The Jena 6 Case is History Written in Lightning

If you don't know who the Jena 6 are, you are not alone. The first I heard about the black high school teens being railroaded through the Louisiana criminal justice system was last week when I received an email urging me to wear black Thursday the 20th in their support.

The first Sean Hannity heard about it was last night when Reverend Al was trying to bring it up and Hannity assumed he was talking about Megan Williams, the young black woman who was tortured and sexually assaulted by those crazy hillbillies in West Virginia. Cryptkeeper Colmes tried to explain but as usual Hannity didn't hear a word he said.

The Jena 6 case began last fall when a new black student to the mostly white, rural Louisiana town of Jena sat under the "white tree," so called because it was the place where the white kids at school congregated.

The next day three white boys on the rodeo team hung three nooses from the tree.

The white boys were only given an in-school suspension, their act deemed no more than a "prank."

The day after that several of the school's black high school football stars organized a peaceful silent protest under the tree. The school freaked, called in the police and the next day Reed Walters, the local D.A., addressed the school. There, he is reported to have looked at the black kids in the audience, waved his pen in the air and said, "With a stroke of this pen, I can make your life disappear."

The football season was a good one for Jena and for a few months there was relative quiet in the town. Then on November 30th, a wing of the high school was burned down. Whites thought it was blacks and the blacks assumed it was the whites.

The always excellent Wade Goodwyn of NPR reported what happened next:

"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."

The first black kid to go to court, Mychal Bell, then 16, was tried as an adult and convicted by an all-white jury. He faced 22 years in prison. After an outcry the charges were reduced; however, tomorrow Mychal Bell is to be sentenced on the lesser charges.

The white kids who attacked Bailey the night before have not been charged with anything.

As always happens in these cases, the blacks say of course there has always been racism in this little town, and the whites say their little town is just like any other small town full of good, churchgoing folk.

What white Southerners still fail to realize is their complicity in some of the most vicious and effective terrorism the world has ever seen. Lynchings were only the most visible and brutal embodiments of a system to terrorize the black minority. A noose is a symbol the way a swastika is a symbol. A noose hanging from a tree in that context is an almost unimaginably vicious act. Those white teens, instead of being ashamed of their terrorist ancestry, reveled in the evil. The adults who are charged with the education of all the students deemed it merely a prank.

The scariest part of this ordeal is that you know these boys are the relatively lucky ones for whom publicity might spare them. How many other black lives are still thrown away at the whim of our broken justice system?

Comments

[SusieQ]

Racism is only a part of high school jocks going crazy on other kids in a lot of small towns. It's a hell of a thing to say, but adults are almost always involved in it in the background. The bullies, the cool kids, pick on others for race, religion, clothing brands (a biggie), thinness or fatness, acne, the amount of money that the other kid's parents make, houses, athletic ability, cars, and everything else that comes up. The
bully's parents at least know about it and do nothing. Some either encourage it or stand in the wings waiting to participate.
Now take a small town and mix in race and you've got Jena.
The problem isn't that there were charges filed, finally, but that there were not enough charges filed and the ones filed were the wrong ones. Start off, the kids who hung the nooses need to be charged with a hate crime. This is a federal crime, so the local cops and prosecutor have nothing to do with it. Second, the kids who went to the party as crashers need to be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Third, the kid with the gun needs to be expelled, charged with illegal posession of a firearm on school property and assault. Fourth, the kids who beat the other one unconcious should be all charged with aggravated battery and anyone who kept beating the kid after he lost conciousness or who kicked him while he was on the ground should be charged with a higher crime. Any time anyone in this mess acted as a group, they should be charged with mob criminal action. If there was alcohol involved, and lets guess, those charges need to be filed, too.

[mae692]

Now SusieQ, you know that would make too much sense.

[1will]

Good points.

[1will]

I'm a White Southernor. I've never beat up black kids or hung nooses from trees. I don't dress up in robes or hoods and I don't oppress black people. I know of no one that has ever been in the Klan or any White Supremist groups.
Ignorant comments from Northernors who have never beens South of DC are getting old. Let me guess, you visited Myrtle Beach or Daytona while in college so you think you know the South.
Do you really believe your own rhetoric or is it just a method to gain some small measure of literary success?

[SusieQ]

And, oh yeah, even though I'm a big fan of trees and shade, I think it's time to cut down the tree and build a new shed to keep the school's lawnmower in.

[StuCop]

It's horrible that people here are justifying this beating...basically saying it's okay to beat people if you're upset about another injustice before...by that logic we should all be justified in beating the shit out of some race or religion or whatever whenever we want...that's crazy.

[mrcontinental]

No one is trying to justify the beating. Where did you come up with that rubbish?

Obviously the punishment is far in excess of the crime just as the punishment for hanging the nooses were far to light.

[mamadeus]

Amy Goodman has been following this story sice last year. democracynow.org

[BinBaldwin]

MLK said the North was his greatest challenge.Some of the biggest racial cases in the past 25 years have occured in Non Southern Areas. Rodney King, Howard Beach, Crown Heights just to name a few.

[NeoConDeath]

How long has the "White Tree" in Jena been the tradition? I wonder if the Jena D.A., Principle, Police Dept., and Jury attended White Tree High and spent time with the tree. If so, would this be a conflict of interest?

[RusStyles]

All over what news? I watch the news more than the average perosn, and this story has been treated more like a pocketbook-snatching case. Paltry coverage in light of the gravity and depravity of the offense(s). There's rarely equal coverage when white males commit horrific crimes. Now OJ didn't hit or even threaten anyone (according to the tape), yet as another poster wrote, the much more heinous WVA assault has been completely overshadowed by the 24/7 OJ "robbery" case. People can blame this blanket coverage on the media all they want; but the ratings for all the news stations have skyrocketed since this OJ affair redux. So they're feeding the public the pablum they (you) crave. Memanwhile, more meaningful news get swept...

[Stevelagain]

It's sickening to see the left so delicately and deliberately not condemn the black kids for hate crimes.

[Stevelagain]

Is that called a hate crime? When a bunch of black kids badly beat up a white kid and send that kid to a hospital?

Why is the left not screaming about this hate crime and demanding that the racists that perpetrated this brutal hate crime to to prison?

Oh, they were black! I get it. Black is "politically correct". Black cannot commit a hate crime. Politically correct pro black racism supersedes the right of the victim in this case! blacks are allowed to be racists, according to the left.

Am I wrong? Then speak out folks, stop acting as if I'm right.

[ms.understood]

Frankly, this is the sickest kind of racism because not only is it unneccesary, but the prosecutor is targeting and using kids to manipulate the system. But not only are the kids from both sides responsible for this as well as the prosecutor, but the school officials are too, because they allowed a "white tree" to exist on a tax-supported school ground, in which last I checked, was illegal. I hope that all of the student's parents sue that school district and get rid of that prosecutor too!

[Karmaghedon]

"Whites screaming that they have finally gotten OJ Simpson".


Lets keep it real here, I havent seen any whites screaming that they finally gotten OJ Simpson.


Please.

[Archie1955]

What absolute scum white southerners are! I bet they're all Southern Baptists. If Jesus ever entered a white Southern Baptist church he'd be run out on a rail for being to dark complected. Hypocrisy thy name is Southern justice.

[GreatFutureForAll]

"If Jesus ever entered a white Southern Baptist church he'd be run out on a rail for being to dark complected."

That's funny. But, I'm sure church attendance in the deep south would fall off if they saw what the real Jesus may have looked like all those centuries ago (a lot more like Tiger Woods than Brad Pitt...perhaps).

Then again, you may be right. They'd claim He was a fake God, kick Him out and ask Him to never return.

[zona9]

Nice racist rant there.

[TheHandyman]

As well intentioned as the author is, he failed to state all the facts, and some of his facts are not accurate. Please go to Democracynow.org and watch the interviews with the parents, the kids, and some of the important players in this issue. The only conviction in the case so far has been overturned by the State appelate court because the black kid was tried as an adult when he should not have been and he was convicted of a crime that cannot be committed by an adult. That race was an issue in this case is obvious. That the DA acted in the worst possible way and continues to do so is also obvious. He intends to appeal the ruling and he refuses to set reasonable bail. In spite of his conflict of interests in the case he refuse to relent or allow it to be tried somewhere else. This smacks of another Nifong type incident and hopefully we will be reading about this DA going to prison. But this DA has a lot of support in the White community which ought to tell us something about the towns leaders!

[mouselion]

I can't even finish reading this article because it targets "southerners" --yet the writer has only learned about the Jenna 6 only recently.

Shameful.

Shameful for not paying attention. Shameful for lashing out at a generalization.

I am white, born in the south. I've been paying attention to this since the story broke nationally, months ago. I cried bitterly when the ignorant, hateful, sick young racist tied the elderly loving, retarded black man from Jasper, Texas behind his pick-up and drug him to his death.

Did you cry?

When people quit lashing out at whole groups of people, based on race, region, religion -- or any other generalized group -- racism and hatred will finally be allowed to die.

That means everybody, including the racists, themselves.

Do not paint me because I am of one group or another. Treat me with equanimity and dignity. Please. I'm one of the best friends you could ever hope to have. And, I am NOT complicit simply because I am a white southerner. (And, I have no reason to pay for other's bad kharma, simply because of "race" -- which is a stupid illusion at best).

I mean this from the bottom of my heart!

[dn]

Are you crying now for the black woman that was tortured for a week at the hands of six whites, 3 male and 3 female?

Did you cry for the black kid that's sitting in a Georgia prison for giving and receiving oral sex from a white girl? Apparently it's only against the law if you're a male, and more so if you're black.

Where are your tears for the D.C. teen shot by police this week? He supposedly stole a mini bike and had a gun, but, that's odd, when the other cops show up they can't find either a gun or bike.

You're one of the best friends we could ever have? Then why are you online voicing your disgust and shedding virtual tears instead of out actively taking a stance against ignorance?

[mae692]

I surprised not to see more comparison between this and the Duke case. It seems like prosecutors have leeway to charge people with whatever they want. The only thing that protects you is an expensive lawyer.

Also, I don't think this is a Southern thing. I'll bet there's poor people (black and white) being overcharged and underrepresented all over America.