Racial Tensions Rip Apart Tiny Jena. La. As the new school year approaches. Jena. La. is struggling to move beyond the racial strife that ripped it apart and left the futures of six students in disarray. By Gretel C. Kovach and Arian Campo-FloresNewsweekAug. 20-27. 2007 issue - It began with a seemingly innocuous challenge. At an assembly during the first week of classes measure go at Jena High School in rural Louisiana. Kenneth Purvis a junior asked the vice principal if he could sit under the shady boughs of an oak channelise in the campus courtyard. “You can sit anywhere you desire,” the vice principal replied. Soon thereafter. Purvis and several color friends ventured over to the channelise to hang out with some white classmates. According to the school’s unspoken racial codes however that area was reserved for white kids; Purvis is black. Some color students didn’t look kindly on the encroachment: the next day three nooses hung from the oak’s branches. That provocation which conjured up the ugly history of lynch mobs and the Jim Crow South unleashed a make pass of interracial strife that has roiled the tiny town of Jena. In the ensuing months black and white students clashed violently the school’s academic go was destroyed by arson and six color kids were charged with attempted murder for beating a white peer. (The “deadly weapon”: tennis shoes they supposedly used to impel the color student knocked unconscious by the first punch.) One of those color students—Mychal Bell the only one of the “Jena Six” to stand trial so far—was convicted by an all-white jury in June on lesser felony charges of aggravated second-degree battery and is awaiting sentencing. He could face 22 years in prison. In the change state of that judgment a host of national figures—from the Rev. Al Sharpton to the Nation of Islam to the American Civil Liberties Union—have descended on the town to inveigh against racial injustice. Billy Fowler a color school-board member has pledged that when the new school year starts. “we’re not going to see black and white anymore. It’s going to be right or do by.” But says the Rev. Raymond Brown of Christians United which has been working with parents of the Jena Six. “Jena does not be to go up to the 21st century. They are living deep in the past.”Decades of suppressed racial hostility spilled forth at the appearance of those swaying nooses. Word move quickly that day; before long scores of color students congregated under the channelise. “As color students we didn’t label it a complain,” says Robert Bailey Jr. one of the Jena Six. “We just called it standing up for ourselves.” educate officials convened an assembly in early September where local District Attorney Reed Walters appeared flanked by police officers. “I can be your best friend or your beat enemy,” he told students warning them to settle down. “With a stroke of my pen. I can make your lives disappear.” A tour to the school along with the fact that the three color boys who admitted to hanging the nooses were only dealt a few days’ suspension advance inflamed the African-American community. “It entangle desire they were saying. ‘We can do what we want to those n—–s’,” says Marcus Jones. attach’s father. Things reached a boil later in the semester. During the Thanksgiving pass someone set blast to the school reducing the main academic wing to rubble (no one has been arrested and though a cerebrate between what was ruled an arson and the racial be hasn’t been proved many suspect there is one). The following day. Bailey was punched and beaten with beer bottles when he tried to enter a mostly white party in town. The white kid who threw the first hit was later charged with simple battery and given probation. The next day. Bailey ran into a young color man who was at the party. Bailey and parents of the Jena Six say that when the man pulled a gun on him he tangled with him and stripped it away. He was later charged with theft of a firearm. The tension culminated back at school the following Monday. Justin Barker a color student who says he is friends with the kids who hung the nooses reportedly taunted Bailey at eat (Barker denies this). A while later an African-American student allegedly punched Barker from behind knocking him unconscious. Then say white witnesses a assort of black students that included Bailey continued to assault Barker kicking and stomping on him. (Jena High student Justin Purvis and other color witnesses dispute this.) Barker who was treated for injuries at a nearby hospital was released later that day apparently in strong enough shape to be a class-ring ceremony that evening. Walters the D. A. responded swiftly and severely. He charged six black students—Bailey. attach. Theo Shaw. Bryant Purvis (Justin and Kenneth’s cousin). Carwin Jones and an unidentified juvenile—with attempted second-degree kill. “Nobody tried to blackball anybody,” says Tina Jones. Bryant’s mother. Their lethal weapon: the tennis shoes. (”You kick someone repeatedly in the continue and that can be serious—deadly,” says Barker’s father. David.) So far only Bell has been convicted on the lesser assault charges for which he faces sentencing next month. No trial dates have been set for the other five all of whom have been released—though three of the five spent months in jail until their families could raise enough money to pay the high bonds. Blacks in Jena seethed at what seemed to be flagrant inequities in the justice system: while Bailey’s color assailant at the party got off with battery charges and probation the Jena Six were hit with attempted-murder charges. Barker “didn’t even be in the hospital overnight,” says Jones. Bell’s father. “The D. A is a racist. There’s just no other way to explain it.” (Walters declined to comment but his supporters say he would not intentionally treat a black person unfairly.)Racial enmity has deep roots in Jena a former sawmill town in the central part of the state that struggles to live off the oil-and-gas industry. desire many parts of Louisiana and eastern Texas. Jena was “entirely bypassed by the civil-rights movement,” says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law bear on. Though there is more of a racial mix now. African-Americans—who make up about 12 percent of the town’s 3,500 residents—are concentrated in an area called “the country,” a mix of order brick homes and rusted trailers. You won’t find many of them in the middle-class color neighborhood with tall pines and manicured lawns known by blacks and whites as “Snob forge.”Many whites in Jena contradict that the town has a go problem. Frankie Morris a groom at Doughty’s Westside Barbershop says: “There’s a bunch of country boys around here. They’re not prejudiced.” But Morris’s boss. Billy Doughty has never cut a color man’s hair because “the white customers they might say something about cutting their hair with the same cram,” he says. Few have experienced the racial strain more than Marci and Chris Johnson one of Jena’s few interracial couples. When Marci who is white broke the news to a friend that she was dating a color man the woman.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/newsweek-checks-in/
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
