And a few more links and info on this:
This video was made with audio, video, photographs, and scans of court documents on June 25, 2007, in Jena, Louisiana.
In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.
The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."
Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.
Yesterday, I was in Jena for the first day of the trial for Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six. The D.A., perhaps in response to public pressure, tried to get Bell to cop a plea. Bell refused, and today, jury selection began. After today, we'll know whether or not the case will be tried in front of an all-white jury. Jena's 85-percent white, and it remains to be seen whether or not the six can get a fair trial.
Both off-the-record and on, Jena residents told me racism is alive and well in Louisiana, and this is a case where it rose above the levee, so to speak.
Update: Mychal Bell, the first of the Jena Six to face trial, was found guilty of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit the same on June 28th. A comprehensive look at the case, the trial and the verdict was published on July 2nd at friendsofjustice.
Welcome, BoingBoing and Kottke readers.
For more information about the Jena Six, please see this youtube video and the following links:
Links:
- Abbey Brown's reporting from Alexandria, LA @ The Town Talk, a local paper.
- Jennifer Townley's been logging TV reports for TV8 in Monroe, LA.
- Discussion on dailykos
- Friends of Justice (Word Document with case timeline)
- Blogs: AntiEssentialistSpeaksUp, afrospear , voxexmachina, listentomeforaminute, acephalous & technorati
- Discussion boards on towntalk.com
- I became aware of the story thanks to the documentary "Race Hate in Louisiana" on BBC2. An article can be found here
- Long comment thrash on reddit
- Online petition re: the Jena Six
No comments:
Post a Comment