This elegant essay in The New Yorker echoes my “Jena is America” theme.  Pay particular attention to one of the stark statistics Steve Coll references: African Americans are currently being incarcerated at four times the 1980 rate.  It’s good to hear the New Yorker talking about the New Jim Crow.

The letter to which Mr. Will is responding is pasted at the end of this post.  Here is Howard’s response:

Dear Mr. _____:

    Thanks for writing. Unfortunately you, and the writer to whom you refer, have your facts seriously wrong about the Jena story and how it came to national attention.

     I am aware of the Jason Whitlock article you reference; he has written several columns attempting to knock down the Jena story and expose “truths” he says the media have overlooked or distorted. In fact, Whitlock called me last week as he was preparing his most recent column, to confirm whether it was true that Alan Bean, a civil rights activist in Texas, was the person who put me on to the story. It is indeed true; in fact, I have quoted Bean in several of the stories I have written about the Jena case and credited him with uncovering it.

     But Bean is scarcely a “race opportunist.” He’s an ordained Baptist preacher who runs a small civil rights group called Friends of Justice in Dallas. He specializes in scrutinizing the justice system for evidence of discrimination, particularly in small towns where abuses are often hidden. Before the Jena case, he made his name by exposing the infamous Tulia, Texas, drug scandal several years ago, in which corrupt police and prosecutors framed a number of black citizens for drug offenses.

     Bean did not “spoon-feed” me this story, and Whitlock’s aspersions about me and Bean are utterly insulting. Bean spent more than a month on the ground in Jena investigating the case and then, after having read another of my stories about a controversial civil rights case, contacted me to suggest I take a look at what was happening in Jena.

     In other words, Bean was a source for this story in the same way that many other lawyers, civil rights activists and ordinary citizens are sometimes sources for my stories, bringing to my attention situations that they believe merit media attention. Sometimes those tips bear fruit and turn out to be accurate, and sometimes they do not withstand further scrutiny. The process of receiving information and checking it out is called journalism.

     Everything Bean told me-and much more that he did not-I verified during three weeks of careful reporting last April and May. I interviewed more than two dozen people-black and white-and visited Jena for three days. I reviewed court records and interviewed several of the Jena 6 families, as well as other black leaders in the town. I spoke with lawyers and civil rights investigators. I interviewed every relevant Jena official who would speak with me, including the mayor, the school superintendent, the deputy sheriff, a school board member and several teachers at the high school. Unfortunately, some of the main players in this story, including District Attorney Reed Walters and the family of Justin Barker (the white student who was beaten), declined my repeated requests for an interview.

     The results of that reporting appeared in my first story about Jena, published on May 20. This was the first national story about the case and set in motion much of the coverage that followed. I recommend that story to your attention — it can be found, along with all my other coverage of the case, at www.chicagotribune.com/jena <http://www.chicagotribune.com/jena>.

     It is true that some Jena officials and other town residents in recent days have begun to alter their versions of what happened in the town last year, in an attempt to spin the story more in their favor. That revisionist history is what Jason Whitlock, and a lot of white supremacist websites, are relying upon to allege that the media is somehow twisting the Jena story. I can’t speak for the rest of the media coverage, but I can tell you that I stand by all of my reporting as an accurate and truthful reflection of the interviews I conducted and the facts I gathered.

     Sincerely,

     Howard Witt

_______

Howard,

FYI- your name is mentioned in this story in the Kansas publication  http://www.kansascity.com/sports/columnists/jason_whitlock/story/296701.html

This reporter says you were fed the Jena 6 story by a so-called race opportunist, Alan Bean. Bean told this reporter he warned Jena officials he would bring the media to town if Walters didn’t back down. Bean was put in touch with the Jena 6 parents and then  published a 5,400-word narrative titled “The Making of a Myth in Jena, Louisiana” and a 2,400-word, media-friendly narrative titled “Responding to the Crisis in Jena, Louisiana.”

Been then “spoonfed” his story to BBC and Howard Witt.  This reporter also writes that the facts commonly reported in the mainstream press, which includes the Tribune, have been distorted or conveniently left out, leaving an impression that blacks in Jena were clearly discriminated against.   If there is some truth here, and I have read elsewhere the points made in this column are accurate, then your stories about Jena 6 are either sloppy or biased or both.

Bean says he contacted you about Jena 6 and then you wrote a story in May. Is that true? Was the Tribune the first large daily to break this story? What kind of relationship do you have with Bean, and how much do you rely on him? Have you written stories where you used Bean as a contact or a source?

Dan Rather got in hot water for relying on an opportunist source. You do great and unimaginable public harm when you distort or leave out pertinent facts to a story, especially on the topic of race. Those poor people in Jena now have to pick up the pieces left from the media circus storm.

If any of this is true, shame on you.

The New York Times and the Jena Times rarely agree.  But on the subject of Jena they appear to be of one accord.

I have made little attempt to respond to Reed Walters’ op-ed in the New York Times.   Everyone knows what I think about Jena; I was curious to see what others had to say.  Walters’ apologia stirred a great deal of interest–it was number five on the Times most-emailed list for two days.  But were readers deferentially scratching their chins or were they doubling over in laughter? 

I suspect the DA’s op-ed (not badly written for a small-town prosecutor) inspired a range of reactions.  

Originally, there was only one Jena story–the one Reed Walters fed to the Jena Times.  It was a simple story: white-hating, super-predators at Jena High School attempt a gang hit on a random white guy . . . and you might be next!  Mr. Walters’ and other LaSalle Parish officials insisted that the assault on Justin Barker was unrelated to the fire that destroyed the main academic wing of the High School three days earlier, the assault on Robert Bailey Jr. at a Friday night dance, or anything else.  In particular, the noose incident had no relation to the assault on Mr. Barker. 

This story reigned unopposed until the Friends of Justice arrived in Jena.  In the course of several visits to the Central Louisiana oil and logging town in January and February, I cobbled together a counter-narrative rooted in personal interviews, newspaper articles and court records.   

The Friends of Justice story was researched, corroborated and replicated by a series of journalists, documentarians and bloggers who started visiting Jena in April and May. 

In this story, the focus shifts from the children (black and white) to the grown-ups who placed them in the midst of a toxic, Lord-of-the-Flies scenario: DA Reed Walters and Superintendent Roy Breithaupt.  

By failing to identify and renounce the racism and hatred woven into the nooses, Reed and Roy effectively re-affirmed and formalized the de facto social segregation at Jena High School.  Had Walters and Breithaupt responded appropriately, Robert Bailey and Justin Barker would have completed the school year at Jena High in peace.

In the last few months, other Jena narratives have emerged.  By ignoring crucial elements of the story (Reed Walter’s pen, the assault on Mr. Bailey, the shotgun incident at the Gotta Go, the school fire, etc.) pundits across the nation have created a stripped-down saga that flows from nooses to the assault on Mr. Barker as if the two events unfolded days apart.  Some journalists (many of whom have done fine work in the past) don’t even mention the nooses. 

The burden of this stripped-down Jena story is simple: hate is bad, but physical violence is worse.  Many readers, reflecting the widespread belief that prison is a cure-all,  have suggested that the noose boys and the Jena 6 should all be sent to the slammer. 

Reed Walters’ op-ed was an attempt to cash in on this context-free version of the Jena story.

Gradually, the full story is beginning to re-assert itself–largely because it is true.   

This Black Star News editorial, “Jena Six DA’s Odious Op-Ed,” is well-written and incisive.  When all the facts are present and accounted for, the entire mess in Jena lies at the feet of a pious Jena church mouse who recently suggested that the Lord Jesus Christ prevented 30,000 black thugs from running riot in his town.