Jena 6

For years, racial tensions simmered in the small, rural Louisiana town of Jena. In August 2006 an incident there sparked marches and national discourse on the judicial system and race. This entry examines the circumstances surrounding the incident, the activism sparked by the incident, and the implications of the incident on the following youth who became known as the Jena 6: Robert Bailey, Jesse Ray Beard, Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, and Theo Shaw.

At Jena High School, White students generally gathered under a large shade tree, referred to as the “White tree,” while African American students usually sat on the bleachers. After a Black student asked the principal at an assembly for permission to sit under the tree and the principal indicated that anyone could sit there, a few Black students did so. The next day, nooses were hung from the tree. A few days later, a protest under the tree by African American students prompted school administrators to call the student body into an assembly. District Attorney Reed Walters told the students that if further disruptive behavior occurred, it would become a criminal matter. The teenagers were arrested and remained in jail until September 2007.

Racial tensions escalated at the high school as a result of the incident with the hanging nooses. In a fight between six African American students and two White students, one of the White students, 17-year-old Justin Barker, was beaten and suffered a [Page 410]concussion. District Attorney Walters charged all six of the Black students with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy. The students, who ranged in age from 15 to 17, faced up to 80 years in prison without parole. All six students were athletes; five were on Jena's high school football team.

Bell, who was 16 at the time, was the first student to go on trial. He was a football star who hoped to get an athletic scholarship to attend college. It was widely reported that he was an honor student and did not have a prior criminal record. Later, it was learned that Bell had had trouble with the judicial system and was on probation for two counts of battery and criminal damage to property. Bell was not granted bail and remained in jail for a considerable length of time before finally being released in September 2007. He was tried as an adult and convicted of aggravated battery as well as conspiracy. Although his conviction was later overturned, it was not without considerable publicity concerning the judicial system in Jena, Louisiana. On September 20,2007, the Reverend AI Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, radio commentator and lawyer Warren Ballentine, and many others converged on the small community to protest the charges and gross disparity in the sentencing that Bell and the other students faced. Sharpton, Jackson, and King led an estimated 20,000 protesters through the streets of Jena. Protesters came from all over the country for the march. Ki-Afi Moyo, organizer of the Dallas-based Internet community “Tx Supports Jena Six,” described the protest as a rebirth of the civil rights movement. His group chartered 20 buses and brought 2,000 protesters to Jena.

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