Jena 6 Petition
Demons of racism roam free: The case of the Jena 6
Author: Bill Quigley
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/11397/1/141/
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/12/07 12:55
In a small still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an all-white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor -*test*-('")ify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial about a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by Black students.
The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents starting when whites responded to Black students sitting under the “white tree” at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree. The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the white victim were all on one side of the courtroom. The Black defendant, 17-year-old Mychal Bell, and his supporters were on the other.
The jury quickly convicted Mychal Bell of two felonies — aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell, who was a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, faces up to 22 years in prison. Five other Black youths await similar trials on attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy charges.
Yes, you read that correctly. The rest of the story, which is being reported across the world in papers in China, France and England, is just as chilling.
Nooses hung on ‘white tree’
The trouble started under “the white tree” in front of Jena High School. The “white tree” is where the white students, 80 percent of the student body, would always sit during school breaks.
In September 2006, a Black student at Jena High School asked permission from school administrators to sit under the “white tree.” School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did.
The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the “white tree.” The message was clear. “Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant ‘ … we’re going to kill you, we’re going to hang you till you die,’” Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students, told the London Observer.
The Jena High School principal found that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of schools overruled the principal and gave the students a three day suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt. “Adolescents play pranks,” the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
To read the rest of the article View here
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University – New Orleans. You can reach him at quigley @loyno.edu. Audrey Stewart contributed to this article.
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