|
hisannabelle -> RE: Jena 6 Day (9/20/2007 11:34:39 PM)
|
fast reply.
greetings,
i think a lot of people (who claim that 6 on 1 isn't fair) are ignoring the fact that the day before the beating the black kids were charged with, a black student attempted to go to a "white party," and was badly beaten by a group of white kids for doing so. those white kids were not tried and convicted for attempted murder, much less by an all-black jury. the black kids ARE being tried for attempted murder, by an all-white jury.
last i checked, hanging nooses was a hate crime. if someone came up and burned a cross or hung a noose on my lawn because most of the women in my family are in interracial relationships and most of my extended family is black, i would feel physically threatened. all the black kids in that school were trying to do was desegregate their school...and hate speech in the form of lynching threats were perpetrated on them. for wanting to desegregate their school. what year is this? 1950?
i am not saying that the black kids should not be punished, but their punishment should be equal to that of the white kids involved who beat their friend as well, and the white kids should also be punished for threatening to commit a hate crime. and then the judicial system should be reprimanded for trying six black kids with an all-white jury in a very obviously racist area.
respectfully,
annabelle.
edited to add:
quote:
So, some white lads evoke memories of lynchings and hangings; inevitably, this causes tension and quite probably insults are threats hurled from all angles, and the result is that the black lads are the first to take the law into their own hands by assaulting a white lad, and it is assumed they were trying to kill him in order to lock them up for 20-25 years.
greetings northerngent (and others who have ignored this),
no, they were not the first to take the law in their own hands. their own friend was brutally attacked by a group of white students before they ever attacked the white student for whom they are being charged with attempted murder.
respectfully,
annabelle.
quote:
As at hundreds of other high schools across America, black and white students at Jena High School in Jena, La., rarely sit together. The white students gather under a big shade tree in the courtyard, while black students congregate near the auditorium.
But last year, a few days into the first semester, a new student, a freshman African American, asked the principal at an assembly, if he, too, could sit under the tree. He was told he could sit anywhere he liked.
Three white boys on the rodeo team apparently disagreed. The next morning, there were three nooses hanging from the shade tree in the courtyard.
Many in Jena's black community wanted the three white students expelled. But when the white superintendent and other school administrators investigated, they decided the nooses were a prank. Instead of expulsion or arrest, the three received in-school suspension.
A few of the black athletes, the stars of the football team, took the lead in resisting. The day after the nooses were hung, they reportedly organized a silent protest under the tree.
The school called an assembly and summoned the police and the district attorney. Black students sat on one side, whites on the other. District Attorney Reed Walters warned the students he could be their friend or their worst enemy. He lifted his fountain pen and said, "With one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear."
That evening, black students told their parents that the DA was looking right at them. Walters denies that. Billy Fowler, a member of the school board, doesn't believe it, either.
"He said some pretty strong things," says Fowler, "but I don't think he was directing it to anyone in particular. I think he just wanted people to calm it down."
But things didn't calm down. Some whites felt triumphant; some blacks were resentful. Fights began to break out at the high school. But that year, the football team was having an unusually good season and the black athletes were a major reason why. So while there were fights throughout the fall, nobody wanted to take any action that would hurt the team.
When the season was over, so was the truce. On Nov. 30, somebody burned down Jena High. Whites thought blacks were responsible, blacks thought the opposite.
Charges and Public Outrage
The next night, 16-year-old Robert Bailey and a few black friends tried to enter a party attended mostly by whites. When Bailey got inside, he was attacked and beaten. The next day, tensions escalated at a local convenience store. Bailey exchanged words with a white student who had been at the party. The white boy ran back to his truck and pulled out a pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran after him and wrestled him for the gun.
After some scuffling, Bailey and his friends took the gun away and brought it home. Bailey was eventually charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who pulled the weapon was not charged at all.
The following Monday, Dec.4, a white student named Justin Barker was loudly bragging to friends in the school hallway that Robert Bailey had been whipped by a white man on Friday night. When Barker walked into the courtyard, he was attacked by a group of black students. The first punch knocked Barker out and he was kicked several times in the head. But the injuries turned out to be superficial. Barker was examined by doctors and released; he went out to a social function later that evening.
Six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated assault. But District Attorney Reed Walters increased the charges to attempted second-degree murder. That provoked a storm of black outrage.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12353776
|
|
|
|
