If you were to have checked out the Wikipedia article on Jena, Louisiana a few months ago, you would have found a passing reference to the Jena 6 controversy with my original Jena narrative and a few newspaper articles used for documentation.  Things have changed.

Responding to the Tsunami of bad press engulfing their community, Jena residents launched a campaign to set the record straight.  Whenever a Jena-related article is followed by a comments section, Jena’s Geek Squad aims gets there the firstest-with-the-mostest.   Where possible, the story has been carefully reworked on the basis of three working assumptions: 1. the mainstream media has everything wrong; 2. local authorities can be trusted implicitly; and 3. black Jena residents are not to be trusted at all (partially because their views on fact issues rarely become a part of the official record).  Reporters looking for “facts” turn to “official records: and the town fathers of Jena, who have been more than willing to oblige.

The new Wikipedia article on the Jena 6 has been transformed into an extended apologia for a misunderstood community.  Editorial comments from disinterested people have injected the occasional note of balance into the narrative, but the finished product is Jena-friendly from beginning to end.  Events that have received a lot of media scrutiny are handled in a relatively even-handed way.  Dozens of editors have weighed in behind the scenes, forcing the Jena folk to insert some balance into the narrative.

But when fact issues that have not received careful media attention come up for discussion, Jena’s Geek Squad have the playing field largely to themselves.  Forgive this extended critique, but somebody needs to set the record straight.

Throughout the Wikipedia article, appeals are made to US Attorney Donald Washington.  Washington, we are reminded, is black.  He is also the official representative of the United States government.  Mr. Washington, we learn at the outset, “has concluded that there is no evidence of unfair prosecution.” 

So why the big fuss?  The remainder of the article explains the confusion.

We learn that Kenneth Purvis, the young black student who asked if he could sit under the tree at the white end of the school courtyard, was simply joking around.  Students of all races, we are told, sat under the “white tree” “at one time or another.” [My research suggests that black students occasionally wandered over to the white side of the courtyard, and white students could sometimes be seen on the black side of the segregated area.  So long as they returned to their proper place, no one had a problem.  Black and white students, however, were clearly expected to hang with their own kind.]

Black students insist that Purvis and several of his friends tested out their new freedom by sitting under the tree after school.   This undergirds the argument that the nooses were a direct challenge to a breach of the color line.  The Wikipedia article has an alternative explanation.

The noose boys, we learn, hung the nooses in innocent anticipation of an upcoming football game.  Black students, it is reported, were initially delighted by the sight of nooses hanging from the tree.  In a rapturous display of gallows humor, they stuck their heads through the loops, laughing and clowning.  A good time was had by all.

The noose hangers, the Wikipedia article suggests, received much harsher treatment than the media would have you believe.  It isn’t mentioned that Superintendent Roy Breithaupt has changed his “noose-discipline” story.  Originally, he told Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune that the offending students received just a few days of in-school suspension.  Lately, this message has been quietly amended.

The noose section of the article concludes with yet another appeal to the omnipotent, omniscient (and appropriately named) Mr. Washington.  The US Attorney has admitted that the nooses “had all the markings of a hate crime,” but he says they could not be prosecuted because no laws were broken. 

Moreover, the article notes that District Attorney Reed Walters has recently lamented the noose incident in the strongest possible terms.    He would have sent the noose hangers to prison if he could, he now says, but the law wouldn’t allow it.

What has happened to the oft-repeated suggestion that the nooses were a juvenile prank?  Mr. Breithaupt voiced this opinion to the Jena Times and repeated it to the Chicago Tribune.  The Jena paper (a fair measure of popular opinion) vigorously seconded the motion. 

Furthermore, when black students protested this characterization of the noose-symbol back in September of 2006, Reed Walters refused to countenance their concerns.  In fact, in the course of a June, 2007 hearing, Walters said he believed the students were over-reacting.  If the message behind the nooses was as loathsome as Walters now suggests, his dismissive attitude to the student protest is, at best, problematic.

The Wikipedia article addresses that problem.  Reed Walters, we learn, was upset because students were being rowdy and inattentive.  [Black students assure me that the room was silent as the grave when the DA spoke.] 

The article denies repeated allegations that Walters was looking at the black students when he made the “stroke of my pen” remark.  No one can deny that black students were sitting on the traditionally black side of the auditorium.  But we are assured that the DA’s eyes danced from the white side of the room to the black side and back again as he spoke. 

Mr. Walters’ statement that he could make their lives disappear with a stroke of his pen had no relevance for white students.  They weren’t upset.  They weren’t protesting.  Their parents weren’t holding meetings down at the Baptist church.  The unrest had been sparked by a black student protest (unmentioned in this article) led by the young men we now know as the Jena 6.   This act sparked the unrest at the school.  True, some white students had a problem with the protest under their tree.  But according to Mr. Breithaupt and Mr. Walters, the white students had a right to be upset–black students, and their parents, were blowing things out of proportion.

Did white students leave the auditorium feeling that they had been threatened; or did they leave reassured that their protest against the protesters had been validated by the local representative of the State of Louisiana?  To ask the question is to answer it.

The Jena Times is a good small-town newspaper.  They dutifully reported that black parents held a special meeting at L&A Baptist Church to protest the school’s response to the noose incident.  The Times also reported that black parents were initially not allowed to address the school board on the matter.  The Wikipedia article skips over these facts.  Instead there is a brief mention of black students, not their parents, protesting to the school board.  Editors failed to challenge these facts because they have been under-reported.

The Wikipedia article doesn’t mention that sporadic fights between black football players and white friends of the noose hangers flared up during the fall semester.  This gives the false impression that everybody immediately forgot about the noose issue.  Again, we are dealing with issues that have not been addressed in media coverage.

The school fire is briefly noted, but it’s significance is not considered (mainstream reporting has been guilty of the same oversight).  Small town high schools are common ground.  Residents attend different churches and often work out of town; but on Friday night, everybody shows up for the basketball or football game.  It is an act of homage–a pilgrimage to Alma Mater.

When someone burns down the school, it feels like sacrilige–everyone responds as if they have been personally violated.  It is 9-11 in microcosm.  Everyone in Jena, black and white, felt threatened, and the fact that arsonists were not immediately apprehended added to the threat.

Now comes the Fair Barn incident.  Black students say Robert Bailey was admitted to the dance; white students say he was refused admission.  Everyone agrees that a 22 year-old former student assaulted Robert without provocation.  Black students insist that several white friends joined the assault–one of them wielding a beer bottle.  White students aren’t so sure about that.  The Wikipedia article discounts the claims made black students because there is no medical proof that Robert was cut on the head.  Once again, the white version of the story becomes the official version.

The under-reported “Gotta Go” incident receives similar treatment.  It is mentioned that the young white student who pulled the shotgun on Robert Bailey and his friends attended the party at the Fair Barn the night before.  But was the young man part of the group of white students who joined in the assault on Robert?  Robert and his friends say yes; the Wikipedia article doesn’t address the question.

If the young white male had participated in an assault on Robert a few hours before, it is not surprising that the white student went for his gun when he saw his erstwhile victim and three friends emerging from a convenience store.   But what if Robert and his friends are lying about that?  Then we have three black males chasing a white male to his truck for the sheer fun of it.  That is precisely what the official version of events suggests.

I will leave it to Robert’s attorney to sort out the fact issues here.  But the puzzle pieces only fit if Robert had a personal beef with the gun-wielding white student.  Robert had encountered hundreds of white people as he exited the Gotta Go in the past; what made this incident different?

The article allows Roy “childish prank” Breithaupt to describe what happened to Justin Barker on December 4, 2006.  “The victim,” we are told, “was attacked, was beaten and kicked into a state of bloody unconsciousness.” 

The article becomes more objective when attention shifts to the trial of Mychal Bell. These matters have been frequently addressed in the media and Wikipedia editors knew enough to demand fairness.  It is even reported that a former football coach named Benji Lewis, an eye witness to the assault on Barker, signed a statement describing the attack in detail–Mychal Bell is not mentioned.  We also learn that coach Lewis was not asked to testify and that Mychal’s court appointed attorney called no witnesses. 

Coverage of the September 20th rally is also fairly balanced, with sympathetic editors and Jena folks jockeying for control of the narrative.  The final version is an awkward amalgam of observations from both sides of the polemical divide.

But when we arrive at the “columnists and editorials” section, the Geek Squad is in full control.  The final word is given to the fair-and-balanced Jason Whitlock.  The Kansas City Star sports columnist asserts that the media story has been “created and orchestrated” by Alan Bean.  “Whitlock,” we read, “contends that the facts surrounding the case in the media have been seriously distorted by Bean and reports that Jena officials consider Bean’s version of the Jena Six events as ‘hogwash'”.

This comment is the unchallenged final word.

You have to admire Jena’s Geek Squad–they take their work seriously, and they do it well.  If these cases ever see the inside of a courtroom (and I still believe they won’t) a watching world will encounter two versions of truth: the official view (reflected in the unchallenged portions of the Wikipedia article), and the black view (reflected in my narrative).   It’s he-said vs. she-said; Whitewash vs. Hogwash.