JENA, LA. — Beau Jones, Jena High School's gangly white quarterback, had one question as he parked his white pickup truck outside LaSalle Parish Courthouse: Was all this -- the jostling camera crews and row of satellite trucks -- really for Mychal Bell?
Bell, his former running back, was inside the courthouse, wearing handcuffs and ankle shackles and meeting with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Bell is one of six black teenagers charged with attempted murder for beating a white classmate, raising criticism that justice in this predominantly white Southern town is not colorblind.
"This isn't Jena," Jones, 16, said softly as he stared at the metal barricades around the local stores, the surveillance cameras being installed across the street, the gleaming limousine that had whisked civil rights leader Sharpton to this tiny tobacco town. "We're now on the map as a racist town, but the town I know, everyone pretty much gets along."
Today, thousands of protesters from across the country are expected to march through Jena (pronounced JEE-nuh), dwarfing its population of about 3,000. Not even the organizers know how many people to expect, but some say it could become a major civil rights march.
"Again, we come to the South to raise new hope, not to condemn," Sharpton told reporters outside the courthouse. "This is not a march against Jena."
Yet with predictions ranging from 1,000 to 60,000 protesters, many locals are apprehensive. The march has been publicized on talk radio and Internet blogs.
Jena High School and LaSalle Parish Library will close for the day. Most local business owners planned to close their stores too. Activists, they noted, vowed they would not spend money in Jena.
Logistical preparations for a large protest in a town with only two stoplights is a challenge for law enforcement officials, particularly with so many businesses expected to be closed. A spokesman for the Louisiana State Police said Wednesday that law enforcement from across the region would assist state troopers and police officers. Portable toilets were to be installed downtown, and the American Red Cross was to provide water.
Many residents of this town, which is 86% white, said they resented the media invasion, arguing that the conflict at the high school had been blown out of proportion, fed by journalists and activists' stereotypes of small Southern towns.
