Jena 6: A Primer To The Racial Unrest In Jena, Louisiana
June 29, 2007 by Laura | Trackback URI
Please read the latest Jena Six post here.
For those following the Jena 6 cases, you can’t tell the players without a program. So here’s the Who’s Who, compiled from a variety of news stories. I’ll be adding to this as more information becomes available. Timeline coming soon… Previous Jena 6 posts are here. As far as I can tell, I’m the only blogger on the right covering this, but there’s a boatload of coverage on the left. There’s a great linkfest at AfroSpear.
The Jena Six
Mychal Bell - the first student tried and convicted for beating Justin Barker
Theodore Shaw - cannot meet the $90,000 bond, so has been in jail since 12/4/06
Carwin Jones - student athlete who received college scholarships, withdrawn since his arrest.
Robert Bailey - the student who was beaten by whites at the Fair Barn
Bryant Purvis -
Unnamed Minor - the sixth “Jena 6″ student is being dealt with in the juvenile justice system.
Other students
Justin Barker - the student who was beaten on December 4, 2006. Descriptions of his injuries in news accounts are varied, but it is indisputable that he only spent two and a half hours in the ER, was not admitted to the hospital, and attended a school event later that evening.
Kenneth Purvis - the student who originally asked permission for the black students to sit under the tree. He may be related to Bryant Purvis, one of the Jena 6, a completely unrelated person or may be Bryant Purvis with the name misreported.
The Lawyers
Reed Walters - the District Attorney in LaSalle Parish, Louisiana. Warned student protestors that “I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen.”
Blane Williams - Bell’s attorney, a public defender who inexplicably called no defense witnesses at all.
Officials/Jena Residents
Glen Joiner - Jena High School Principal who recommended that the noose-hanging students be expelled. It has been reported that the principal’s name is Scott Windham but this is incorrect. I believe Mother Jones originally reported this, and blogs picked it up including this blog, but according the the Jena High School website, the principal is Glen Joiner. Scott Windham is the Transportation supervisor for the LaSalle Parish school district.
Superintendent Roy Breithaupt - Overruled Joiner and suspended the three noose-hangers, saying “Adolescents play pranks. I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
Murphy McMillian - Jena mayor, says that “Race is not a major local issue. It’s not a factor in the local people’s lives.”
Eddie Thompson - a white pastor who admits that racism is rampant in Jena, and who has worked alongside other pastors in Jena to resolve the racial problems.
Emma Humphries - emergency room supervisor at LaSalle General Hospital at the time of the attack. She said Barker sustained a number of cuts and bruises, including a serious abrasion of the eye. She noted that he also had a swollen eye.
Persons of Interest
Unidentified - the white people who beat Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn. Bailey says there were six or seven of them. One received a charge of simple battery; the rest were not charged at all.
Unidentified - 21 year old Jena High School graduate who either was part of the group who beat Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn the night before, or at least was present, threatened black students with a shotgun at a Jena convenience store. He was not charged, but the students who disarmed him were charged with aggravated battery and theft.
White students who hung nooses should’ve been expelled and had “distrubing the peace” charges pressed agianst them.
The 6 or 7 whites who beat Bailey at the fair should’ve been charged.The white guy aiming a shotgun at minors should have been charged.
Despite these injustices,does that justify 6 black kids planning & carrying out an attack on an uninvolved white kid? Just because the Law failed 3 times doesn’t mean it should fail a 4th time to appease liberals. Jail ‘em!
To Joe Hebert,
You’re right: the “law” in Jena has failed.
The law failed three times previously by not even acknowledging the crimes committed against black youths. In fact, in the shotgun incident, charges of assault and theft were brought against the black youths for wrestling the shotgun away from the man.
But the Law is also failing by convicting these six youths.
The conspiracy charges are very loose at best, with no evidence behind them other than what people can assume and read into them (therefore not usable in court). From signed student accounts of the incident Barker was heard taunting Bailey about the attack at the party and using racial epithets to provoke him. The hit or punch to the back of Barker’s head happened literally moments later as Barker left the gym and entered the hallway. It is beyond judgmental to assume that any of what happened was pre-meditated and that six youths should be charged while only one youth threw a punch.
Further, I believe that Reed Walters, Jena’s DA, is culpable in the fight because he threatened the youths’ lives when they tried to express their anger and frustration at the injustice with nonviolent protest under the tree in September.
Barker was not as uninvolved and innocent as your statement suggests. He is friends with those who hung the nooses and injected himself into the incidents by verbally assaulting someone.
Lastly, and perhaps most important, why do people continue to forget that those being put on trial are MINORS. All under the age of 18 when the event occurred, all of them are being tried as adults for a school fistfight. I do not condone violence here, but there is no proportionality between the crime and the sentence.
The real justice, which no court can mandate, is for an understanding, a dialogue, a reconciliation between white and black youth to begin in order that the future communities of Jena will not tolerate the nooses, the race hate crime, which fomented every subsequent incident.
First I want to thank you fo taing a interest in this story and doing yor pat o inform your readers. Th Unamed persons you don’t have listed in the attack:
Matt Windham - 21 year old Jena High School graduate who either was part of the group who beat Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn the night before, or at least was present, threatened black students with a shotgun at a Jena convenience store. He was not charged, but the students who disarmed him were charged with aggravated battery and theft.
He was one of the attackers, the other two, Justin Sloan hit him, as well as his sister Jessie Sloan.
I am a internet radio talk show host and I was preparing for a sow on the Sentencing Projects latest report. I wanted to highlight some cases of injustice and came upon this case. I was able to piece togther a possible recourse of action detail in the piece I justfinished writing. Please read it at my blog and pass the info along. Thank you again for your concen for these children. God Bless!
http://oneblackmansblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/conspiracy-against-rights-and-police.html
I think that that the law wasnt doing the correct thing. Because its not fair that charges thise black boys for attemptes murder charge on schoolgrounds, but when those 5 or 6 white boys jumped on Robert Bailey AT A PARTY IN TOWN they didnt charge those white boys with attempted murder. That was basically the same thing those black boys did to the white boys at school. They should have left that up to the school to handle not the police. When the white boys hung the nooses on the tree, they were in in-school suspension, ON CAMPUS for 3 or 4 days. Maybe if they wouldnt have done that and if things were taken care then maybe the situation wouldnt have been as bad as it is now.
I’m saddened to just hear of this case when it happened nearly a year ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jena had confederate flags hanging in front of the court house in which a judge (who the town considers to be in his right mind) gives a youthful offense like fighting a $90,000 bail as if its lawful. This case is such an obvious display of injustice and small town prejudices that it cringe at the thought of Blacks even still living in the town. Its modern day Jim Crow that I’m sure the racist town legal system hoped would stay under the national radar. If you’re not able to travel to Louisiana, as I am not, be sure to make your community aware of this case. Visit http://www.petitiononline.com and submit an online petition to have this case reviewed by a federal court to give these young boys a chance at a life. We need every bias case in the history of LaSalle Parish, LA reviewed but we will have to take it one step at a time.
[You missed today's post which explained that the high bail was justified by Bell's 4 prior convictions. That is very recent news, and probably will not get much play in the sinestrosphere. As to the petition, read the section above the comment box for a link to the petition, and an explanation on why it is a waste of time. I still think the felony charges are wrong and that this should have been handled in the juvenile system, but Bell's convictions are now established as fact, not rumor, so we should acknowledge it and the effect that those convictions had on his bail and charges. - Laura]
You are incorrect about one thing Laura:
Scott Windham WAS the principal last year at Jena High School. He resigned. The new principal is Glen Joiner.
“21 year old Jena High School graduate who either was part of the group who beat Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn the night before, or at least was present, threatened black students with a shotgun at a Jena convenience store. He was not charged, but the students who disarmed him were charged with aggravated battery and theft”
You will skew anything to support your argument. It is not proven whether or not the white kid with the shotgun was provoked by the black students. You are implying that the fact of the matter was that he pulled out the gun and threatened them right away, which is what the black students contend. If you want to analyze this case objectively, I would say, “the person who pulled a gun after claiming to have been provoked by the black students. Reports vary on whether or not he was provoked.”
Common Sense:
I agree with you, but keep in mind this posting was from June 29th. This was before many of us in Jena decided to fight back the media with facts on the case. Understandably, many people were outraged about what the media portrayed to them as a huge racial conspiracy. I’m sure Laura had these same feelings, too.
Honestly? I only heard hearsay around town about all of this and when I read some news reports, it STUNNED me. I was thinking “Why didn’t I hear about all of this stuff?” Now I know it was media bias.
I’m just happy all of the facts are starting to come to light.
I know for a fact that Scott Windham was the principal at Jena High School when this was going on. It just happend that when everyone started to report on this story he had got a promotion at the School Board Office. Glen Joiner took his place after he left. But when all of this was happening, Scott Windham was the principal. If you do not believe me you may call either of these two numbers and ask them who was the principal before Glen Joiner and who was the principal when all of this happened and they will tell you Scott Windham. Here are the munbers.
Jena High School- (318) 992-5195 or School Board Office (318) 992-2161
Honestly…I think both parties deserve to be punished for various reasons…and it is sad that during a time when our country is at war…we are still fighting over something we cannot chage!… Which is the color of our skin.
Wake up people…we have to protect our land from terrorist! Can we just at least live in peace, dispite our personal opinions so that we can all survive.
Dee:
I’ve spoken by email with a guy named Alan Bean, who I BELIEVE is the founder of Friends of Justice. They are actually fighting for the release of the Jena 6 (which I completely disagree with), but he told me that, when it’s all said and done, both sides are going to look stupid. He’s actually spent alot of time in Jena and has read all of the documents related specifically to the Jena 6 case repeatedly. So I’m guessing he probably knows what he’s talking about. We just happen to differ on which side we take.
So we’ll wait and see how it plays out. I’m all for fair punishment. I don’t have a ton of faith in our judicial system, never have. But honestly, it is the best thing we have to go by.