Free the Jena 6!

By Weekly Archive On Sep 25, 2007

Just
when I was wondering whatever happened to Rev. Jesse Jackson, he
popped up again, accusing Barack Obama of "acting like he’s
white" — for not making a bigger deal about recent events in
Jena, La.

Typical
of Rev. Jackson, he’s only half right. At the same time, thank God
for Rev. Jackson because he is
half right, and because he raises an issue we should all know about
and care about.

He’s
wrong about Obama, who has, in fact, condemned what happened in Jena.
But Jackson’s right about this: Why aren’t we more outraged about
what’s going on down there? And why aren’t we hearing more about Jena
on the TV news, and less about O.J.?

In
case you’re as ignorant of the facts as I was until Jackson spoke
out, here are the facts: Last fall, at Jena High School in rural
Louisiana, black high school students were told they couldn’t sit
under a certain tree in the schoolyard, nicknamed the "White
Tree," because its shade was reserved for "whites only."
After they got permission from the principal to sit there anyway, the
next morning they arrived to find three nooses hanging from the tree.

Appearance
of the nooses only prompted more African-American students to sit
under the tree, which set off months of racial tension in the
community. Someone set fire to the school’s academic wing, reducing
it to rubble. A young black student, Robert Bailey, was punched and
beaten with beer bottles when he tried to enter a mostly white party.
A few nights later, a white man at a convenience store waved a
sawed-off shotgun at Bailey and two friends, chasing them out of the
store. The next day, a fight broke out at the high school. Mychal
Bell, the school football team’s star running and defensive back,
slugged Justin Barker, a white student who’d been taunting him with
racial slurs. Other students jumped in. Barker went to the hospital
with superficial wounds, but recovered quickly enough to go out
partying that evening.

Enter
District Attorney Reed Walters. Weeks earlier, he’d appeared at a
school assembly and warned students that he could "make their
life disappear with the stroke of my pen." Walters now carried
out his threat by charging Bell and five other black students
involved in the high school brawl, not with assault, but with
second-degree attempted murder. They each faced 100 years in prison.
Meanwhile, the three white students who started everything by hanging
nooses from the tree were slapped on the wrist with a couple of days
of in-school suspension.

Even
though he was only 16 at the time, Bell was arrested in December,
charged — as an adult — and held in prison until his trial on June
28, when an all-white jury convicted him of aggravated battery and
conspiracy. Under Louisiana law, that charge requires a deadly
weapon. Prosecutors identified Bell’s weapon as — his tennis shoes!
An appeals court recently overturned Bell’s conviction, but he’s
still being held in prison while authorities now decide whether or
not to try him in juvenile court. His five co-defendants still await
trial on the original murder charges.

Meanwhile,
life goes on in Jena. A white Baptist minister told Bell’s parents
that the hanging of nooses by white students is just "kid’s
play." And Newsweek quotes local barber Billy Doughty as denying
he’s prejudiced, yet admitting he’s never cut a black man’s hair
because "the white customers, they might say something about
cutting their hair with the same stuff." Why, next thing you
know, they’ll even complain about drinking from the same water
fountain, or eating from the same plates at the lunch counter.

And
may I remind you: this is 2007, not 1957? Yet you and I haven’t heard
a peep about Jena. Cable news is so busy talking about O.J. and Larry
Craig, there’s no time to talk about racism, which is alive and ugly
as ever in the Deep South.

And
we thought we were living in an America where a black man could be
elected president? We’re not even living in an America where a black
man can sit under the same tree as a white man.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "How
the Republicans Stole Religion."
His email address is: bill@billpress.com. His Web site is:
www.billpress.com.