Five decades ago, civil rights struggles could be seen in stark, good versus evil terms. Virtuous pioneers such as the Little Rock Nine, James Meredith and Rosa Parks confronted raw racism and triumphed over it. Today, racial injustice persists, still corrosive, but less overt, and so it is in tiny Jena, La, where dangling nooses, an overzealous prosecutor and an insensitive establishment have drawn international attention and generated talk of a new civil rights movement.

Some of the evidence in Jena is murky or in dispute, and the “Jena Six” — the Black teens at the heart of the story — don’t quite conjure images of civil rights heroes of the past. While the Little Rock Nine heroically challenged a bigoted governor who attempted to keep them out of a segregated high school by armed force, the Jena Six are accused of beating a white classmate in front of dozens of witnesses.

The question is whether they, like so many other Blacks, were wronged because of their race. They were charged with attempted murder even though the beating victim was well enough to go to a school function that night. The cases are still being adjudicated. However, a careful review of the known events that led up to the beating suggests that the way white authorities handled racial tensions in their overwhelmingly white town may well have turned a manageable, teachable situation into a racial maelstrom.

School officials appear to have minimized or patronized Black concerns, while the district attorney filed inappropriately severe charges against the Black teens — a double standard that rightly resonated with Blacks across the nation. The story revolves around two primary, but not directly related, episodes: The Nooses. Thirteen months ago, when a Black student asked at a Jena High School assembly whether he could sit under a tree known as a gathering place for white students, an assistant principal told him he could sit anywhere he wanted. The next day, though, two nooses were found dangling from the tree.

Hanging nooses is not a crime under Louisiana law, but, in a state where 335 Blacks were lynched from 1882 to 1968 (a total exceeded only in Mississippi, Georgia and Texas), it is a repugnant, overtly racist act. Three white students were quickly identified as the perpetrators. The principal recommended their expulsion. But a school board committee overruled him. The students were suspended — but the length and terms were not disclosed. “Some alternative suspension, along with other criteria,” LaSalle Parish School Supt. Roy Breithaupt told the Town Talk in nearby Alexandria, La., shortly afterward.

The vague language proved maddening. Stories circulated that the suspension was for three days; this echoed in multiple media reports and became an article of faith. Just in the past few days, Supt. Breithaupt has begun saying that the students were suspended at an alternative school for nine days, served “in-school” suspension for two weeks and faced detentions and other penalties — a far more fitting response.

In the absence of any clarity, though, Black parents and other Blacks in the community, incensed over the nooses, grew more angry at this perceived leniency. Some tried to talk to the school board and were turned away, according to the Alexandria newspaper. At the next meeting, one parent got five minutes to speak. When she was done, only the lone Black on the 10-member board thanked her. The meeting went right on. “They act like she didn’t even come,” one parent told a reporter.

The school’s response to the nooses was almost as clumsy. Officials called an assembly to calm students and invited District Attorney Reed Walters. “I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the stroke of a pen I can make your life miserable,” District Attorney Walters recalled warning the students. That blunt statement ignited deeper resentment.

Three months after the nooses appeared, in early December, two scuffles over a single weekend revived racial tensions. When school opened on Monday, Dec. 4, they exploded. A Black student — identified by some witnesses as 16-year-old Mychal Bell — hit Justin Barker, a white student, as he walked into the schoolyard after lunch. As Justin Barker lay motionless on the ground, Black students allegedly kicked him in the head. He was treated for cuts, bruises and a swollen eye and released from the hospital later that day. He attended a school ceremony that night. J

ustin Barker was not involved in the noose incident, authorities said, and they found no hard evidence to connect that incident to the assault. Six students, ages 14 to 18, were arrested. Mr. Walters, the district attorney, charged five with attempted second degree murder and conspiracy, driving home his point that he could make lives miserable. Together, the two charges carry prison sentences of up to 75 years. All six students, including one charged as a juvenile, were expelled. A judge set high bonds — $70,000 to $138,000.

Mychal Bell spent nearly 10 months in jail. Another teen spent more than six. As the case started drawing national attention, District Attorney Walters began reducing the charges. Mychal Bell was tried first. He was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy by an all-white jury in June. (Only whites showed up for jury duty that day, according to the Alexandria paper, not necessarily surprising in a parish that is 86 percent white and 12 percent Black.)

Since then, an appeals court has overturned Mychal Bell’s conviction, ruling he should not have been tried as an adult on those particular charges. District Attorney Walters said he will prosecute Mychal Bell again, this time as a juvenile. Four others, ages 17 and 18 when the fight occurred, still face charges as adults.

By this summer, the perceived under-reaction to the nooses, contrasted with the harsh treatment of the six teens, had caught fire on Black radio and reverberated across the Internet. The national media descended on Jena, and on Sept. 20, civil rights activists, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, led a rally that drew thousands to the town, many waving signs proclaiming, “Free the Jena 6.”

What works on a placard, however, will not resolve a criminal case. If the six Jena teens were involved in beating Justin Barker, they are no choir boys. Mychal Bell, for example, has been found responsible for several juvenile crimes, including two batteries and was on probation at the time of the beating, according to the Town Talk. (For that matter, the victim, Justin Barker, was arrested last May at Jena High after a gun was found in his truck.)

The six accused teens deserve to be dealt with by the criminal justice system — but fairly and judiciously. Instead, District Attorney Walters brought the most severe charge imaginable. He cited the sneakers the teens wore as lethal weapons. He failed to take into account their youth. The community was left to wonder: Would District Attorney Walters have done the same if the “Jena Six” were white teens and their alleged victim were Black?

That point resonates with Black Americans, not because this case is an aberration in 2007, but because it seems so commonplace. Just ask any Black man who has been stopped for “driving while Black” — and most will tell you they have, or look at the findings of a 1999 study of the city of New York’s “stop and frisk“ program, which concluded that Blacks were detained at higher rates than whites.

While Blacks made up about a quarter of the city’s population, about 51 percent of all persons stopped were Black, the New York attorney general found. Other research, published by Stanford University, suggests prosecutors consider white victims, especially of non-white offenders, to be more credible than non-white victims. Is it any wonder so many Blacks are distrustful of the criminal justice system?

Throughout the episodes in Jena, authorities seem to have lost sight of the obvious goal when a teenager goes off track. It is to salvage his life — usually by some mix of punishment and instruction — not to destroy it.

That applies to noose hangers and muggers, though perhaps not in equal proportions. More broadly, authorities in Jena appear to have had ample opportunities to use those hateful nooses to open talks about race relations with students and parents, Black and white — the most productive outlet for racial tensions. District Attorney Walters had a chance to use his discretion more wisely. If there is a lesson here for the rest of the nation, it is to recognize that color-blind justice is far too rare and that, when racial tensions simmer, they need a peaceful outlet, not hot flames that will bring them to a boil.