings" that characterized the Jim Crow South. Its facts are appalling. It is an unbelievable display of state-sponsored racism that dwarfs even the Genarlow Wilson case in terms of raw injustice. Here is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with the scoop:
This story begins in the small, central Louisiana town of Jena. Last September, a black high school student requested the school's permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. Until then, only white students sat there.

The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: "They said, 'Y'all want to go stand under the tree?' We said, 'Yeah.' They said, 'If you go, I'll go. If you go, I'll go.' One person went, the next person went, everybody else just went."

Then the police and the district attorney showed up. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers recounts: "District Attorney Reed Walters proceeded to tell those kids that 'I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.' "

It wouldn't happen for a few more months, but that is exactly what the district attorney is trying to do.

Jena, a community of 4,000, is about 85 percent white. While the black community gathered at a church to respond, others didn't see the significance. Soohen interviewed Jena town librarian Barbara Murphy, who reflected: "The nooses? I don't even know why they were there, what they were supposed to mean. There's pranks all the time, of one type or another, going on. And it just didn't seem to be racist to me." Tensions rose.

Robert Bailey, a black student, was beaten up at a white party. Then, a few nights later, Robert and two others were threatened by a white man with a sawed-off shotgun, at a convenience store. They wrestled the gun away and fled. Robert's mother, Caseptla Bailey, said: "I know they were in fear of their lives. They were afraid that this man was going to shoot them, you know, especially in the back, running away from the scene."

The next day, Dec. 4, 2006, a fight broke out at the school. A white student was injured, taken to the hospital and released. Robert Bailey and five other black students were charged ... with second-degree attempted murder. They each faced 100 years in prison. The black community was reeling.

Independent journalist Jordan Flaherty was the first to break the story nationally. He explained: "I'm sure it was a serious fight, and I'm sure it deserved real discipline within the school system, but he (the white student) was out later that day. He was smiling. He was with friends ... it was a serious school problem that came on the heels of a long series of other events ... as soon as black students were involved, that's when the hammer came down."

The African American community began to call them the Jena Six. The first to be tried was Mychal Bell, 17 years old and a talented football player, looking forward to a university scholarship. Bell was offered a plea deal, but refused. His father, Marcus Jones, took a few minutes off from work to talk to me: "Here in LaSalle Parish, whenever a black man is offered a plea bargain, he is innocent. That's a dead giveaway here in the South."

Right before the trial, the charges of attempted second-degree murder were lowered to aggravated battery, which under Louisiana law requires a dangerous weapon. The weapon? Tennis shoes.

Mychal Bell was convicted by an all-white jury. His court-appointed defense attorney called no witnesses. Bell will be sentenced on July 31, facing a possible 22 years. The remaining five teens, several of whom were jailed for months, unable to make bail, still face attempted second-degree murder charges and a hundred years each in prison.

Color of Change has a petition you can sign urging their freedom, and here is another petition asking the DOJ to open a civil rights investigation.

More:

Pandagon

While Seated

Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University-New Orleans, gives his account of the story at Counter Currents

Racialicious: "The racism in the behavior of the local government is as flagrant as anything that occurred during segregation. The institutions of government in Jena, Louisiana are operating on de-facto Jim Crow; they carry out through cultural practice what was once law."

Elle, Ph.D

Free the Jena Six!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah racism is alive and well in the South and it's sad that in this day and time, with the Internet bringing together people of all kinds, that things like that still happen.

But the fact remains that what those white kids did, however reprehensible anyone finds it, was NOT an act of PHYSICAL violence. The Jena 6 had no right to retaliate the way they did and now they will have to pay the consequences and I firmly believe that if you want to act like an adult and commit an adult crime, then you should just suck it up and deal. And that goes for anyone, no matter their skin color.

I think this incident (or pair of incidents, because no one can talk about one without mentioning the other) is being used to fan the flames of hatred, not extinguish them.

Anonymous said...

And for the record, I feel the exact same way about a white person who decides to commit violence against ANY minority. Something similar happened in Texas, recently, and tragically the survivor of the vicious attack later committed suicide, apparently unable to cope with the emotional aftermath of what he had endured physically.

The capacity of humans to commit violence upon one another knows no limits, does it?

(Same Anon from above) :-)

Anonymous said...

Obviously there is racism at work here. However, I think that nearly everyone is failing to see the underlying issue here: that the legal system allows these types of things to happen. A District Attorney with a bias against anyone for any reason can pile enough charges on that there is no chance of getting out of it, regardless of innocence. They can throw you in prison and delay your trial. So much for innocent until proven guilty. In this case the motive was race, but the motive could be anything and the legal system invites these types of abuses. The quote by the DA about erasing their lives with a stroke of his pen says it all. The legal system is the root of the problem here.