The Jena 6

In September 2006 after asking permission from the vice principal several black students at Jena High School sit under an Oak tree where white students typically gathered to get out of the sun and to socialize. A day later students arrived at the school to find nooses hanging from the tree branches.

The school principal recommended expulsion for those responsible for the nooses but the school district committee overruled the recommendation and, instead, suspended the three white students.

On November 30, 2006 Jenna High School main academic building was torched. The crime remains unresolved, although some suspect the arson was linked to the increasing racial tension at the high school.

In December 2006 racial tensions continue to build at Jena High School. At a private party in Jena, a 22-year-old white man, Justin Sloan, attacks a 17-year-old Robert Bailey, a black student and one of the Jena 6, with a bottle. Sloan is charged with simple battery and his subsequent punishment is probation.

In another incident a white high school student pulled a gun on blacks students in a convenience store parking lot. Three black students wrestle the gun away from him. Tensions were very high and more was to happen.

On December 4 2006 several black students jump Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School. He is knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped. the parent of the Jena 6 say that Barker provoked his attack. At the hospital, Barker is treated for injuries to his eyes, and ears and released that day.

Later in December 2006 six black students are arrested and charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Three of the six have their charges reduced to aggravated battery. Many say that these charges are excessive and signal the “New Jim Crow Laws” aimed at jailing black men, reducing them to the status of a felony that has no rights either to vote, find work or to take his rightful place in American society. Statistically, these numbers are growing and the “New Jim Crow Law” is taking a serious toll on the black American community.

Arrested in December, 2006 the first conviction in the case was handed down to Mychal Bell and he is charged with aggravated battery. The 16-year-old teenager at the time is now 17 and he remains in jail, facing 22 years in prison. Imagine, if Mychal were your son and how you would feel.

On September 14, 2007 A judge vacates the conviction of 17-year-old Mychal Bell, saying the charges should have been brought in juvenile court. Bell 16 at the time of the incident, has been in prison since December 2006, unable to afford his $90,000.00 bond.
Bell’s sentencing for his previous convictions of conspiracy to commit second degree-degree murder and second-degree battery had been scheduled for September 20, 2007.

On September 18, 2007 a three-judge panel said it was “premature” to consider releasing Mychal Bell. The defence attorney said that the district attorney will have to determine whether to re-file the charges in juvenile court.

It was widely reported that Bell (photographed above), now 17, was an honor student with no prior criminal record. Although he had a high grade-point average, he was, in fact, on probation for at least two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property.

On September 19, 2007 the US Attorney, Donald Washington, said there was no connection between the nooses hung by white Jena High student, three months earlier, and the beating of the white student by black students about three months later. The LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters also rejects the idea that the two events are related. One wonders what judges do n this legal system when the lawyers determine matters of law and decide apparently that events in a case are unrelated.

On September 20, 2007 a civil rights gathering convened in Jena and about 15,000 to 20,000 protesters descended on Jena to demonstrate against what they called the unjust treatment of the accused black teenagers

Jena Louisiana Much Like Halifax Nova Scotia

Jena is pronounced (JEE-nuh) and it is a throwback to another time. Jena’s 2,971 population is 225 miles away from New Orleans, the state’s multi-racial centre. Locals dispute the growing story of Jena, but here is how they describe it in their own words.

“Here, one refers to elders as "Sir," and "Ma'am." Children still pull
catfish from creeks; couples court at Jena Giants football games; families
rope goats and calves at weekend rodeos.

In a place where per capita income is $13,761, there aren't any swank,
French restaurants, but rather, family eateries such as the Burger Barn,
Ginny's and Maw & Paw's. Most of Jena's 14-odd churches stage Easter egg
hunts. On summer afternoons, sweet tea and lemonade on a neighbor's front porch is obligatory.

And there are endearing figures, like the designated town sweeper who
mountain bikes around town with a wagon full of rakes, brooms, dustpans
and cleaning fluids, stopping only to sweep shop owners' parking lots or to
distribute complimentary bubble gum to grade schoolers.

Not all vestiges of the past are beloved, or quaint, of course.

There are no black lawyers, no black doctors and one black employee in the
town's half-dozen banks. (The employee is male, an accountant who works
out of public view.)

Economics play a role in this; with the closure of the sawmills in the
'50s, the town now relies heavily on the exploitation of oil and natural
gas, offshore. There are relatively few good-paying jobs in what is
gradually becoming a retirement community, and some point out that African Americans with higher educations tend to leave the parish.

"To a certain extent, that's true," says Anthony Jackson, one of Jena
High's two black teachers. "But I know some people who tried to stay here
and couldn't get good jobs. There was, for instance, a gentleman who
graduated as a certified biology teacher, but he left because he didn't
want to deal with what's going on here."

Cleveland Riser, 75, who began working in Jena as a teacher and then rose
to become an assistant superintendent of schools in LaSalle Parish, says
blacks have long had trouble getting ahead in Jena.

"In my experience, the opportunity for advancing in my profession was
denied, in my opinion, because I was black—not because I was unprepared
professionally, or because of my performance."

Here and across the "crossroads" of Louisiana, there are Klan supporters,
to be sure; David Duke, the former KKK Grand Wizard, carried LaSalle
Parish in his 1991 run for state governor. And Jacqueline Hatcher, a
59-year-old African American, remembers when, as a ninth grader in 1962,
she saw a large cross burning out front of the all-black Good Pine High School.

"We heard the Klan was meeting in the woods because there was going to be desegregation in the schools and they didn't want that," says Hatcher.
Still, no one recalls seeing any public lynchings or whites in robes and
masks for a half century.

"If I could take you back to 60 years ago, and then fast forward to today,
you'd have to say we've come a long way," says Billy Wayne Fowler, a white
school-board member who is one of the few leaders with the school
administration or local law enforcement who still talks to reporters.
Most townsfolk, he says, interpreted the events of last year pretty much
the same way—that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren't always on the mark.

The boys who hung the nooses "probably should have been expelled," Fowler
says, and the murder charges brought against the black teenagers were "too
harsh, too severe."

Tommy Farris, 27, an oil driller, and his wife, Nikki, 29, a registered
nurse, concur—to a point. "Those boys should have expelled," says Nikki,
who is white. "It was no innocent prank. I think those boys knew what they
were starting by hanging those nooses from a tree."

Tommy, who is black, agrees. But free the Jena Six?

"That's not going to happen," he says, adding that he thinks the black
teenagers are being given a fair chance to defend themselves against the
charges.”

There is one truly noticeable difference now of days from what things used to be and that is more and more young Nova Scotians are using hand guns to settle differences, and young Nova Scotians are afraid of nothing. Unlike preceding generations, the brave new one will not be naively denied their fair share of the Canadian dream.

Jena welcomes the visitor and it is “A Nice Place to Call Home.”

Please answer the above poll question: Should Mychal Bell of Jena 6 be released?