Judge J.P. Mauffray is disappointed.  He had desperately wanted to use the juvenile justice privacy provisions to deflect public attention from the Mychal Bell trial and all court proceedings related thereto.  As Howard Witt explains below, Rapides Parish

District Judge, Thomas Yeager, isn’t standing for it.  “The right to an open trial is one that’s very important,” Yeager said in making his ruling, “so that the public has confidence in what we do.”

Now we must wait to see if Mychal Bell’s juvenile trial, currently scheduled for December 6th, will be continued to a later date so Mauffray can appeal Yeager’s decision.  For Mychal’s sake, I hope it is.

On a related note, Robert Bailey’s trial, originally scheduled for next week, has been indefinitely postponed.  For the sake of the defendants, Jena residents, and prosecutor Reed Walters, these cases are best settled out of court.

_____________________________________

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

1:24 PM CST, November 21, 2007
 JENA, La.

A judge ruled Wednesday that the public and the news media should have full access to all legal proceedings involving Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially-charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, whose prosecution had been shrouded in secrecy on orders of the trial judge.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Chicago Tribune and joined by a coalition of major U.S. media companies, Rapides Parish District Judge Thomas Yeager ordered that Bell’s upcoming criminal trial, as well as any pre-trial hearings, must be open to the press and the public.

Yeager also ordered that the court record and transcripts of any closed proceedings held so far be made available to the news media, and that attorneys for Bell be released from the trial judge’s gag order directing them not to speak about the case.

“The right to an open trial is one that’s very important,” Yeager said in making his ruling, “so that the public has confidence in what we do.”

Yeager’s ruling was a rebuke to LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray, who had ordered that all the proceedings in Bell’s case should be closed because the youth, who is now 17, is being tried as a juvenile for his alleged part in the beating of a white student at Jena High School last December.

The news media argued, and Yeager agreed, that Louisiana law, while generally mandating that juvenile matters must be kept confidential, nevertheless requires that certain juvenile cases involving serious felony charges must be open to the public. Bell is charged with aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy, two of the charges that qualify to be heard in open court under state law, Yeager ruled.

It was the second major setback for Mauffray in the Bell case. Last June, Mauffray presided when Bell was tried and convicted as an adult on the battery and conspiracy charges. An appellate court later vacated that conviction, ruling that Jena District Attorney Reed Walters and Mauffray had improperly tried Bell as an adult rather than a juvenile.

Mauffray sat as a spectator in his own courtroom Wednesday as Yeager, appointed by the state supreme court as a visiting judge to hear the news media case, politely upbraided him.

“It’s not discretionary, it’s mandatory,” Yeager said. “[Mauffray] should open the proceedings and he should open the court records. It’s not a confidential case.”

Mauffray declined to comment after the ruling. But his attorneys vowed to immediately appeal the decision and asked Yeager to suspend its enforcement until that appeal is heard.

Yeager said he would only suspend his ruling if all parties in Bell’s case, currently scheduled for trial Dec. 6, will agree to postpone the trial and any other pretrial proceedings while Mauffray’s appeal makes it way through a higher court. Otherwise, Yeager said, the news media and the public would suffer irreparable harm if their access to past and future court proceedings is denied while the appeal is pending.

In a court filing last week in answer to the media coalition lawsuit, Mauffray’s attorneys had already conceded that Bell’s upcoming trial is required to be open under state law. But Mauffray had argued that the news media had no right to access pretrial proceedings or court records.

“This was a great victory for the press today and the rights of the people to observe the workings of the court,” said Mary Ellen Roy, lead attorney for the news media coalition.

Bell and five other black teenagers face trial for the Dec. 4 beating of a white student, Justin Barker, who was attacked and briefly knocked unconscious. That incident capped months of violent racial tensions in Jena set off after a black student asked school administrators for permission to sit beneath a shade tree in the high school courtyard traditionally used only by whites. The next day, three white students hung nooses from the tree-an offense dismissed as a youthful prank by school officials but denounced by many black students and their parents as a hate crime.

Walters had initially charged the Jena 6 defendants with attempted murder, but later reduced the charges. Civil rights leaders have criticized the prosecution of the black youths as excessive and indicative of what they assert is a pattern of unequal justice in the mostly white town of 2,867.

hwitt@tribune.com
 

The Michael Baisden fiasco has legs.  I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.  I have said my piece on the matter and was determined to let it go at that.  But this thoughtful essay deserves your attention.  Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report argues that Baisden’s sins are a direct result of the Black media’s shift from information to entertainment.

Michael Baisden is entertaining.  He has a lovely baritone; he’s glib; he’s slick; and I’m sure he is provocative.  But is he informative?  Does he care about the facts?  And if he doesn’t, might it be because he works in a medium rooted in sensation, not information. 

Alternet just picked up this penetrating essay that has been circulating for over a week now.  Ford doesn’t pull his punches:

We urge Color of Change not to let that squealing pig go. His written and internet-posted “apology” is insincere and incoherent, while his slanderous and libelous radio message, repeated and recorded over the course of weeks — that Color of Change, the ACLU, Friends of Justice and others were engaged in fraud — cast doubt on the victims’ reputations in the minds of hundreds of thousands of listeners. Any recantation must have the same force as the original allegation. That means Baisden, the low-life with no shame or scruples, should be required to give as much radio time to his apology as he invested in his brazen assault.

I wish I could argue with those sentiments (because I desperately want to forget this ugly incident and move on), but Ford is right.  Baisden needs to issue a formal apology, first to Marcus Jones (Mychal Bell’s father) for exploiting his confusion, then to all the organizations slandered on Love, Lust and Lies.

Several articles have been written in response to recently released FBI hate crimes report, but this piece from the BBC explains why the FBI statistics tell you more about the prevailing mindset in Mississippi than they tell you about hate crimes.

Wide differences in reporting by the states has provoked criticism.

Louisiana reported 22 hate crimes, Alabama one, and Mississippi none, while California reported 1,297 and New Jersey 759.

Heidi Beirich, from the Southern Poverty Law Centre in Montgomery, Alabama, told the Washington Post that many states are dismissive of hate crimes and have different ways of classifying what constitutes a hate crime.

“That’s one example of why hate crime statistics are basically a worthless number. It’s not the FBI’s fault,” she said.

Given that Mississippi doesn’t believe a single hate crime was committed within its borders last year, it is hardly surprising that the nooses hung by the “Jena 3” didn’t make the FBI hate list.  Southern officials believe in Jesus, but they don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, and few, it seems, believe in hate crimes.

I have always argued that the proper response to the noose incident in Jena was education, not prosecution; but the act should constitute a hate crime in anybody’s book.  It isn’t that far a drive from Jena to Mississippi.

Cudos to the Southern Poverty Law Center for deflating the FBI Report.

New York Times pundits have been waging an internecine war over Ronald Reagan’s “states rights” comment at the Neshoba County fair in 1980.  David Brooks fired off the first shot by denying that The Great Communicator was nearly as bigoted as critics claim and that the Neshoba incident is just another cheap shot by simple-minded liberals.

Bob Herbert, the Times’ token black columnist, is unrepentant. 

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

 Paul Krugman has written two indignant responses to Brooks’ apologia, including today’s offering, “Republicans and Race.”

. . . in December 1979 the Republican national committeeman from Mississippi wrote a letter urging that the party’s nominee speak at the Neshoba Country Fair, just outside the town where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. It would, he wrote, help win over “George Wallace inclined voters.”

Sure enough, Reagan appeared, and declared his support for states’ rights — which everyone took to be a coded declaration of support for segregationist sentiments.

As Krugman acknowledges, Reagan made not a single overt reference to race.  But then,

Neither did Richard Nixon. As Thomas and Mary Edsall put it in their classic 1991 book, “Chain Reaction: The impact of race, rights and taxes on American politics,” “Reagan paralleled Nixon’s success in constructing a politics and a strategy of governing that attacked policies targeted toward blacks and other minorities without reference to race — a conservative politics that had the effect of polarizing the electorate along racial lines.”

This strategy was effective, Krugman argues, because, as Reagan took the stage at the Neshoba County Fair, a powerful backlash to the civil rights movement was rolling across the southern states. 

Scott “Grits” Henson, the best political blogger in the great state of Texas, sides with David Brooks on this one.  “I think it’s time to bust apart apart this stale, outdated meme that “states rights” is merely “code” for racism,” Henson wrote in a recent column, “Grits to Bob Herbert: you still don’t understand white southerns”.  

“There’s some historical truth to it,” Henson admits, “but it’s a truth that obscures many equally important ones, IMO damaging honest political discussion more than clarifying it.”

Henson’s point is that not all Reagan Democrats interpreted the reference to “state’s rights” as an fond reference to the Jim Crow past.  Scott says he was drawn to the phrase by a legitimate fear of Big Brother federalism and a reverence for constitutional checks and balances.

Scott Henson possesses an encyclopedic grasp of political history, and I’m sure he is right about Bob Herbert (and most other Yankee scribes) failing to understand white southerners.  Nonetheless, I’m with Herbert and Krugman on this one.

Context is everything.  It is no longer acceptable to make overtly racist remarks in public: in the South, or anywhere else in America.  This development may constitute the only solid advance the civil rights movement achieved.  And there is a downside. 

When George Wallace stood in the door of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama defying the National Guard, you knew where he stood.  Wallace wanted you to know; his political survival depended on it. 

But that was June of 1963.  Reagan delivered his Neshoba County speech in August of 1980, seventeen eventful years later.  No longer could a southern politician critique the civil rights movement in an overtly and unapologetically. 

According to a now-redacted Wikopedia article, Louisiana congressman Speedy Oteria Long ran for the humble office of LaSalle Parish (Jena) District Attorney in 1973 because there was no longer any room in federal politics for an outspoken segregationist.   The original “Speedy Long” Wikopedia entry contained a great deal of material that has been eliminated by post-Jena scribes, but the basic facts remain. (The Wikopedia entry on Gillis Long, Speedy’s cousin and long-time political opponent, provides much of the same information as the original “Speedy” entry–albeit in less graphic language.”

Speedy Long served as LaSalle Parish District Attorney until 1985, and continued his legal practice in Jena for another twenty years.  According to the unredacted Wikopedia article (a remnant of which can still be found here), Reed Walters, the current LaSalle Parish DA, eulogized Speedy Long as “the epitome of a Southern gentleman . . . He was a mentor,” Walters said.  “I could go to him for good, sound, solid advice.”

As Scott Henson suggests, it is easy to read things into this sort of information that don’t fit the profile.  An old time friend of Speedy Long assures me that the Jena politician invited the KKK to participate in his rallies only because it bought him votes.  Privately, I am told, Long was repelled by the “hard bigotry” of his redneck supporters. 

Moreover, there is good reason to believe that Speedy Long was every bit the “Southern gentleman” Reed Walters says he was.  (Long died in the fall of 2006, a few weeks after the now-notorious noose incident.)  Elderly black residents of LaSalle Parish remember Mr. Long as a kind and fair man.  He didn’t hate black people–in fact, he was rather fond of them.  On most issues, Long voted with liberal Democrats.  He simply believed in states rights on constitutional, libertarian and, one suspects, traditionalist grounds.  If the majority of southerners wished to maintain the old Jim Crow regime, Long believed, they should be allowed to do so. 

Nonetheless, according to biographer Bill Dodd, Speedy Long “was a segregationist and had sense enough to quit Congress before he got beat.”

Why have editors excised the Mr. Walters’ eulogy from the Wikopedia article on Speedy Long?  Perhaps they feared that some enterprising soul might connect the dots: Speedy Long was an unrepentant segregationist; Speedy Long was Reed Walter’s mentor; therefore, Reed Walters is a segregationist.

The facts do not support that conclusion.  Unlike his mentor, Reed Walters was born into a world where public opposition to the civil rights movement is a one-way ticket to political oblivion.   Trent Lott’s whispered remark to Strom Thurmond nearly derailed his political career.   For obvious reasons, Reed Walters has never gone on record as opposing the civil rights movement or its manifold consequences. 

All we can say for sure is that Reed Walters came of age in a world in which respected elder statesmen deeply resented the forced integration of the South.  By the time Reed Walters took over as DA in 1991, the integration question was moot.

Context is everything.  When Speedy Long decided to retire from federal politics in 1973, Jena High School had been formally integrated for three years. 

Were Jena’s white residents clambering for an integrated high school in 1970?  Hardly.

Was Jena’s black community marching on the LaSalle Parish Courthouse, demanding an integrated school system in 1970?  No, they weren’t.  Seven years after the Nashoba County incident, everyone knew the fate of uppity niggers and white nigger lovers.

But it goes deeper than fear.  Many African Americans old enough to remember 1970 see the integration of the high school as a backwards step.  Several black teachers lost their jobs and black students suddenly found themselves on a formally integrated campus surrounded by resentful white people. 

This was the context for Jena’s informal system of educational apartheid.  Classes were integrated; but the courtyard and the school auditorium remained strictly segregated.  You wouldn’t find any of this in the official school handbook; but everybody, black and white, knew the score.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan made his appeal to states rights in nearby Neshoba County, white residents of LaSalle Parish got the message.

Eleven years later, over 70% of the white voters of LaSalle Parish cast their votes for David Duke.  Does this mean that white sheets were hanging in the closets of most white voters?  Not at all.  A vote for David Duke was a desperate shot across the bow; the rough equivalent of putting a confederate flag sticker on your truck bumper.  But the simple truth cannot be denied: fifteen years before hangmans nooses flapped from a tree at Jena High School, LaSalle Parish residents were still angry about the civil rights legislation that had been crammed down their throats in the early 60s.

What were Jena’s noose-boys thinking when they did their dirty work.  Craig Franklin, the unofficial mouthpiece of Jena’s white community, says the boys were playing a joke on some of their equally white friends.  It was all in good fun.  You see, there was this tradition of hanging random objects from the now-famous tree.  When the noose-boys learned that their handiwork had been interpreted as a hate crime, Franklin tells us, they were horrified.  Nothing of the sort had ever entered their minds.

Are we really supposed to believe that?  I mean . . . really?

For thirty-six autumns, an integrated Jena High School has been holding first-day-of-school assemblies in a segregated auditorium: white kids on one side; black kids on the other.  This is a matter of public record.

But in late August of 2006, a black student named Kenneth Purvis asked if it was okay for black students to sit under the tree on the white end of the school courtyard.  Editor Franklin suggests that Purvis, desperate to milk a few more minutes from the assembly, tossed off a random and meaningless question.

Are we really supposed to believe that . . . really?

A black kid in Jena, Louisiana doesn’t stand up at a school assembly and ask if he can sit under a tree at the white end of the school courtyard unless he is as serious as cancer.  He may giggle nervously as he asks the question (we are talking about a high school freshman, after all), but he is serious.

This wasn’t a question about a tree, and everybody knew it–just as everybody at the Neshoba County fair knew what Ronald Reagan was getting at.  Kenneth Purvis was asking if Jena High School’s informal apartheid was official policy.  “What’s the deal,” Purvis was asking; “are white kids and black kids self-segregating; or is there an official policy that we have to hang out at separate ends of the square and sit on opposite sides of the auditorium?”

Purvis didn’t say those words; but that’s what he meant, and everybody knew that’s what he meant.

Principal Scott Windham understood the “tree question” and gave the only answer a public official could give in 2006: “Ya’ll can sit wherever you want.”

In other words, “You can self-segregate if you want; or you can integrate if you’d rather.  But nothing is set in stone.  There is no informal policy.  It’s all up to you.”

Kenneth Purvis and his buddies liked that answer.  They like it so much that, as soon as the final bell sounded that day, they sat themselves down under the shade of that tree.  Then, jubilant and reassured, they went home.

The next morning, two (some say three) nooses, in the school colors of black and gold, were swinging from the branches of that tree. 

Were the noose-hangers sending a message?  Context rules out any other interpretation. 

The noose-boys liked Jena’s informal apartheid.  They weren’t particularly gifted, academically or athletically.  Black kids like Mychal Bell and Carwin Jones were big, fast, strong and socially outgoing.  The black athletes hung together.  Mess with one of them and you had to answer to all of them. 

But, thanks to Jena’s informal apartheid, the noose-boys didn’t have to mess with kids like Mychal and Carwin.  They stayed on the white side of the school yard and the black students stayed on the black side.  Occasionally, students would cross the color line.  The black and white football players got along pretty well, and there were even a few cross-racial friendships.  But the unspoken racial code was strong enough to keep country white kids from having to deal with black athletes like Mychal and Carwin if they didn’t want to.  And they didn’t want to.

The nooses were a vote in favor of maintaining the color line.  How do I know that?  Have any of these kids said as much? 

Did Ronald Reagan mention the legacy of the civil rights movement when he spoke at Neshoba County in 1980?  Did he have to?

Context is everything. 

The kids hung the nooses precisely because they were participating in a conversation that precluded words.  It was all symbol and code, but the flow conversation was understood by everyone.

Until, that is, carpetbaggers and outside agitators started reading between the lines.  Then a noose is just a rope hanging from a tree; a rope entirely devoid of significance, racial or otherwise.  Context is nothing.  A cigar is just a cigar.  A noose is just a noose.  Nothing means anything . . . unless, maybe, the noose was intended as a practical joke–on white kids.  Or maybe it was a good-natured threat to next week’s football opponent–they were called the Mustangs.  Or maybe the noose-boys were just watching Lonesome Dove and were so captivated by the image of nooses hanging from a tree that they decided to hang some nooses, randomly, you know, and they picked that tree because . . . well, that’s the tree you hang stuff in, and . . .

Are we really supposed to believe this stuff . . . really?

Why would a sane, intelligent man like Craig Franklin drain every hint of common-sense-context from the Jena narrative?

Why would a sane, intelligent individual like David Brooks sell New York Times readers a de-contextualized version of the Neshoba County story?

Because David Brooks is trying to rescue Ronald Reagan, the maligned hero of the modern conservative revival, from the obvious.

Similarly, Craig Franklin is trying to rescue Reed Walters, the maligned hero of Jena, Louisiana, from the obvious.

Two questions: what did the nooses signify to the noose-boys; and, much more significantly, what did the nooses signify to public officials in Jena?

Ex-principal, Scott Windham thought the nooses, whatever they signified, deserved a full year’s suspension.  You don’t give a full year’s suspension to students for playing an innocent prank on white members of the rodeo team, (or, alternatively, for issuing a playful threat to the Jena Giants’ next football opponent). 

Windham’s recommended punishment only makes sense if we are talking about a hate crime perpetrated against Kenneth Purvis, his friends, and every African American student at Jena High School.

Given the context, no other interpretation is possible.  Scott Windham knew the noose-boys were demanding a segregated school courtyard and he wasn’t about to yield to their not-so-subtle threats.  Besides, there were legal issues to be considered.  A potential lawsuit.  Black parents were up in arms over the nooses.  This couldn’t be swept under the rug.  A strong statement had to be made.

But Scott Windham did not represent the last word in LaSalle Parish.  School Superintendent Roy Breithaupt and District Attorney Reed Walters (the school district’s legal representative) had the power to overrule the principal, and they used that power.

Outraged black parents convened a meeting at L&A Baptist Church to consider their options.  The next morning, black students, led by the young men now known as the Jena 6, staged a protest in which they symbolically occupied the tree at the white end of the school courtyard. 

Fights broke out.  Why?  If the students at Jena High School were “self-segregating”, why did the black students suddenly feel the need to occupy the noose-tree; and why did this gesture arouse such violent anger in some white students?  

Tensions became so severe that many parents, black and white, stopped by the school to pick up their kids. 

Why did no one explain to these parents that the noose-boys had been misunderstood?  When Scott Windham called an emergency assembly, why didn’t he assure the black students that they were misreading the situation?  Why didn’t he ask the noose-boys to write statements of apology that could be read to the student body?  Why didn’t Mr. Windham assure the students, black and white, that the campus of Jena High School was fully integrated, so students could sit wherever they wanted?

By this time, Principal Windham had seen the writing on the wall.  He had seriously misread the situation.  His initial recommendation of harsh treatment for the noose-boys had infuriated white parents; now Mr. Windham was fighting for his job. 

A district championship was more important than a few silly nooses, Windham suggested.  Then, fearing that argument wasn’t working, he turned the meeting over to Reed Walters.

Every police officer in Jena, in full dress uniform, was present in the auditorium when Reed Walters rose to speak.  As he has repeatedly explained, the Prosecutor wasn’t happy to find himself in the high school auditorium.  He had been sitting at his desk at the courthouse trying to decide if he should ask for the death penalty in a rape case, when the call came in from principal Windham.  The foolishness at the high school, Walters has suggested. was not worthy of this attention. 

Like Principal Windham, Reed Walters made no attempt to assure the students that, the noose-boys notwithstanding, Jena High School was fully integrated and would remain so.  Walters could have assured the black students that they were free to sit anywhere they wanted–including under the tree at the traditionally white end of the square.  He could have issued an appeal for racial harmony.

But he did none of these things.  Instead, he told the students that he could be their best friend or their worst enemy.

No one questioned this statement; it was self-evident.  In his role as prosecutor, Reed Walters could choose to be harsh (like Principal Windham) or he could choose to be lenient (like Superintendent Breithaupt).  The office of district attorney comes with enormous powers of discretion.  Every expression of negative juvenile behavior could be interpreted as a crime, as an innocent prank, or as something in between.

Then Reed Walters pulled a pen from his suit jacket pocket, clicked it dramatically, and issued a surly threat: “I want you to know that with a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear.”

To whom was he speaking? 

It doesn’t matter.

According to Craig Franklin, Reed Walters issued his threat because (a) he was angry that Scott Windham can called him over to the schoolhouse, and (b) a gaggle of giggling girls (white girls, mind you) weren’t paying sufficient attention.

Are we really supposed to believe this stuff . . . really?

Reed Walters, we are told, was telling disrespectful white girls that, if they didn’t show him the respect due his office, he would put them away.  For what?  Is there a law against dissing a middle aged white guy at a school assembly?

More to the point, is there any conceivable circumstance under which Reed Walters could conceivably send a white, female Jena High student to prison? 

Of course not.  If he was upset with the level of noise in the room, Mr. Walters might have called the room to attention; but he would never threaten to press criminal charges against the offending students.  He isn’t crazy.

Reed Walters issued his threat to the students responsible for the current emergency.  He was angry with the black football players who had protested the noose incident.  That much is certain.  It is also possible that he was angry with the white students who reacted violently to this protest.

The situation could have been easily defused.  Mr. Walters could have informed the students that, during their free time, they could sit in any part of the school courtyard they felt drawn to.  Further, he could have warned the white students that any attempt to maintain a de facto segregation at the high school would not be tolerated.  Students could self-segregate if they chose to; but any attempt to restrict access to the “white side” or the “black side” of the square was in violation of school policy, state and federal civil rights statute, and would not be tolerated.

It would have been so easy to say that.  It so obviously needed to be said.  It was the natural thing to say.  So why didn’t Walters say it?

Context is everything. 

Reed Walters avoided the integration-segregation issue for the same reason his mentor, Speedy Long, had allowed the KKK to parade at his political rallies thirty-five years earlier–his constituency demanded it.

Neither Reed Walters nor Roy Breithaupt were endorsing segregation in the fall of 2006; nor were they championing the civil rights of black students.  They were ignoring an issue that, in their professional judgement, the white community of Jena wasn’t ready to deal with.

This explains why otherwise sane and intelligent people are currently engaged in myth-making.  If Reed Walters was threatening to weild the awesome powers of his office against black students protesters, the attempted murder charges filed last December appear in an altogether different light.

So the context must disappear, even if that means cooking up utterly impossible apologias for Reed, Roy and the noose boys.  These “explanations” may work for conservative bloggers, the editors of the Christian Science Monitor, or even the Department of Justice, but they will not stand up in open court. 

Reed Walters could have defused a potentially catastrophic situation.  He didn’t.  Instead, by discounting the legitimate protest of black students, Mr. Walters gave his tacit approval to the noose-boys and their toxic message.  He placed black and white students in an adversarial relationship that was bound to end badly.  When the inevitable occurred, Mr. Walters was the best friend of white residents and the worst enemy of black defendants.  In addition, he has issued a string of “extrajudicial remarks” which will eventually get him recused from these cases.

When that happens, the Jena story will be told the way it really happened.

Context is everything.

Yesterday’s march on the Justice Department in Washington sparked a brief article in the Washington Post.  The New York Times published a two-paragraph summary of the AP article, but didn’t ask anyone to cover the event.  The LA Times did a piece, but signalled their discomfort with the subject matter by featuring a dismissive comment from a local Southern Christian Leadership Conference official.

Reporters who covered the story weren’t sure what the march signified.  Some characterized it as an extension of the September event in Jena; some believed it was motivated by the recent spate of noose hangings; while others focused on a range of recent horror stories from Sean Bell to Megan Williams.

The Department of Justice clearly needs a wake-up call, and it appears that the Rev. Al Sharpton is the only black opinion leader in America sufficiently motivated to lead the parade.  That is to Sharpton’s credit.  At least the man takes action.  But it is also a problem.

Sharpton has had a banner year–no question–but he isn’t playing well with black intellectuals.  Ta-Nehsi Coates questions Sharpton’s credentials as the representative African American. 

“When he becomes the face of often legitimate racial injustices, his critics are then free to snort, ‘Yeah, but it’s Al Sharpton.’ Sure, that’s unfair to the cause. But the reverend is no victim. Mr. Sharpton needs the media to keep up the illusion of his relevance. The pact is simple: He gets a platform, and the media get great television. Memo to everyone everywhere: Al Sharpton isn’t a black leader; he just plays one on TV.”

My concern with the famous reverend is strictly practical: he majors in the minor.  I don’t mean to minimize the significance of nooses being strung up across America (I am horrified by the trend); but nooses are a symptom of the real disease.

America’s deepest problem is mass incarceration, a subject Al Sharpton rarely mentions.  Take Jena, for example.  Sharpton is so insistant that the noose hangers be prosecuted as adults in federal court, he appears to have forgotten about the fate of the Jena 6.  Perhaps the argument is that if the feds won’t crack down on the noose boys they need to stop DA Reed Walters from being so hard on Mychal Bell.  I don’t think that argument will play to well in a court of law.

Al Sharpton wants all noose hangers prosecuted.  Unfortunately, the boys who hung nooses in Jena appear to be the only hate criminals in the nation willing to step up and admit their misdeeds.  You can’t prosecute a noose; you need a perp, and we rarely have one.

Jena demonstrates how easily the children of America are swept into prison.  That is why my primary goal from the beginning has been to get these kids good attorneys so the cases can be removed from the hands of LaSalle Parish jurors and public officials.

The message must not be, “Let’s lock up the white kids too.”

“With a stroke of my pen I can make your lives disappear,” Walters told the young people of Jena.  And across America, young people are disappearing into the Gulag.  Once in the system, they rarely get out. 

True, some people belong in prison–there is no practical alternative.  But America’s prison population has exploded in the course of the last quarter century and poor people of color are paying the price.  The folks who rode the buses to Jena understand that.  Does Rev. Sharpton?

I don’t have time for an extended response to this provocative piece, but Harvey Cox and company are clearly asking the right questions.  Please read and respond.

By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA)– Harvard University divinity professor, the Rev. Harvey G. Cox Jr., recalls marching for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and even being arrested for the cause.

“There were an enormous number of white pastoral participants. There were nuns. There were priests. There were rabbis. There were a lot of people involved at that time,” recalled Cox, among the nation’s preeminent theologians.

But, more than 40 years later, amidst daily reports of racial violence, threatening nooses, torture, and other hate crimes across the U.S., Cox now marvels at the near deafening silence of his fellow white clergy.

“I have noticed, especially since I’ve been watching the Jena incident, how that is not happening now,” he said of the once thriving white participation in the movement for racial justice. “For one reason or another, maybe their plate is so full and they’ve got these other things they’re concerned about, maybe they don’t think of this as very central.”

Among the early members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Cox is one among clerical observers and race hate experts interviewed by the NNPA News Service who agree that white pastors are failing to speak on racism.

Cox points to several reasons that he believes the silence has come.

Many white Christian leaders are simply pre-occupied with other issues such as the Iraqi War, he said. Also, both white and black churches nowadays are simply preaching sermons that help people from any race to make it through the hardships of day-to-day life, he says.

Cox added that among the foremost reasons that white clergy are not as outspoken on civil rights in 2007 is because there’s no leading black clergy of equal influence to Dr. King.

“It just has to be recognized that there isn’t the kind of elegant and eloquent summiting of the white church leaders as we had with Dr. King. Nobody, it seems to me, is even trying to do that very much,” Cox said. “There is no comparable voice that I can see.”

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the SCLC with King, remembers Cox’s activism and generally agrees with his observations about today’s white clergy. But, he called blaming the silence of white clergy in race matters because of the lack of an “elegant and eloquent” black leader a cop out.

“The model is not black preachers. The model is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ’s word is still there and the Word of God is still there and the call of God is still there. I admire Harvey Cox, the activist. And I’ve admired him for a long time,” said Lowery. “But, I think he’s hiding behind the fact that there’s no King. There’s Jesus. And, you know, preachers are called by God and Christ. They don’t have to have a black person to hide behind. They can step out on their own faith.”

Lowery predicts members of the so-called “Christian Right”-including Pat Robertson, who have largely dominated the media over the past decades with their political participation will be forced to speak on racial issues as the presidential race heats up in the months to come.

“They are the loudest spokespersons and they are the ones who are dominating the religious scene. And others have been reluctant to come forth and that’s unfortunate because they should not hide their light under a bushel,” said Lowery. “That, I think, is the sternest challenge to the communities of faith today-to put forth the positive aspects of the faith as it relates to human relations. And right now the religious right, the [now deceased Jerry] Falwells and that group, Jones University and Pat Robertson, that bunch, they’re in charge.

“White preachers have been reluctant to be a headlight because they have suffered consequences when they have taken bold stands. So, the number of those who have taken those kinds of stands, they are few,” said Lowery. “But, I think there are many, many white people in the community who need leadership. They’re not getting it at the moment. But, I think the tide will turn. Unfortunately, they’re assuming the tail light position, waiting on somebody else to provide the headlights. But, I think we’re going to see in the coming months more white religious leaders speaking out in the context of progress and justice.”

In the Jena Six incident in Jena, La., white teens hung noose ropes in a so-called “White Tree” at Jena High School after seeing three black students sitting under the tree. Numerous noose incidents around the nation have followed since the controversy and national march to protest unequal justice among the black and white teens last month. But, some observers dismiss noose threats as pranks or copycats, ignoring the thousands of blacks who were murdered by hangman’s nooses throughout history.

White pastors have a responsibility to teach their congregations from a biblical perspective on such matters, said Bishop Noel Jones, pastor of the 10,000-member City of Refuge in Gardena, Calif.

“The greatest thing to solve the problem would be for white pastors to stick their necks out far enough and deal with the issues of justice and to deal with the issues of what’s proper and what’s right in America,” said Jones. “I’m not just talking about white people tolerating minorities, but I’m talking about white people loving them. This has been our cry since slavery.”

Minister Sharmaine Allen, an African American divinity student at predominately white conservative Regent University, is not convinced that all white pastors are silent.

“I’m familiar with many white pastors who this is a passion for them. And they speak about it, but they don’t have the same platform and so they’re definitely not heard in terms of the volume,” said Allen, who once convinced the African American pastorate at Dominion Church of Washington, D.C., where she now serves as a minister, to hold a racial reconciliation forum during regular Sunday morning service.

But, in white churches, just talking about racism is not enough, she said, adding that the pastor must take the leadership from the inside out.

“When the pastor’s heart changes, and when there’s true reconciliation in the heart of the pastor, when it’s not just about a program or something temporary or a quick fix to say ‘I have this badge of honor on. I’m a reconciler,'” she said. “When true reconciliation occurs in the heart of the pastor, then change is imminent for that church and that community.”

Al Sharpton and Chicago Tribune correspondent, Howard Witt appeared on the O’Reilly Factor a couple of nights ago to talk about Jena 6 money.  I don’t usually watch the Factor (largely because my wife and I didn’t break down and get cable until a few months ago).  But I was watching Wednesday night because an O’Reilly staffer had asked me to appear with Witt and Sharpton.  Inevitably, I was bumped, but I tuned in nonetheless.

Howard Witt knew he was on the show to state whatever facts could presently be discerned: a lot of money has been donated directly to the Jena 6 parents; to date, no accounting of this money has been made; contrary to internet rumor, there is no evidence that the money is being used inappropriately; Dallas-based radio personality Michael Baisden has also collected money; no one knows how much Baisden has raised or how the funds have been dispersed; Mr. Baisden has accused James Rucker’s ColorofChange organization of “shady” dealings; ironically, ColorofChange is the only organization associated with the Jena 6 fundraising effort to have made a full financial disclosure.

From these facts, Fox News conjured up a headline that says far more about Fox News than it says about the Jena 6 fundraising effort: “New Reports Claim Nearly Half a Million Dollars Donated to Jena Six is Missing.”

Howard Witt never hinted that any funds are “missing”.  He merely stated that spurious claims have been made by Mr. Baisden; that it is Mr. Baisden who needs to account for his Jena-related fundraising; and that the parents need to quell unfounded rumors by making a full financial disclosure.  The parent-controlled account lies in a bank in Jena, Lousiana.  I repeat, no funds are missing.

Bill O’Reilly and Al Sharpton understand one another.  Bill needs to have Al on his show every so often because Al knows how to turn it on for the cameras.  Al likes to be on the O’Reilly show because his status as a civil rights celebrity depends on being celebrated–and in America, that means being asked to appear on shows like the O’Reilly Factor.  By having Sharpton on his program, Bill deflects criticism that he is a racist nut-job. 

As Jon Stewart suggests, the American conversation has devolved into a Hardball-style screaming match between liberal and conservative partisans.  When ratings are at stake, nuance spells death.  Darth Vader needs Luke Skywalker; Luke needs Darth.  Bill needs Al; Al needs Bill.

Bill asked Al about Michael.  Al defended Michael.  The man asked a few questions; answers were given; case closed.

I wish it were that simple.  Ever since Michael Baisden, Al Sharpton et al entered the Jena fight, James Rucker has been putting out fires.  I have been with the ColorOfChange leader in Jena on several occasions and I’ve witnessed the agony.  Mr. Baisden has been tapping out a narrative of suspicion re: ColorofChange for months now.  Long before the September 20th march, I was on a radio talk show in Chicago.  A caller said, “I’ve been hearing over the radio that money raised for the Jena 6 isn’t getting to the families.  I gave $25 so those kids could hire good lawyers; should I be asking for my money back.”

“Well, Dr. Bean,” the host replied, “what advice would you give this woman?”

It wasn’t hard to stick my finger in that particular dam-leak.  Unfortunately, thanks to Mr. Baisden’s irresponsible rhetoric, similar questions were being posed in contexts where no one was around to provide simple answers. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Baisden was asking his listeners to send their Jena 6 contributions (more accurately, their Mychal Bell contributions) to him.

I never had a problem with Michael Baisden raising money for the Jena 6.  James Rucker didn’t have a problem with it either.  But how do we explain the constant anti-ColorOfChange innuendo?

Al Sharpton doesn’t think an explanation is necessary because Michael Baisden did so much to bring thousands of people to Jena.  I’m sorry; but success in one arena, however significant, doesn’t give anyone a free ethical ride. 

In fact, the very success of the march on Jena unleashed a string of consequences, some good, some bad, some downright ugly. 

Would we have seen 20,000 marchers in Jena without the involvement of Mssrs. Baisden, Jackson, Sharpton, etc? Obviously not.  If it had been left to the folks planning the event prior to the involvement of the celebrity figures (ColorOfChange, student groups at traditionally black colleges like Howard, the Black Blogoshere, Friends of Justice, etc.) we might have seen 2,500-5,000 people in Jena on September 20th.

Would a smaller rally have been a bad thing?

It all depends.  If the goal was to flex organizing muscle and send a signal, the massive turnout was terrific.  But if we’re talking about improving the legal fortunes of six young defendants, the waters muddy.

Why have we not received a full financial accounting of the Jena 6 moneys under the control of the parents? 

For one thing, until last week, no one had requested an accounting. 

But there’s another reason.  Until recently, the Jena 6 families have been so distracted with constant demands for interviews and invitations to appear in places like DC and Atlanta, that they haven’t had the time or energy to worry about how much money was in the bank account.

Al Sharpton’s people called Friends of Justice to get contact information for the families in Jena–that was the last we heard from them.  On July 31st, at the conclusion of a rally that drew 300 people to Jena from across the country, the original grassroots organizers were sitting under a big white tent with representatives from all six Jena 6 families.  The mood was relaxed.  Hopes were high.  Morale was strong. 

Then we got the call from our first civil rights celebrity.  Al Sharpton told the parents that he would come to Jena if two conditions were met: (a) he wanted several SUVs to pick up his entourage in New Orleans, and (b) he wanted to be the familys’ sole media representative.

The results were predictable; a few parents quickly acceded to Sharpton’s demands; others were adamantly opposed; a third group wasn’t sure what to do–they had no problems with Sharpton’s involvement, but they weren’t fussy about the terms.

 Sharpton solved the problem by giving the lion’s share of his attention to one family while ignoring those unwilling to play by his rules.  Soon Jesse Jackson was focusing on a second 6 family.  Nothing helps fundraising more than having a real live Jena 6 victim to show off in Chicago.

How did the families feel about this?  They didn’t know how to respond.  When your child’s life is on the line you want all the allies you can get.

Meanwhile, communication between the Jena 6 families became increasingly difficult.  Initially, parents would get together to count the money, keep the books, and write thank you notes.  But as the media circus expanded from one ring, to two, then three, the parents stopped getting together.  Phones were ringing from dawn to dusk.  Some parents had mixed feelings about the barrage of interest; others stopped answering their phones.  Some were willing to tolerate the hype for the sake of the fight; others withdrew in disgust.

The oft-lamented lapses in judgment (a defendant shoving money in his mouth on MySapce; two others “thuggin” for the cameras at the BET awards) cannot be fairly evaluated apart from this context.  The behind-the-scenes trauma of the Jena 6 and their parents should be nobody’s business–these people deserve their privacy.  But it is now in their best interest that a few salient facts be disclosed.

The young man who stuffed the bills in his mouth was mimicking the behavior of the rags-to-riches Hip Hop artists he listens to.  His MySpace page was getting hits from immature adolescents across the country.  In their eyes, the young defendant was a full-blown celebrity.  So he did what celebrities do–he put on a little show for the cameras following a script created by the performers he admired. 

This kid lives below the poverty line.  His mother is too poor to afford a car.  He shares an eight-by-eight bedroom with his younger brother.  Was the video a mistake?  Obviously.  But the entire affair was a direct (albeit unintended) result of the Sharpton-Baisden celebrity show.  Al and Mike can handle the hype–adolescent boys cannot.

Consider the BET fiasco.  Who invited these kids to travel to Atlanta?  Who handed them the tickets?  When they showed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting suits, who suggested they change into the Hip Hop duds?  Who’s idea was it to parade vulnerable defendants in front of the cameras?  In a celebrity culture like ours, a standing ovation was inevitable.  Of course the kids “thugged” for the cameras–they watch BET, so they know the drill. 

Now, suppose only 2500 people had come to Jena on September 20th; would the event have been frontpage news?  Probably not.  Would invitations to DC, New York and Atlanta have been issued if student leaders and no-name grassroots organizers had been in charge?  Nope. 

Now let’s flip the equation.  Apart from the celebrity factor, there would have been no MySpace video (and if there had been, nobody would have noticed).  Apart from ersatz, media generated star-power, the Jena 6 defendants would never have been invited to Atlanta to hand a trophy to Kanye West and mug for the cameras. 

More significantly, apart from the Al-Michael-Jesse show, the families would have maintained their initial unity.  You wouldn’t see a confused father being crudely manipulated by a media celebrity on national radio.  Mr. Witt wouldn’t have had an article to write and Mr. Sharpton wouldn’t have been asked to appear on the Factor.

Furthermore, the pre-celebrity media attention the Jena 6 story generated was perfectly sufficient to attract the attention and concern of gifted attorneys nationwide.  These dedicated men and women were lining up behind the Jena 6 long before September 20th.  Most of the attorneys currently involved in the fight for justice are media-averse individuals who do their best talking in the courtroom. 

Can you attract attention to injustice without celebrity support?  I wish I knew.

But one thing is clear: if your hands wander too close to the celebrity fire they are likely to get burned. 

I had nothing to do with attracting celebrity figures to this fight.  I can take no credit for the Jena 6 phenomenon that swept the nation in September.  Thus, I refuse to take responsibility for the media-generated fiascos that followed in the wake of this event. 

The Jena 6 parents have held up admirably under the onslaught.  They know they need to get the money into the hands of a trustee with a reputation for integrity, and they will.  Money isn’t missing.  This was a minor problem with a simple solution until celebrities started firing inexplicable broadsides at grassroots organizers.

The media’s interest in the money shows that Jena has legs.  We won’t be seeing any headlines until things fire up in the courtroom.  So let’s all sit back and let the lawyers work quietly behind the scenes.  The fate of the Jena 6 is now in their hands.

New Reports Claim Nearly Half A Million Dollars Donated to Jena Six is Missing

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Fox News

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: “Impact” segment tonight, you may remember the case of the Jena Six. African-American high school students charged with beating a white student after a racial incident at Jena High School, in Arkansas.

Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders rallied to assist the six students. And reports say about $500,000 was raised for their defense.

Now there are questions about where that money has gone. Pictures of defendant Robert Bailey with $100 bills have surfaced on the Net. Two other defendants appeared well heeled at a music awards event they traveled to.

Joining us now from Washington, where he’s leading a march for justice on Friday, is Al Sharpton. And from Dallas, Texas, Howard Witt, who broke the story for The Chicago Tribune.

You know, I like The Chicago Tribune. I think it’s one of the few newspapers in the country where you get an honest appraisal of the news. But if you had to put a headline on this story, Mr. Witt, what would it be?

HOWARD WITT, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Well, I think the headline would be lots of question marks around the funds that were collected for the Jena Six defendants. There’s been rumors about the fate of that money floating around the Internet as you mentioned for quite a while now. Several weeks, but the controversy really broke into the open last week when Michael Basin, who’s a prominent black talk radio host based here in Dallas, actually went on the air and accused a group called Color of Change of having actually somehow been shady with the money.

The irony of that is that Color of Change, which has raised about $212,000 for the Jena Six defendants, they’re the only group in all of this that actually has been completely transparent about how they have distributed the money. And they’ve basically shown how they have paid it all out to the attorneys.

There’s a lot of other questions regarding the rest of this money hanging out there. And including Michael Basin himself, who until I started asking questions about it, he himself was not forthcoming about how he had distributed the money. So there’s a lot of questions.

O’REILLY: OK, how many charities are there? And they’re not really charities because they were just funds set up. But how many funds are there that are helping these defendants?

WITT:Well, it’s an unknown question how many there really are. There’s a lot of Internet scammers out there who were raising money on behalf of the Jena Six. And no one knows where that money went.

But of the big major groups, there’s Color of Change which is an Internet based civil rights group and an established group. There’s the NAACP. And there’s a group called the Jena Six Defense Fund. That is money that is controlled by the parents themselves. And it’s sitting in a bank account in Jena, Louisiana, controlled by the parents. Those are the major sources.

O’REILLY:All right, so the parents themselves are controlling — now we hear that the parents have bought Escalades, big cars, are driving around in them since these funds were established. Is that true?

WITT: No, I — I have no — see no evidence that that’s true. That’s one of the rumors that’s out there. There’s no evidence that that’s the case. The problem is in the absence of any kind of transparency about this money.

O’REILLY: Yes, you don’t know. You don’t know. But you haven’t found out that they did indeed spend money on expensive cars? That you haven’t found out, OK.

WITT: No, there’s no evidence that they’ve misused the money, but no one knows for sure because.

O’REILLY: Well, what — all right, what about this Robert Bailey, the picture where he’s holding $100 bills and his mother says that he earned this money parking cars. Do you know anything about this specifically?

WITT: Yes, in fact, I talked to his mother about that. Not parking cars. He works as a parks maintenance worker down there in Jena. She claims that that’s money he earned on his job. It could be.

The question is, you know, it wasn’t a very smart thing for him to do to be seen posing with this money, because again it just seems like

O’REILLY: Yes, $100 bills, I mean, that’s a lot of park maintenance.

All right, Reverend Sharpton, now when you have this kind of a flow of funds — and you’ve been doing this for a long time — into a system where there is an umbrella accountability here, one agency is accountable, the others aren’t, there is, you know, the perception that something may be going wrong because a half million dollars is a lot of dough. How do you see it?

AL SHARPTON, REV., CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER:Well, I think, first of all, let’s not confuse many of us that were involved had nothing to do with the fundraising. National Action Network, my group, had nothing to do with any of the funds. And so when we say civil rights leaders protested and put all that in with who’s on the Internet, those are not the same parties.

Secondly, I think that when you talk about the group Color of Change did over $200,000, that’s half of the money that you’re saying was raised. So half of it, you are saying is transparent.

As I understand state law, that you make annual reports. And people are required to report what they did in `07 and `08. So are we asking here for people to have to do a transparent report before it is due? And whether or not that is a legal requirement is another question, I don’t know.

I would be — I’m very happy to hear him say that there is no evidence that the parents have bought Escalades. There’s no evidence of people running around, misusing the money personally with the family. So I think this is all about a distraction.

I think Michael Basdin, because he was one of the moving forces of the protests, has this for Friday, was concerned about that and concerned about the families. And he legitimately raised it. He used his platform to do it.

When there was answers, he apologized. And I think that’s the responsible thing to do. But I think in any movement, there’s always distractions. At the end of the day, what are we saying? The parents we don’t think did anything. We don’t know who did, but it just looks funny.

O’REILLY: Well, it looks funny. And whenever you have cash, you guys know, whenever there’s cash coming in, you got to account for it.

SHARPTON: All right. Well, let me ask a question. Do you, Mr. Witt, have any evidence that someone has done something wrong with the money? Who? I mean, let’s say. Rather than tarnish a movement for justice with some ifs and maybes, be straight. What is it that you’re saying is happening?

O’REILLY: Well, I think he’s just raising questions. I mean, Mr. Witt — as a journalist, I would raise them, too.

SHARPTON: Well, let’s raise the question about unequal justice. Let’s raise the question about the cost.

O’REILLY: Well, I think we’ve already done that, reverend. You’ve been on this program and every other program raising the questions.

SHARPTON:You’ve been very fair about that, Mr. O’Reilly. But what I’m saying is to raise the question without any substantive charge is really a distraction.

O’REILLY: No, no, no. That’s where you’re — reverend, now if I’m going to train you in journalism, you got to listen to me now.

SHARPTON: All right. Go ahead.

O’REILLY:You raise the question and then evidence comes forth.

SHARPTON: Right.

O’REILLY: It’s like Watergate.

SHARPTON: And my question is.

O’REILLY: You have a little evidence, and then it starts to grow. This is a legitimate story.

SHARPTON:My question is if you are showing me journalism, the question is that if you’re already saying there’s no Escalades, there’s no evidence of splurging, then what is the question?

O’REILLY: The question is where’s the other $250,000? And what’s being done with it? Gentlemen..

SHARPTON: And who are you asking the question.

O’REILLY: And we will stay on this story. Reverend.

SHARPTON: And you need to ask those that raised it, because.

O’REILLY: And we are going to do it. We’re going to do it.

SHARPTON: (INAUDIBLE) did not raise the money.

O’REILLY: All right.

SHARPTON: And I think he would tell you that.

O’REILLY: If you want to get some exercise, you can join the reverend in D.C. on Friday. He’ll be marching for justice as we do here every day on “The Factor .” Gentlemen, thanks very much.

No real surprise here.  Judge Mauffray was uncomfortable with the media presence in his courtroom during Mychal Bell’s trial in late June–and that was before Jena became a national story.  But the legal precedent for allowing media into the courtroom in trials of this nature was simply too strong, so Mauffray abandoned that fortress and retreated to the “no media in hearings” position.  That probably won’t stand either; but you can’t blame a guy for trying.

chicagotribune.com

TRIBUNE UPDATE

Judge says he’ll open Jena trial to public

But jurist won’t allow access to preliminary hearings

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

9:08 PM CST, November 15, 2007

HOUSTON

Replying to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of U.S. media companies, the judge overseeing the trial of Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, reversed course Thursday and agreed to open Bell’s upcoming juvenile trial to the public.

But LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray, in a court filing, maintained that he is not required to open pre-trial hearings in Bell’s case to the news media or the public, and he argued that the media lawsuit seeking full access to Bell’s case should be dismissed.

The lawsuit, initiated by the Chicago Tribune and joined by the Associated Press, The New York Times Co., CNN and other major media organizations, asserts that Mauffray’s earlier decision to close all the proceedings in Bell’s case runs counter to Louisiana juvenile laws and provisions of both the Louisiana and U.S. Constitutions.

The suit cites, among other arguments, a 2004 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that all juvenile proceedings involving certain categories of violent crime must be conducted in open court.

“Judge Mauffray does acknowledge that [sections of the Louisiana Children’s Code] permit or require adjudication, disposition and modification hearings in those specified cases to be public, and he intends to comply with applicable law,” Mauffray’s attorney, Donald Wilson, wrote in response to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is set to be heard Wednesday. Bell, 17, is scheduled to go on trial Dec. 6 on charges of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy for his alleged part in an attack on a white student at Jena High School last December.

Six black teenagers have been charged with jumping the white student and kicking him while he lay unconscious. The incident capped months of violent racial tensions in the small, mostly white central Louisiana town, and civil rights leaders have asserted that the charges against the black youths were excessive.

Bell was initially tried and convicted of the charges as an adult, but an appellate court threw out the conviction, ruling that Bell should have been prosecuted as a juvenile.

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Please give this recent survey from the Pew Research Center you careful attention.  I have linked you to the full report instead of summary articles because the document deserves to be read in full. 

It is easy to pontificate about “perception gaps” between white and black Americans (I do it all the time), but sometimes we need to wrestle with objective statistical surveys.  Do black and white Americans differ in their perceptions?  It all depends on the question.

For the most part, blacks and whites like each other just fine.  There is little evidence of widespread bigotry in the Pew numbers.  But ask whether African Americans experience prejudice on a day-to-day basis and an enormous perception gap is immediately apparent.  Whites don’t think prejudice is a big deal; blacks disagree.  Respondents, regardless of race, tend to think integrated schools are a good thing.  But whites are far more likely than blacks to value neighborhood schools over integrated schools.  This, I suspect, is because black parents know the quality of education rises with the percentage of white students, while white parents know that the presence of black students does not correlate positively with good teachers or state of the art facilities.

On the other hand, the numbers suggest that a slim majority of African Americans believe that if black workers are having trouble getting ahead it is their own damn fault.  Black support for Bill Cosby is twenty percentage points higher than support for Al Sharpton (Although Sharpton’s approval ratings among African American respondents are respectable). 

For some reason, the survey didn’t think to ask white respondents what they think of black notables.  My guess is that Sharpton’s approval ratings would have been dramatically lower among whites than blacks–but that must remain a gut feeling because the folks at Pew didn’t ask the question.

 The most dramatic perception gap of all appears when black and white respondents are asked about their confidence in the criminal justice system.  Forty-two percent of whites (hardly an encouraging figure) believe the police can be trusted to treat the races equally; among blacks, that figure drops to fourteen percent.

Curiously, the criminal justice questions are restricted to attitudes toward police officers–a clear sign that the folks asking the questions (a) were tied to questions originally formulated in the 1970s, and (b) have precious little first-hand experience with the criminal justice system.  Ask blacks and whites how much confidence they place in the courts, or how they perceive the credibility of all-white juries, and you would really see a gap open up. 

Nonetheless, the statistics provided validate the perception gap I have been blathering on about.

By the way, negative attitudes toward police officers are highly correlated with income level.  Poor respondents, black, white and Latino, hold the police in low regard.  This is largely because law enforcement has a tendency to treat the residents of poor neighborhoods like potential criminals.  People get tired of the suspicion.

The Pew report reveals some trends that should give criminal justice reform advocates more than a moment’s pause.  For one thing, black people are just as likely to have a low view of black people as white people do.  This is particularly true of high-income, Republican-leaning, African Americans.  Most black respondents take a dim view of the Hip Hop industry (naughty lyrics seem to be the big problem here), and concern over issues like low marriage rates and high birthrates among unmarried mothers are extraordinarily high in the black community. 

In other words, trendy white liberal skepticism about “family values” doesn’t resonate in black America.  The poorer black respondents are, the more likely they are to express concerns about the social disintegration of the neighborhoods they live in. 

The numbers indicate a large and growing “values gap” between the black middle class and low-income black people.  Most black respondents feel that the black middle class is becoming more like the white middle class even as the gap between low and high-income blacks widens.  

In other words, the black middle class distrusts low income blacks almost as much as it distrusts the criminal justice system. 

The Pew survey suggests that black families are almost three times as likely to live in poverty as are white families.   Poverty, as everyone knows, is highly associated with incarceration.  This helps explain why white America (66% of the general population) accounts for only 36% of the prison population while black Americans (a scant 12% of the population) comprise 40% of the prison population.

The incarceration gap between middle class and poor blacks is almost as great as the incarceration gap between whites and blacks generally.   Social influence rises with income and social class.  The more prominent the citizen, the less likely they are to have first-hand experience with the inequities of the criminal justice system.  This explains why it can be so difficult to get black opinion leaders on the right side of criminal justice reform issues.

These trends help explain the steadily falling popularity of black preachers and the NAACP.  The civil rights crisis used to impact all black Americans; now the poor are affected far more profoundly than the affluent.  Black Americans are much more aware of the minequities within the criminal justice system than are white Americans; but awareness doesn’t always translate into advocacy. 

We have seen that a slim majority of black respondents believe that black workers should blame themselves for their failure to get ahead.  I suspect there is a similar tendency for the black middle class to blame young black males who run afoul of the law for their plight: “do the crime, do the time.”

This doesn’t mean that black America is deaf to the cry for justice; it just means the issues must be spelled out with prisine clarity if you want the support of mainstream black America. 

Take Jena, for example.  The 20,000 people who came to the central Louisiana town on September 20th were overwhelmingly middle class.  They rode the buses because they identified with the Jena 6.  Support cooled, however, when one of the defendants made the mistake of emulating his Hip Hop heroes by stuffing large denomination bills into his mouth on MySpace.  Days later, when two Jena 6 defendants showed up at the Hip Hop awards “thugin'” for the cameras in trendy Hip Hop attire, support for the defendants declined further.

The Jena 6 still enjoy widespread support within the black community, but that support cannot be taken for granted.  I don’t blame the kids for their missteps; I blame civil rights celebrities who “market” the defendants and their families. 

The Jena 6 are normal kids caught up in a toxic situation–nothing more, nothing less.  They are not heroes, nor are they commodities to be hawked in the public square.  They are human beings who need to be protected from the American celebrity machine.  We need to humanize the victims of the New Jim Crow–we do not need to glamorize them.

The Pew survey makes one thing clear: white America represents the ultimate challenge for criminal justice reformers.  Most white folks believe that life is getting better for black people, that the police treat all people equally, and that black Americans face little prejudice in their daily lives.  We won’t get anywhere until we start to change these perceptions.  Public policy is shaped by popular perception.

If the Pew survey is anything to go by (and I think it is) we’ve got our work cut out for us.

Journalists report the facts; they aren’t supposed to weigh them.  They fly to Alexandria, rent a car, drive to Jena, gather quotes from five or six white people, three or four black people, then it’s back to the airport and home. 

He-said-she-said journalism is supposed to be balanced and objective; it is really a thinly veiled form of entertainment.  Dueling quotations create conflict, and conflict, as writing guru Robert McKee will tell you, provides the foundation for a good story.  Much journalism has all the balance and objectivity of a Punch and Judy puppet show.

James West Davidson is an historian.  Historians are trained to sift and weigh the vestigial remains of the past; the primary sources (usually written documents) that provide the only clues we have to go on.  As Sherlock Holmes frequently told Watson, not all clues are created equal.  There are self-serving red herrings designed to distort and cover up the truth; and there are luminous details that open windows on a distant world.

We can’t know with scientific certitude what happened in Jena.  Eye witness accounts conflict, so what are we to do?  Journalists serve up dueling quotations; historians probe for credibility.

Between 1989 and 1994, I was a doctoral student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  Few will be impressed by that fact, I’ll grant you.  Baptists have a largely-deserved reputation for valuing orthodoxy over objectivity; but the professors I toiled under didn’t fit the stereotype.  With degrees from places like Yale, the University of Chicago, Oxford and Boston University, these men and women had been drilled in the principles of “historiography”.  Sloppy thinking was not tolerated.  Doctoral students couldn’t get away with citing heaps of quotations from “the authorities”; every opinion was subjected to rigorous and critical scrutiny. 

“I realize that’s what Roland Bainton believed,” my professors would say; “but what do you think?”

I’m not sure why I spent five purgatorial years working on an unmarketable degree.  I had three young children at the time and we lived below the poverty line.  To make matters worse, the once-venerable Southern Seminary was being taken over by fundamentalist zealots while I slaved away on my dissertation.  My professors likened “the fundies” to barbarians at the gates of Rome.  Objective scholarship was anathema to these Visigoths.  In their view, a seminary existed to defend the tenets of orthodoxy as “orthodoxy” was defined by the folks in the pews.

The barbarians had a point, of course; parish ministers can’t afford to be too objective unless they enjoy loading U-Haul trucks.

As a pastor, my training was an albatross; but once I found myself engaged in criminal justice reform work, the strict tenets of historiography became profoundly relevant.  When you are dealing with issues of race and crime you confront prosecutors skilled in the arts of character assassination; small town editors marching in lock step with the affluent and the influential; police officers who relate to poor neighborhoods the way occupying armies relate to a vanquished population.  In other words, you’re up against great, heaping, malodorous piles of bull shit.  The canons of historiography come in very handy when you need to blow a hole through the crap and get to the truth. 

Getting “the facts” ain’t easy when it is in everyone’s best interest to fudge and obfuscate.  So it was in Tulia; so it was in Church Point, Louisiana; so it is in Jena.

James West Davidson is the author of They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race.  At the turn of the 20th century, Ms. Wells cut through the cant and propaganda printed in white Southern newspapers to get to the real facts about race riots and lynchings.  The editors of the Jena Times, Mr. Davidson believes, are following in a long and ignoble tradition when they promote a revisionist history that raises far more questions than it answers.

I agree.

Jena Is More than Jena and a Noose Is More than a Nuisance

By James West Davidson

Mr. Davidson is a historian and the author of the recently published ‘They Say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race.

There’s no need any longer to make Jena, Louisiana our whipping boy. Over the past few weeks the New York Times, the Washington Post and other papers have catalogued a string of incidents in which nooses were displayed in New York City, Long Island, College Park, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Macon, Greensboro, and San Antonio.

The nooses were hung on flagpoles, strung up in a police locker room, placed on a Coast Guard ship, dangled from the stage of a Memphis theater, looped over the door of a professor’s office, and displayed with the blackened face of a stuffed animal stuck through.

Meanwhile some folks in Jena were looking to put the troubles there in a more hopeful light. “If you compare us today to fifty years ago,” pointed out one school board member, “we have come a long way.”

No doubt the nation has come even further from the nadir of race relations in the 1890s, when the redoubtable Ida B. Wells of Memphis began her campaign against lynching. Born a slave around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, Wells was a schoolteacher before launching her campaign against white violence. During those years, not just noose hangings but lynchings were being reported once or twice a week.

If she were alive today, Wells (or Wells-Barnett as she was known, after marrying in 1895) would surely grant the progress made. But the lynching in 1892 that led her to become an activist bears more than a little similarity to the incident at Jena. Not in the level of violence, but in the way events unfolded and the way the nation reacted to them.

Jena began with a schoolyard quarrel: black students asking if they could sit under a tree where whites congregated; two nooses hung in evident retaliation; several brawls the following week. In Memphis in 1892, the spark was a fight over a game of marbles at “the Bend,” a section on the city outskirts. A black boy bested a white boy in a scuffle; the white boy’s father thrashed the black boy; black parents gathered to protest.

The violence soon escalated. Plainclothes police raided a nearby black-owned grocery, sent there by the white owner of a rival grocery. When the black proprietors opened fire on what they believed was a lawless mob, they and other bystanders were arrested. Four nights later a real mob snatched the storeowners from jail and riddled them with bullets.

At the time Wells had already left teaching to become a journalist protesting the deteriorating state of race relations. “Separate car” laws were being enacted for intercity railroads, as a full-blown policy of segregation spread across the South. Twice Wells was ejected from the first-class “ladies car,” and twice she successfully sued the railroads for damages. (The Tennessee supreme court eventually ruled against her on appeal.)

Wells was out of town when the Memphis lynching occurred. Her absence, though, may have helped open her eyes to the underlying dynamics of lynching. Being away, she had to glean her information from white newspaper accounts, which spoke breathlessly about a “nest of turbulent and unruly negroes” who provoked the police.

But in this case Wells knew the accused personally. Thomas Moss was a close friend, a gentle and decent man. One of the supposedly “unruly” storeowners, he was found lying in a pool of blood, still carrying the pamphlets he used to teach Sunday school.

The massive distortions in the newspapers led Wells to realize that the other accounts of black crimes and white mobs were murky at best and utterly unreliable at worst. In the future, when news of a lynching broke, her first move was to travel to the scene to obtain direct information.

With Jena, the national press has shown only modest interest in imitating Wells. Most stories have relied on local accounts, concentrating on whether residents believed media coverage to be “fair.” The Jena Times, swamped by an “overwhelming number of requests from outside media,” assembled a chronology that firmly stated, among other things, that “there was no racial motivation behind the nooses and that the incident was a prank.” According to a child welfare supervisor who interviewed the perpetrators, “They honestly had no knowledge of the history concerning nooses and black citizens. This may seem hard to believe for some people, but this is exactly what everyone on the committee determined.”

Wells would have snorted in disbelief. If the nooses were not meant to intimidate, what was the point of this innocent “prank”? Why a noose and not, let us say, jockey shorts hung from the tree? What were the boys thinking and what was their motivation? On this the Jena Times remained mum. And even if the boys had “no knowledge of the history” of lynching, what does this say about the state of social studies courses being taught?

But we need not—should not—focus on Jena alone. The latest rash of noose sightings makes clear that intimidation remains at the heart of the act. Stay in your place. Keep away from white jobs.

At the construction site near Pittsburgh where one noose turned up, the white boss dismissed its placement as “just a joke.” Another “prank,” like Jena.

Wells understood differently. Lynching “is a national crime and requires a national remedy,” she insisted in her day. We should be exploring why, despite the demise of lynching, nooses and intimidation remain a clear threat to the wellbeing of our nation. The press should lead the way.