THE NATION - Nooses stir a year of racial unrest - Stiff charges for the 'Jena Six,' black teens who beat a white youth, draw controversy to a small Louisiana town.
JENA, LA. — In December, six black boys jumped a white boy at the high school here and beat him while he lay unconscious.
The victim was taken to the hospital, but he was not gravely hurt. He attended a class ring ceremony later that evening.
The black boys were charged with attempted murder, which threatened to put them in prison for most of their lives. The district attorney alleged they'd used a deadly weapon: their sneakers.
The case of the so-called Jena Six has elicited outrage around the world -- not only because of the stiff charges brought against the black teenagers, but because of the stark contrast between the way black boys and white boys in the same town were treated.
The assault was the culmination of months of racial unrest in Jena (pronounced JEE-nuh), a former sawmill town of about 3,000 people in the backwoods of central Louisiana. It started at the beginning of the last school year, when a black freshman at Jena High School asked the vice principal during a school assembly whether he could sit under the "white tree," a gnarled oak on campus where white students gathered to escape the stifling Southern heat. He was told to sit wherever he wanted.
The following day last September, three hangman's nooses were dangling from the oak's branches. Two months later, the school was set on fire.
The three white boys who hung the nooses were identified but not expelled or charged with a hate crime; they were suspended for three days. No one has been charged in the arson.
The Jena Six were kicked out of school last school year. Five were charged as adults with crimes that carry long prison sentences. (The other boy is being tried as a juvenile and was recently allowed to return to classes.)
One of the six, Mychal Bell, 17, was convicted of aggravated battery by an all-white jury this year, a crime that carries a maximum punishment of 15 years. On Friday, a state appeals court overturned his conviction after his defense attorneys argued that he was unlawfully tried as an adult.
Still, Bell remained behind bars late Friday, as he had been for the last nine months. It is unclear whether LaSalle Parish Dist. Atty. Reed Walters will seek to drop the charges, retry him as a juvenile or ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court's decision. Walters did not return requests for comment.
