9-25-07, 9:44 am

Tens of thousands of people marched in Jena, Louisiana last Thursday to protest the arrest and trial of six African American high school students who allegedly fought with white students after some white students hung nooses in a tree on the grounds of Jena High School. The case began last year when African American students at Jena High School asked their principal for permission to sit under a tree on the school grounds known as “the white tree.” The principal said they could sit anywhere, so the students did. The next day, three nooses were hanging from the tree, a threatening symbol of old south lynch law and KKK terrorism, an act that is widely seen today as a hate crime.

While three white students were briefly suspended for their role in hanging the nooses, six Black students alleged to have been involved in a subsequent fight with a white student, were charged initially with attempted murder and conspiracy charges that carried life-time penalties.


Though school officials and local authorities dismissed the noose-hanging incident as a 'prank' and the events as unrelated to racism, many people came to see the heavy-handed response to the alleged actions of the Black students as evidence of continued racial injustice.

In response to the events, 200,000 people across the country signed a petition demanding the release of the Jena 6. National civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the National Action Network, helped organize last week's march.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said, 'This is an American outrage that demonstrates the continuing shame of racial division in our country.'

In a prepared statement, State Representative Calvin Smyre (GA), President of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators endorsed the march and called on the entire country 'to stand firm in ending this discriminatory action in Jena, LA.'

American Federation of Teachers Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour, a Louisiana native and chair of the AFL-CIO Civil and Human Rights Committee, condemned obvious racial disparities in the case.

'Nearly 50 years after standing up to racial injustice,' LaCour added, 'all Americans should be concerned and offended by the blatant discrepancies in the charges stemming from a school yard fight and for the apparent dereliction of power exhibited by public officials in Jena.'

Last Thursday, an estimated 50,000 people marched in Jena to demand the release of the Jena Six.

While most of Jena closed down in anticipation of the march, predominantly white Nolley Memorial United Methodist Church welcomed the visitors. Rev. Lyndle Bullard, pastor of Nolley Memorial, arrived at his church parking lot with members of his congregation at 7 am on Thursday to greet the marchers.

Bullard said, 'We just started greeting people and finding out where they were from. We thanked them for coming and welcomed them to Jena. We talked about hospitality.'

Though the majority of marchers were African Americans, Tim Wheeler, reporter for the People's Weekly World, who attended the march, says most of the people he saw were workers.

Describing the march, Wheeler told Political Affairs that 'when I interviewed people, many, many of the people were workers.' Wheeler noted that the American Postal Workers Union had a contingent in the march and that various leaders and participants were steelworkers, electrical workers, carpenters, and more from all parts of the country, but especially the south.

The main demands of the march were to free the Jena Six, Wheeler reports. 'I think the clearest demand is to free the Jena Six, to drop all charges against the six youth, to restore or establish some kind of equal justice.'

Wheeler then commented on how the media coverage of the Jena Six case compares to that of fallout over the prosecution of three white Duke University students earlier this year.

Wheeler described the right-wing media's campaign to punish the overzealous prosecutor in the Duke case, while ignoring the excessive actions of the prosecutor in the Jena case as 'another example of the double standard.'

But the issues raised by the Jena Six case isn't simply a southern problem. Wheeler recalled that the last time racial injustice in the US criminal justice system received such global attention resulted form the shooting of African immigrant Amadou Diallo by New York City police in 2000.

Media reports now indicate that the FBI is investigating death threats posted on a Web site operated by a white supremacist group that published the addresses of five of the Jena Six and implied that violence against the defendants would be justified. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has also ordered the state police to look into the matter.

Rev. Jesse Jackson urged more urgent steps to protect the defendants from racist violence.

Readers can follow Tim Wheeler's reporting on the Jena Six case at the People's Weekly World and sign the NAACP's petition.

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