Unknown Victims of Civil Injustice

In 2007, 20,000 civil rights protesters marched through the small town of Jena, Louisiana. New York Times reported the march as the "largest civil rights protests in years" defending six Black students that were involved in a fight at Jena High School.

Many media outlets blame the fight on the hanging of two nooses on a tree that students call the "White Tree" because only White students hang out under there. Maria Newman of the New York Times reported that the nooses were hung after an assembly when a Black student asked an assistant principal if Blacks could sit under the tree.

However, according to CNN, the U.S. attorney's office verified that the fight that sent a White student to the hospital and six Black students in jail charged with second-degree attempted murder was unassociated with the hanging of the nooses almost three months before. Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana said that both events, though separate, were the account of rising racial tension, which only further escalated when the town of 3,000 was forced to host thousands of protesters.

The "Jena 6", all minors, five of which were charged as adults, were said to be treated more harshly than the white students who hung the nooses. Subsequently the trials were revoked and each minor was sentenced again. Mychal Bell the focal point of attention because he was detained during the protest took a plea agreement made by the district attorney, which his father claimed in a 2008 interview with The Town Talk was "coerced".

The members of the "Jena 6" were revered in the Black community, given a standing ovation when presenting an award at the BET Awards, in which they acted more like rappers than victims of racism. The Jena 6 defense fund helped some of the boys move away from Jena, including Jesse Ray Beard, who was sent to New York for a football camp, living and interning for a local attorney, and then afterward sent to a private school in Connecticut that has the annual tuition of almost $80,000. Though held in high esteem for their courage and supported through and through by civil rights activist, some of the boys, including Beard, two years from the initial incident are still getting in trouble.

Beard in February 2007 right before going to football camp and that fancy private school was convicted of batter, criminal damage to property, and assault. Bryant Purvis was arrested for an assault that caused injury to a fellow student in the Texas high school he attended in early 2008. Corwin Jones was arrested in the summer of 2008 charged with misdemeanor simple battery after being identified as one of the several people that beat a man with a baseball bat. Mychal Bell was arrested and charged of shoplifting, resisting arrest, and assault on December 24, 2008, according to the Associated Press. On the 30^th of December Bell was then took to the hospital after shooting himself in the chest.

In Jena, they probably faced racism and were probably unfairly sentenced, but why must civil rights activist and even the media act as if they were six innocent boys. If anything they've made a mockery of the civil rights movement, showing how unworthy they were of the support of so many in the first place.

Somehow, African Americans that are put in the limelight for enduring injustices of racism always end up in trouble afterwards. Including, the infamous Rodney King, who was involved in a case of excessive force by several Los Angeles police officers in 1991. The acquittal of these officers lead to the L.A. riots, one of the most infamously memorable moments of the decade. However, Rodney King after receiving support from civil rights leaders and a million dollar settlement, King began to find himself in trouble with law with hit and run charges, and countless DUIs.

People ran, skipped, and flew down to Louisiana to defend the Jena 6, but no one came to the aid of the less known Tulia 46, who in 1999 were drawn into the false claims of Tom Coleman, an undercover cop. Coleman derived a story, telling officials that he had made hundreds of drug buys in the town of merely 5,000 people, leading to the arrest of 46 residents, 40 who were Black (15% of the towns Black population) and all of who which lived in the Black side of town.

The documentary, Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War by Sarah and Emily Kunstler is one of the few depictions of the plight of the Tulia 46. Paramount Pictures is also planning to present a movie based on the events to release in 2009. But the Tulia 46, though most are free never got the support from civil rights activist, though it was obvious with no physical evidence of drugs related to any of those arrested, that all were innocent.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/19/jena.six.link/index.html

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/louisiana/jena/index.html