Le Monde wrote a story on Jena, and Carol Garagan translated it for us from French–thanks Carol! This is a very in-depth treatment, which does a good job showing the subtlety of race and class. They also resisted the temptation to make cheap shots at the American South. That’s good, because every country wrestles with its own problems of racial or ethnic exclusion and class inequality. The Jena story can teach us some lessons about how to make things right, not just how “Americans” or “the South” get things wrong. Thanks, Le Monde! Note: all quotations have been translated from English to French, back to English, so sometimes the wording is a little amusing.

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The Tree of Wrath

Le Monde, July 17, 2007

It’s a story of the old South. A tragic story, haunted by the demons which rise up from another time. A story in black and white.

In the shadow of an old tree, magnificent and harmonious, generously spreading out its branches, have lunched for decades the white students of the high school of Jena, a small city of 3,000 inhabitants tucked away in the depths of Louisiana with a population that is 85% white. This ancestral organization of the school yard which relegates the black students to the periphery might have continued if a young black man, at the beginning of the 2006 school year, hadn’t audaciously and publicly posed the heretical question: “Can we sit under the tree too?” The reply from the school principal was very clear: “Sit where you want.” And, under the outraged gaze of the white students, a handful of young Blacks slipped into the shade of the old tree.

The next morning, September 1^st, 2006, three ropes tied into nooses hung from a branch of the tree. Two black ropes on either side of a rope painted gold: the school colours. The black students were horrified, their parents humiliated. “It’s not necessary to be a historian to understand this message!” said Caseptla Bailey, the mother of one student. “The rope, around here, symbolizes slavery, lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. The past isn’t that distant. This gesture says to our children: ‘Dirty niggers, we’re gonna get you!’”

Three white students were quickly identified as the authors of this provocation. But the principal of the school, who wanted to expel them, was overruled by the superintendent of the school board, who concluded that a little “childishness” didn’t deserve more than a three day suspension. Shocked that the affair had been treated so lightly by the administration, the black parents met one evening in the Baptist church to discuss a possible response. And the next day, some black students – among whom were a handful of athletes, stars of the local football team – staged an impromptu demonstration under the “white” tree. The administration panicked. A general assembly of the school was quickly convened, during which the District Attorney for the district, Reed Walter, surrounded by a dozen police officers, took the floor and threatened the young demonstrators. “I’m warning you”, he said while focussing on the athletes, “I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. And I can, with a stroke of my pen, annihilate your lives”. [This quote has been translated from English to French, and back to English.]

The next day, the police patrolled the school corridors; the day after that, the school was locked down. The parents, alarmed, came to pick up their children or refused to send them back to school. The school principal, on the radio, swore that order would reign from now on, and the local newspaper, The Jena Times, stated that everything was really the fault of the black parents who, by organizing a meeting, had turned a schoolboy prank into an issue of racism, and had themselves provoked unrest at their rejection.

Life resumed again in the Jena school yard, marked by a palpable tension between the black and white students (notably the small clique who had hung the nooses and the group of athletes) and the growing annoyance of the teachers (almost entirely white), who were furious that their black students were daring to speak of racism and who had decided to forcefully remind them of the discipline evoked by the prosecuter. This didn’t prevent a 16 year-old black youth, Mychal Bell, from carrying the Jena Giants football team to a new victory and from being celebrated in the newspaper as the best player on the team. Offers from major universities, attracted by his athletic exploits, flowed in, raising the hopes of his family which lacked the resources to put him through college.

But, during the night of Thursday, the 30^th of November, a blaze, determined to be arson, devastated part of the high school. Fourteen classrooms were destroyed, the small town was in shock and the police were stumped(?) The weekend which followed was violent. Friday evening, one of the young black athletes who arrived at a party attended by Whites was punched as he entered by a white adult, then beat up by students arriving in reinforcement. The next day, coming across three black students who were leaving a grocery store, a young white, implicated in the brawl of the previous evening, ran to his car to get a gun which he pointed at the young men. A fight ensued, the white was disarmed by the students who then fled. Captured by the police, they were charged with “assault and battery” and “armed robbery”. Worried by this episode, several teachers pled with the school administrators to put off the re-opening of the school. But, on Monday, December 4^th, courses resumed normally. Until lunch time.

It is difficult to know what happened then. Some defiant looks, insults, ‘the finger’ waved under the nose of one of the athletes by a white student – a certain Justin Barker –, user of the word “nigger”, friend of the evening brawlers and of the originators of the “joke” with the nooses…he now, in any case received a punch, collapsed, was kicked and lost consciousness. Confusion reigned, none of the witness saw the same thing. But Justin Barker was taken to hospital and the police didn’t wait to put six young blacks behind bars, the six athletes already noted from the first demonstration. The District Attorney immediately charged them with “assault and battery”. But the anger of a handful of teachers who encouraged the school administrators to take a stronger stance made the District Attorney reconsider. Thereafter, it was “attempted murder” and “conspiracy” of which they were accused. For a school-yard brawl, they were facing one hundred years in prison.

The District Attorney, moreover, proceeded to clarify his position. In a text published by the Jena Times he warned: “To those who have caused these incidents, I say that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and for the most serious crimes warranted by the facts. And for your sentence I will request the maximum penalty authorized by the law. I will see to it that you will never again threaten the school students of this area.” The black community was stunned. The six boys were expelled from school and the bail set for their conditional release (from $70,000 to $138,000) was too high for the parents, the majority of whom live in mobile homes or shacks. Thirty-five pastors from the parish got together to call for peace in the community. A communal prayer, likewise, brought the community together one evening in December at the football stadium. For that’s really the problem, the Jena Times asked us to believe, suppressing any hint of racism: we don’t pray enough! In spite of the protestations of the parents, the mobilization of numerous associations for the defence of civil and human rights, and the establishment in Jena of a branch of the NAACP (one of the main organizations for the defence of African-Americans involved in battling racial segregation since 1909), the six black athletes stayed in prison.

The white youth taken away in an ambulance? He’s fine. Leaving the hospital three hours after the brawl, he participated that same evening in a school ceremony. He has since been found in possession of a gun loaded with 13 rounds concealed in his van parked in front of the school.

What followed was equally appalling. And the first trial, that of Mychal Bell the football star, which was held June 26^th, 27^th and 28^th, was an alarming caricature of one law for the rich, one for the poor. In a court room which was divided in two – the whites rallying around Justin Barker and his family on the right; the families of the six blacks who were charged on the left, Mychal Bell faced an entirely white jury, a white District Attorney, a white judge and 17 white witnesses. His black lawyer, assigned by the court, didn’t ask him any questions, didn’t question the selection of the jury, didn’t point out any of the numerous contractions between the witnesses and call any witnesses himself. He didn’t have any questions concerning the racial provocations, the nooses hung on the tree, the brawls, the insults, he said not a word about the future of the young athlete, who, after spending the last 7 months in prison, had distinguished himself with good scholastic results. Nothing. The young man had whispered in the ear of his defence attorney at the most flagrant disagreements between the witnesses, but the defence attorney didn’t hold them to account.

So, when the District Attorney, after having announced at the opening of the proceedings that he was withdrawing the charge of “attempted murder” asked the jury to find Mychal Bell guilty of “conspiracy” and “aggravated assault” the six jurors voted unanimously to convict. What matters about these charges, carrying a penalty of 22 years, is that, under the law of Louisiana, they require the use of a “dangerous weapon”. A teen’s tennis shoes were the weapon in question! The judge will deliver the sentence on July 31.

Mychal Bell’s parents, like those of the other five young blacks awaiting trial, are disheartened. Cleveland Riser, a wise old man who has lived thought the times when buses, schools and fountains were reserved for whites, said sadly: “The boy never had a chance”. Alan Bean, a white activist pastor and founder of the association Friends of Justice, said: “This trial is the worst example of judicial error that I have ever encountered”. And a black woman exiting from the trial said “It was a modern-day lynching”.