FYI --  Those interested in such an AEJ panel.  I sent the other Jena 6
article with my commentary on media coverage right?  - E-K.

From Diverse Online

Current News
For HBCU Students, Jena Is The Civil Rights Movement of Their Generation
By ADD SEYMOUR JR.
Sep 21, 2007, 09:55

JENA, La.

North Carolina Central University law student Quinn Byars had heard all
the talk about being part of history for making the trek to Jena, La.,
with thousands of other protestors Thursday. But college students like
Byars believe they've made a much bigger statement to the world.

"For our generation it's so important because we don't really get the
opportunity to come together like this," says Byars during Thursday's
rally in Jena.  "It gives us an opportunity to come together to make
noise and come together on an issue."

To take a stand against injustice, specifically the excessive charges
leveled against the six young Black male high school students in the
small Louisiana town for injuries suffered by a White male student in a
school fight, is what brought thousands to town to demand justice for
the group dubbed the "Jena 6."

Jena is a rural, central Louisiana town of nearly 3,000 residents (85
percent White) surrounded by acres of cotton fields and small two-lane
highways. It's also a town that historically has had tense race
relations, where Whites live on their side of town and Blacks on theirs.
Rarely do the two meet.

"Yeah, it's kinda divided," says Roy Beard, a Black, 42-year-old native
of Jena.  "That's the way it's always been. We've gone to school
together, but after that, we go our separate ways. But the younger
generation, there is a big change in them for the bad.  If it wasn't
bad, why would you hang nooses from the tree?"

The tree is what became the center of controversy at Jena High. Last
year a Black freshman asked the school's principal if he could sit under
a tree on campus where historically only Whites congregated.  Black
students generally hung out in some bleachers at the school.  Days after
the principal said the Black student could sit anywhere he wanted, three
nooses were hung from the tree. 

The White students who hung the nooses were eventually suspended for
three days and the noose issue labeled a prank, upsetting Black students
and Jena's Black community.

What followed were a series of race-based fights between Black and White
students that culminated into the Jena 6 fight. District Attorney Reed
Walters first charged all six Black youth with attempted murder for
beating the White student, Justin Barker. Those charges were reduced to
second degree battery and conspiracy which carries a jail sentence of up
to 22 years in jail.  Mychal Bell, the only Jena 6 defendant tried so
far in the case, was found guilty after being tried as an adult. But a
Louisiana appeals court ruled Bell, who is still in jail, shouldn't have
been tried as an adult and threw out the conviction. 

The other defendants are awaiting their trials.

Students from historically Black colleges and universities held marches
and rallies on their campuses days prior to coming to Jena. In Atlanta
Wednesday, hundreds of students from Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta
University and Spelman College marched through busy, lunch-time,
downtown Atlanta traffic to voice their displeasure for the alleged
injustice in Jena.

But while they rode down to Jena the next night, they echoed the concern
of college students all over who seem to believe the Jena issue is the
spark they needed for their own movement -- sort of their own Montgomery
bus boycott.


"Jena was a vehicle, basically," says Morehouse senior Reginald
McKinley.  McKinley led the group of 110 Atlanta University Center
students who jumped on two buses to ride deep into the night to Jena,
march and protest fervently and then immediately return to Atlanta to
make classes this morning.  The trip was a grueling 24-hour odyssey
filled with impromptu discussion between students about activism.

"We needed something that would wake everyone up," McKinley says. "Jena
happened to be there."

Students crowded buses on campuses all across the country to take their
stands in Jena.  For example, 100 students at Philander Smith College in
Arkansas -- nearly 20 percent of the school's entire student body of 560
-- made the trek to Louisiana.

This, many said, became their opportunity to be part of a human rights
movement.

"I think this has the potential to be (this generation's Montgomery bus
boycott), if it's followed up correctly," says Howard University junior
Michael Browne during Thursday's rally in Jena.  "If we can go back and
educate those students and people who couldn't come down here, well,
that's how movements occur."

Browne, like students all over Jena Thursday, were wearing some form of
t-shirts reading "Free the Jena 6."  Nearly all were wearing something
Black as a sign of unity.

Louisiana state troopers lined the streets, keeping watch over things.
Counter protestors were nowhere to be found, though there was at least
one "incident" where a car full of White passengers, flashed an obscene
gesture towards a bus load of Black students leaving Jena.

Students and others marched through Jena's streets singing songs and
chanting things like "I am the Jena 6."  Onlookers, mostly Black,
cheered and took pictures.  Some Whites sat in lawn chairs in their
yards, quietly watching.  Many had left town for the day, putting up
ropes and "no trespassing" signs around their homes. Most merchants had
closed their businesses for the day.

"They were scared of all of this," says Beard.

Broderick McBride, a freshman at Morehouse, loudly led the singing and
chanting of scores of people marching down La. 127 into downtown Jena,
where most buildings are less than two stories tall.

"This march is bigger than the Jena 6," says McBride. "This is the start
of a movement that will liberate our people." 

Spelman College freshman Markieta Woods summed it up well. 

"We want them to see that our generation isn't stagnant and we do want
to make change," she says, just before the Rev. Jesse Jackson took the
stand to pump up the marchers heading to Jena.  "We do want to make
change."


- ADD SEYMOUR JR.


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