Executive Director Alan Bean wrote this three-part reflection after participating in the September 20^th rally for justice in Jena, Louisiana. Alan concludes that a new civil rights movement was gaining traction in Jena on September 20^th, 2007. But that movement will look totally different from the spectacle that America saw on CNN.

We’ve broken up this reflection on the September 20th protests into three parts:

Part 1: Premonitions of a Movement | Part 2: Sowing the Wind | Part 3: Looking to the Future

Part 1: Premonitions of a Movement

The September 20^th rally for justice in Jena was a thing of beauty. Local officials had declared a state of emergency. Businesses were instructed to close. Some buildings were boarded up. The local Methodist Church kept its doors open; the rest of the town was shut up tight. The Methodists had the right idea.

When protesters started getting off the buses in Jena, Louisiana on Thursday morning I decided to get a picture of every T-shirt I encountered. After fifty pictures I threw in the towel. Virtually every contingent from across the nation had produced its own shirt. The background was invariably black, and there was usually some depiction of a noose and a tree.

I found myself flashing back to the day in January when I first met Mychal Bell and Robert Bailey, in the lock-up on the second floor of the LaSalle Parish courthouse. The boys had only been behind bars for a month or so at the time, but they were frightened and stunned by the events unfolding around them. Their eyes were asking, “What is happening to me? Why am I here?”

I don’t see a lot of visions (it’s not a Baptist thing), but that day was an exception. As Caseptla Bailey and I emerged from the courthouse, the entire lawn was covered with people demanding justice. Then it all faded; a momentary flash—a premonition.

On September 20^th, the protestors didn’t just cover the lawn in front of the courthouse; people in black T-shirts stretched for blocks. Hundreds of buses were parked throughout the town. I was too far from the makeshift stage at the courthouse to hear the speakers and, frankly, I didn’t care—the real message was being delivered by the beautiful people who came to Jena to voice their protest.

On September 20^th, the civil rights leaders of tomorrow weren’t on stage—they were watching from the crowd. They will get their chance—please, Jesus, make it soon. America is desperate for a new civil rights movement led by fresh faces.

Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Michael Baisden and the rest swept into town in stretch limousines, delivered their sound bites; then retreated to the relative comfort of Alexandria. Most of the people on the street had endured a harrowing two-day ride in a bus to stand under Jena’s unforgiving sun. But when we all hit the streets, everyone knew this was an historic moment—something unprecedented and unparalleled; a resurgence of the marches on Washington in the early 1960s. I almost expected the scene to be suddenly transformed into the black and white images I remember from television.

But this was not a black and white crowd. White people did travel to Jena for the rally, but this event was over 99% African American. It takes a big fire in the belly to put a person on a bus for two days. When I asked people why they had come to Jena the answer usually started with, “I heard about this story from Michael Baisden, or Steve Harvey or on CNN.” Then came the stories. “My cousin (or my son, or my brother) is doing time back home. What happened to Mychal Bell is happening all over this country.”

Black people understand this; white folks (for the most part) don’t have a clue what is going on in the criminal justice system and don’t want to know.