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
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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