Most of us never knew there was such a place as Jena, Louisiana until just recently. The residents of Jena (population 3,500) wish we still didn't. This tiny little town midway between Baton Rouge and Shreveport was by most accounts a peaceful community where folks generally got along with each other. Coming into the town you pass by a sign that identifies Jena as "a nice place to call home."
"We are not a racial town. We get along fine," said one long-time resident. That all started to unravel about a year ago.
My father used to have a humorous sign that said something like, "When you are up to your eyeballs in alligators, it is hard to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp." It must be hard for residents and officials of Jena to look back on the admittedly bad decisions of the last year and remember that their original intention was to try to diffuse a situation at the local High School.
In September of last year, several black students asked the vice principal of Jena High School if they could sit under an oak tree on the school's campus, a place that was a hangout for some of the white students. When the vice principal told them they were free to sit wherever they wanted to, they gathered under the tree. The next day, there were three white hangman's nooses suspended from the tree.
The students responsible for the nooses were identified and interviewed. They told school officials it was intended as a prank. Jena High's principal recommended the three students be expelled, but the school superintendent overruled him. The three students were briefly suspended from attending classes.
Understandably, the black population of the town and the black students who were the targets of the "prank" were appalled at the lenient punishment meted out. Tensions at the school and in the town grew increasingly tense in the months following. On November 30, an arsonist set fire to the High School's main building and it was destroyed. In early December, a young white man was allegedly taunting several young black men with racial epithets. A fight broke out and the white man, Justin Barker, was injured. He was treated and released from the local hospital. The six young black men involved in the fight were arrested and charged with attempted murder.
The black community was outraged that in contrast to the mild wrist slap given to the white students, the local DA chose to throw the book at the black students involved in the fight. As of this writing only one of the so-called Jena 6 is in jail. A court ruled today that Mychal Bell will not be released and his bail will not be reduced.
At the very heart of this issue is the failure of the white citizens of Jena, especially the school officials, to recognize and appreciate the horrific imagery of a noose to the black community. It alludes to decades and decades of terror reigned down on the black population in this nation and most especially in the deep south. For almost a century following the end of Civil War and up until the 1960s, thousands of blacks were brutally murdered at the hands of lynch mobs that acted as judge, jury and executioner. In many, if not most of the cases, the victims were innocent.
Lynching was such a socially acceptable practice in white America that gruesome photos of lynchings were sold as postcards by the thousands. It is forever burned into my memory a photo I saw in a history book when I was a young man: The beaten, bloated body of an African American man hanging from a rope tied to a tree, and dozens of ordinary-looking white men, women and even children laughing, smiling, and pointing at the body.
Swastikas, burning crosses, nooses hanging in a tree - these are images and symbols that are no joking matter when they are used as a veiled threat.
Did the three young white men in Jena who placed the nooses in the tree mean it as a harmless prank? Only the boys and God know that. But in reality, it was no prank. That action was a clear message to the blacks who asked for and received permission to gather under the oak tree - it was a death threat. "Stay in your place or you'll end up at the end of a rope like many of your ancestors did." That is, any way you slice it, a terroristic threat. It is no prank. They should have been severely punished, not let off with a "boys will be boys" attitude.
The six boys who beat up Justin Barker deserved to be punished also, but not charged with attempted murder and conspiracy. We're talking about a High School fight here, not an assignment for the Major Case Squad.
There is no doubt the rhetoric coming out of Jena, Louisiana, has been over the top. There is no doubt that some are using this incident for their own aggrandizement. There is no doubt this whole thing has gotten blown way out of proportion.
But make no mistake about it, the injustice is real.
The officials of Jena and LaSalle Parish have no one to blame but themselves that they are now painted with a broad brush as at best insensitive and at worst racists.
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