Jena 6: Jena High “White Tree” Cut Down

Quick summary of the Jena Six case:
In Jena, Louisiana, a black student challenged the de facto segregation of his high school by asking permission to sit under the “white tree.” School officials told him to sit where he liked. The next day three nooses hung from the tree, which triggered an impromptu protest by the black students of Jena High. LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, flanked by the police, informed the black students at an assembly later that day that he could end their lives “with the stroke of a pen.” Racial tensions grew, the school’s academic wing was burned, and Robert Bailey, a black student, was attacked by a group of whites at a party. One person was charged with a misdemeanor for that beating. The next day Bailey and two friends were threatened with a shotgun at a convenience store by Matt Windham, a white man who had been present at the beating. They wrestled the gun away from him and ran to report the incident to the police, who charged them with robbery of the shotgun. Finally at school two days later, a group of white students, including the noose hangers, taunted Bailey and other students, calling them “niggers.” A white student was beaten by a group of black students, taken to the hospital and released within three hours. He attended a school function that night. Six black students were charged with second degree attempted murder for the fight. The first to be tried was Mychal Bell, whose public defender put on no case, called no witnesses, and permitted a friend of the DA, the mother of a prosecution witness, and a good friend of the victim’s mother, to be empaneled on the six person jury. Bell was quickly found guilty. Robert Bailey, Theodore Shaw, Carwin Jones, and Bryant Purvis are still waiting to be tried. The sixth of the Jena Six is in the juvenile justice system.

Read this Jena Six article for more details or check the Jena Six archives.

Another good article on the Jena 6 by Abbey Brown at The Shreveport Times, but with some interesting and seemingly contradictory details.

… “A clean slate,” LaSalle Parish School Board member Billy Fowler said of why the tree was cut down in the past few weeks. “There’s nothing positive about that old tree. It’s all negative. And I’m serving on the new School Board, and we’re wanting to start fresh on some things.”

… Fowler said the tree eventually would have been cut down for construction purposes, but that he also is hopeful its removal will help heal old wounds.

“School’s about to start,” he said. “We don’t want the blacks coming back up there looking at the tree knowing what happened, or the whites. We just want to start fresh.”

… “Cutting down that beautiful tree won’t solve the problem at hand,” [Caseptla Bailey, mother of one of the Jena 6] said. “It still happened.”

But Fowler hopes that isn’t the case. He said he’s confident it will help the school year get off on the right foot.

… According to Jena High students, the nooses were found hanging in the tree the day after an annual assembly where one student asked about who could sit under the tree.

… The noose incident, which some have said should be handled as a federal hate crime, was never reported to the Jena Police Department, LaSalle Parish sheriff’s office or LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, according to U.S. Attorney Donald Washington.

The school investigated the incident and determined the nooses were placed there as a “prank” in response to the question, he said. Washington’s office doesn’t have enough evidence to prosecute those responsible for the nooses with a hate crime, he said.

The article references that a school committee, not Schools Superintendent Roy Breithaupt, overruled the Jena High principal’s expulsion of the noose hangers, although Breithaupt evidently agreed with it. If that’s true, who was on the school committee? The article also states that the student who asked permission to sit under the white tree, Justin Purvis, did so at an assembly. That has not been reported before. The first assembly reported in this story was the one where DA Reed Walters threatened the black students. However, if Purvis did ask at an assembly, that gave the noose-hangers an extra day’s lead time to practice making a noose, which as I’ve noted before, is not a simple knot. If the nooses were never reported to the Jena Police Department, who eventually reported them to the DOJ, which U.S. Attorney Donald Washington said investigated the incident a week after it happened?

It was a good decision to cut down the tree. Bailey is correct in that it won’t change anything, but the tree’s stump will not evoke nearly as much anger as the tree itself would have. This doesn’t solve existing problems, but it may prevent future ones. That’s something, at least.

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