Black People : Racism goes on trial again in America's Deep South

Goddess Auset333

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Feb 9, 2007
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The prosecution of three black Louisiana youths reveals the rise of
discrimination by stealth

Tom Mangold in Jena, Louisiana
Sunday May 20, 2007

Observer

In the cool and beflagged small courtroom in Jena, Louisiana, three black
schoolboys - Robert Bailey, Theodore Shaw and Mychal Bell - are about to
go on trial for a playground fight that could see them jailed for between
30 and 50 years. Jena, about 220 miles north of New Orleans, is a small
town of 3,000 people, 85 per cent of whom are white. Tomorrow it will be
the focus for a race trial which could put it on the map alongside the bad
old names of the Mississippi Burning Sixties such as Selma or Montgomery,
Alabama.

Jena is gaining national notoriety as an example of the new 'stealth'
racism, showing how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in
America's Deep South, even in the year that a black man, Barak Obama, is a
serious candidate for the White House.

It began in Jena's high school last August when Kenneth Purvis asked the
headteacher if black students could break with a long-held tradition and
join the whites who sit under the tree in the school courtyard during
breaks. The boy was told that he and his friends could sit where they
liked.

The following morning white students had hung three nooses there. 'Bad
taste, silly, but just a prank,' was the response of most of Jena's
whites.

'To us those nooses meant the KKK [Ku Klux Klan], they meant, "*******,
we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die,"' says
Caseptla Bailey, a black community leader and mother of one of the
accused. The three white perpetrators of what was seen as a race hate
crime were given 'in-school' suspensions (sent to another school for a few
days before returning).

Jena's major industry is growing and marketing junk pine. Walk down the
usually deserted main street and you will not find many black employees.
Bailey, 56, is a former air force officer and holder of a business
management degree. 'I couldn't even get a job in Jena as a bank teller,'
she said. 'Look at the banks and the best white-collar jobs and you'll see
only white and red necks in those collars.'

Billy Doughty, the local barber, has never cut black men's hair. 'They
just don't come here,' he mumbled. 'Anyway, their hair is different and
difficult to cut.'

The majority of blacks live in an area known as Ward 10. Many homes are
trailers, or wooden shacks. Rubbish lies in the streets. On 'Snob Hill',
where the whites live, the spacious gardens and lawns are trimmed, the
gravelled drives boast SUVs and nice new saloons. Only two black families
live there. A teacher from Jena High had enough money to buy his way in.
But when he arrived local estate agents refused to show him a 'white'
property even though several were advertised in the local paper ('they're
all under contract,' the agents lied). The teacher eventually went to see
one white owner and offered him cash. 'The guy preferred green [dollars]
to black, so I got the property,' laughed the teacher, 'but since we moved
in three years ago we haven't been invited by a single neighbour.'

On 30 November, someone tried to burn Jena High to the ground. The crime
remains unsolved. That same weekend race fights between teenagers broke
out downtown, and on 4 December racial tension boiled over once more in
the school. A white student, Justin Barker, was attacked, allegedly by six
black students.

The expected charges of assault and battery were not laid, and the six
were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit
second-degree murder. They now face a lifetime in jail.

Barker spent the evening of the assault at the local Baptist church, where
he was seen by friends to be 'his usual smiling self'.

Nine days later, with the case technically sub judice, the District
Attorney made the following public statement to the local paper: 'I will
not tolerate this type of behaviour. To those who act in this manner I
tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and
with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are convicted I
will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you
never again menace the students at any school in this parish.'

Bail for the impoverished students was set absurdly high, and most have
been held in custody. The town's mind seems to be made up.

But now the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and
the American Civil Liberties Union - 'damned outsiders' - have become
involved and have begun to recruit, enthuse and empower the local black
population. Reporters from the BBC and the New York Times have been drawn
to the story. Jena does not like this publicity and shifts uncomfortably
in the glare. It is 42 years since President Lyndon Johnson closed the
loopholes that allowed southern states to discriminate against blacks.
When the accused shuffle into court tomorrow, it's Jena that will be on
trial.

· Tom Mangold reports 'Race Hate In Louisiana' for 'This World', BBC2,
Thursday, 7pm.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
 
Here is another article on this story

By Howard Witt said:
Racial demons rear heads
After months of unrest between blacks and whites in Louisiana town, some see racism and uneven justice


JENA, La. -- The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town's jagged racial fault lines. Finally, it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites.

Now the 3,000 residents of this small lumber and oil town deep in the heart of central Louisiana are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest.

One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman's nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard.

The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school's 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree's cooling shade.

"Sit wherever you want," school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.

African-American students and their parents were outraged and intimidated by the display, which instantly summoned memories of the mob lynchings that once terrorized blacks across the American South. Three white students were quickly identified as being responsible, and the high school principal recommended that they be expelled.

"Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple," said Tracy Bowens, a black mother of two students at the high school who protested the incident at a school board meeting.

But Jena's white school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt, ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt and suspended the students for three days, angering blacks who felt harsher punishments were justified.

"Adolescents play pranks," said Breithaupt, the superintendent of the LaSalle Parish school system. "I don't think it was a threat against anybody."

Yet it was after the noose incident that the violent, racially charged events that are still convulsing Jena began.

First, a series of fights between black and white students erupted at the high school over the nooses. Then, in late November, unknown arsonists set fire to the central wing of the school, which still sits in ruins. Off campus, a white youth beat up a black student who showed up at an all-white party. A few days later, another young white man pulled a shotgun on three black students at a convenience store.

Finally, on Dec. 4, a group of black students at the high school allegedly jumped a white student on his way out of the gym, knocked him unconscious and kicked him after he hit the floor. The victim -- allegedly targeted because he was a friend of the students who hung the nooses and had been taunting blacks -- was not seriously injured and spent only a few hours in the hospital.

But the LaSalle Parish district attorney, Reed Walters, opted to charge six black students with attempted second-degree murder and other offenses, for which they could face a maximum of 100 years in prison if convicted. All six were expelled from school.

To the defendants, their families and civil rights groups that have examined the events, the attempted murder charges brought by a white prosecutor are excessive and part of a pattern of uneven justice in the town.

The critics note, for example, that the white youth who beat the black student at the party was charged only with simple battery, while the white man who pulled the shotgun at the convenience store wasn't charged with any crime at all. But the three black youths in that incident were arrested and accused of aggravated battery and theft after they wrestled the weapon from the man -- in self-defense, they said.

"There's been obvious racial discrimination in this case," said Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who described Jena as a "racial powder keg" primed to ignite. "It appears the black students were singled out and targeted in this case for some unusually harsh treatment."

That's how the mother of one of the defendants sees things as well.

"They are sending a message to the white kids, 'You have committed this hate crime, you were taunting these black children, and we are going to allow you to continue doing what you are doing,'" said Caseptla Bailey, mother of Robert Bailey Jr.

Bailey, 17, is caught up in several of the Jena incidents, as both a victim and alleged perpetrator. He was the black student who was beaten at the party, and he was among the students arrested for allegedly grabbing the shotgun from the man at the convenience store. And he's one of the six students charged with attempted murder for the Dec. 4 attack.

The district attorney declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story. But other white leaders insist there are no racial tensions in the community, which is 85 percent white and 12 percent black.

"Jena is a place that's moving in the right direction," said Mayor Murphy McMillan. "Race is not a major local issue. It's not a factor in the local people's lives."

Still others, however, acknowledge troubling racial undercurrents in a town where only 16 years ago white voters cast most of their ballots for David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who ran unsuccessfully for Louisiana governor.

"I've lived here most of my life, and the one thing I can state with absolutely no fear of contradiction is that LaSalle Parish is awash in racism -- true racism," a white Pentecostal preacher, Eddie Thompson, wrote in an essay he posted on the Internet. "Here in the piney woods of central Louisiana ... racism and bigotry are such a part of life that most of the citizens do not even recognize it."

The lone black member of the school board agrees.

"There's no doubt about it -- whites and blacks are treated differently here," said Melvin Worthington, who was the only school board member to vote against expelling the six black students charged in the beating case. "The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided."

And the troubles at the high school are not over yet.

On May 10, police arrested Justin Barker, 17, the white victim of the Dec. 4 beating. He was alleged to have a rifle loaded with 13 bullets stashed behind the seat of his pickup truck parked in the school lot. Barker told police he had forgotten it was there and had no intention of using it.

Click HERE for the article.

And folks have the audacity to think Racism/White Supremacy is not alive and kicking.

smh
 

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