Most journalists won’t touch complex stories like Tulia and Jena until the investigative grunt work has already been done.   That’s why I sent my “Responding to the Crisis in Jena, Louisiana” piece to Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune. His work on the Shaquanda Cotton story convinced me that he would “get” Jena.  Only later did I realize that Witt had traveled to Linden, Texas to break the Billy Ray Johnson story.  It was just a minor item on the news wire that Howard thought somebody ought to look into.

In this feature article, Howard Witt returns to Paris, Linden and Jena to see if anything changed once the cameras left town.

Witt’s reporting in the Tribune caught the attention of Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  During the civil trial that eventually netted $9 million for Billy Ray Johnson, Dees appealed to the better angels of Linden, Texas.  Instead of painting Mr. Johnson’s tormentors as depraved animals, Dees emphasized the humanity of the victim. 

My wife, Nancy and I traveled to Montgomery to meet with Richard Cohen, Morris Dees and several other members of this well-established civil rights organization.  Dees, remarkably fit at 74, handed me a copy of his biography (recently edited to include his work on the Johnson case) and a DVD featuring television news magazine treatment of the story.

When the same social dynamics crop up in little towns like Tulia, Paris and Linden and Jena you have to wonder if these communities are isolated vestiges of Old South racism or dramatic illustrations of a contemporary national problem.  The aggressive (some would say, grotesque) prosecution of the Jena 6 contrasts with the casual judicial response to the good-ol-boys who left Mr. Johnson for dead on an ant heap.  The treatment of Shaquanda Cotton (seven years of detention for pushing a hall monitor) takes on a shocking aspect when juxtaposed with the lenient treatment of a white girl convicted of arson.

The point isn’t that Shaquanda Cotton or the Jena 6 moral exemplars; the point is that they are not treated like American citizens.

The most insightful comment in Mr. Witt’s restrospective comes from Jena pastor Eddie Thompson.  Asked why so many white folks in Jena seem to feel that blacks and white get along splendidly, Thompson said, “There’s a lot of white people who have not genuinely seen the issue.  If you’re living in the majority, then everything looks fine to you.”

No black-and-white answers

Several months after racial injustices were exposed, some wounds have begun to heal. And some have festered.

Howard Witt: http://www.chicagotribune.com/howardwitt>

Tribune senior correspondent

December 26, 2007

Plotted on a map, the towns of Paris, Linden and Jena line up neatly along a 300-mile diagonal that falls across the Texas-Louisiana border.

But to many African-Americans, that line looks more like a gash across the beneficent face that the New South tries to present to the rest of the nation.

In each of those three mostly white towns, local incidents of perceived discrimination against blacks drew national outrage and civil rights protests after the Tribune wrote stories about them, thrusting their long-obscured racial tensions into the open during a tumultuous year.

Now, Tribune senior correspondent Howard Witt has returned to discover whether the fundamental racial dynamics of Linden, Paris and Jena were altered in any meaningful way after the TV cameras departed and the headlines faded away.

The answer in Linden appears to be yes. In Paris, not much. And in Jena, it’s too soon to tell.

As spotlight dims, shadows remain

The stories read to many like harrowing echoes from the worst days of the Jim Crow South.

In the east Texas town of Paris, amid allegations from black parents that the local schools and courts systematically discriminate against their children, a white judge sentenced a 14-year-old black girl to up to 7 years in a juvenile prison for pushing a hall monitor at her high school. The same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down a house, to probation.

In Linden, Texas, four young white men lured a mentally retarded black man to a party, made him dance for their amusement while calling him vile names and then knocked him unconscious and left him for dead by a trash dump. The black man survived a brain hemorrhage but suffered permanent disabilities; the white men got a slap on the wrist from local juries that regarded them as “good old boys” who made a youthful mistake.

And in Jena, La., a local prosecutor initially charged six black high school students with attempted murder after they allegedly jumped a white schoolmate and kicked him while he lay unconscious. The attack followed months of racial violence set off after three white students hung nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard in what black students saw as a threat directed at them.

Once those hidden stories became public and started ricocheting across the Internet, civil rights leaders, bloggers and the rest of the media trained their sights on the three towns. Activists organized national petition drives, letter-writing campaigns, fundraising efforts and protests.

And the short-term effects of that intense outside scrutiny were profound.

Texas youth officials released the Paris girl, Shaquanda Cotton, from prison in a matter of weeks. Civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Linden man, Billy Ray Johnson, and won a $9 million judgment against his attackers. And more than 20,000 demonstrators from across the nation journeyed to Jena to stage the largest civil rights march in years.

Long term, however, a question still lingers: For all of the national ferment, are the relations between blacks and whites in these three towns any better?

Linden, Texas The triumph of tolerance

The white mayor who casually referred to black men as “boys” is gone.

An African-American doctor was recently elected to the town council. And Linden officials contributed $10,000 to a new community center built by a black philanthropic group.

Even a controversial mural inside the local post office depicting barefoot black fieldworkers picking cotton — a painting many black residents found offensive — has a new brochure posted beneath it explaining the historical and artistic context of the Depression-era work.

In many ways, Linden no longer resembles the starkly divided town where many white residents once closed ranks around the four white youths who in 2003 assaulted a mentally retarded black man and dropped him beside a garbage dump, unconscious and bleeding in his brain.

Instead, many here say that over the last year a new spirit of interracial cooperation has infused the town of nearly 2,300 people, 78 percent of whom are white and 20 percent black.

But it took the Billy Ray Johnson beating case — and the harsh portrayal of the town in the national media as a racist backwater — to bring that change about.

“The attack on Billy Ray Johnson not only wrecked the life of Mr. Johnson but disrupted the entire town,” said Linden’s new mayor, Kenny Hamilton, a branch manager at a local bank. “But it did make us step back and look at how we are portrayed, and we found it to be undesirable. So we resolved to do some things about that.”

One thing Linden’s voters did this year was turn out of office the local district attorney, whose 2005 prosecution of Johnson’s attackers was regarded by many black residents as half-hearted and ineffective.

Local juries declined to convict the four white youths of any serious felonies, instead finding them guilty of a few misdemeanors. Although Johnson suffered permanent brain damage in the attack, none of the attackers served more than 60 days in the county jail.

Last April, however, another jury hearing the Johnson case reached a far different conclusion. Acting in a civil suit brought on Johnson’s behalf by the Southern Poverty Law Center, local jurors awarded Johnson $9 million in damages against his four assailants.

“At one point in the trial, one of the defendants said that ‘we put it in the back of the truck,’ referring to Billy Ray,” recalled Judi Howell, one of the jurors who heard the civil case. “I can remember cold chills running through me. As far as I’m concerned, that was a $9 million ‘it.’ We wanted to send a message that this was not acceptable in our community.”

The civil jury’s verdict redeemed Linden, many believe.

“That civil verdict was very cleansing for the community, to see that he received justice for what was done to him,” said Rev. David Keener, pastor of the Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church. “There was an admission of wrongdoing on behalf of the judicial system.”

Thomas Northcutt, president of the Fairview alumni association, a group of graduates of the segregated school that used to serve blacks before Linden schools were integrated in 1970, is even more optimistic.

When Northcutt approached Linden’s Economic Development Corp. with a request to help the Fairview association build a new community center, the town officials instantly offered a large donation.

“As tragic as it was, the Billy Ray Johnson case united this town,” said Northcutt, a carpenter whose family owns the Linden farm where his ancestors once toiled as slaves. “People are talking to each other more.”

– – –

Update: Billy Ray Johnson

A family dispute over the custody of Billy Ray Johnson erupted after he was awarded the $9 million civil verdict in April. A lawyer and a man claiming to be Johnson’s legal guardian, who are seeking control over the damages award, recently removed Johnson from the Texarkana nursing home where he was receiving therapy and brought him back to Linden to live with his ailing mother and an ex-convict brother. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is investigating the situation.

Paris, Texas False starts, dashed hopes

Springtime in Paris this year looked to offer a new beginning — at least for a moment.

March was rocky, as protesters, civil rights activists and TV cameras crisscrossed the streets amid bitter accusations that this east Texas town of nearly 26,000 systematically discriminates against the 22 percent of its citizens who are black. Paris officials angrily replied that outsiders were twisting perceptions of their town.

But by April, some Paris leaders were counseling reconciliation. The editor of the local newspaper suggested a plaque at the Paris fairgrounds to commemorate the painful history of black lynchings that took place there in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Meanwhile, the Paris branch of the NAACP asked the City Council to convene a special diversity task force to investigate the state of racial relations in the town. Others called for a series of town hall meetings where residents could air their grievances.

By May, however, the outsiders and their unwanted attention had moved on from Paris. And the racial reconciliation proposals were dead.

“The City Council didn’t think that was the function of the city” to establish a diversity committee, said Dr. Joann Ondrovik, a white psychologist who is president of the Paris NAACP chapter. “They thought it’s unnecessary.”

Little has changed in Paris in the nine months since the town was thrust onto the national stage over the case of Shaquanda Cotton, the 14-year-old black girl sent to youth prison for shoving a hall monitor at Paris High School.

Although state authorities released Cotton from prison on March 31, just three weeks after her story became public, and she has been living quietly at home with her mother ever since, her case remains a divisive totem for the town.

Many blacks regard the teenager as a victim of what they perceive as unequal justice and disproportionately harsh discipline meted out to blacks in Paris schools and the local courts — and a symbol of broader economic discrimination that they say afflicts the town. There are no black employees, for example, in the Paris Fire Department and few in other local government jobs.

Racism “is as prevalent today in Paris as it was 50 years ago,” said Nadine Ausbie, a paralegal and former clerk for a local judge who said that for many years she was the only black employee at the county courthouse. “It has never been OK here. It’s still not OK. And it never will be OK.”

Yet many whites see Cotton as representative of nothing more than a troublemaking student who got the punishment she deserved.

“To be honest with you, I don’t see [racial tensions] in Paris,” said Mayor Jesse James Freelen. “It’s outsiders coming in to our community, and they don’t know all the facts.”

Even some black residents who say they agree with Freelen seem conflicted about the issue.

Joe McCarthy, a prominent African-American leader, joined a recent lunch with several white businessmen who called on him to endorse their view that there is no racial discrimination in Paris. And to a point, McCarthy agreed.

But then the discussion turned toward allegations of racial profiling by the Paris police. And McCarthy, a middle-age man who drives a luxury car and served on the City Council from 2001 to 2004, suddenly volunteered how he was pulled over while driving through downtown Paris early one morning.

“I was the only one out at that time of morning, there was only one way you could turn, but the police officer said I had failed to use my turn signal,” McCarthy recounted. “It just rubbed me wrong. Do I look suspicious? He only stopped me because I was black.”

– – –

Update: Shaquanda Cotton

Shaquanda Cotton, now 16, has been living at home in Paris since being freed from a Texas youth prison on March 31. She is not enrolled in school, but her mother says she intends to begin home-schooling so Shaquanda can earn a GED certificate.

Jena, La. The jury is still out

At one end of Oak Street in downtown Jena sits Doughty’s Westside Barber Shop, where proprietor Frankie Morris matter-of-factly explains that he will never cut a black man’s hair because that would soil his combs and clippers and offend the white customers who fill his chairs.

At the other end of Oak Street sits Southern Heritage Bank, where Vice President Thomas Watkins says he would gladly hire an African-American to join his exclusively white staff of 35 if only he could find one who was qualified.

Smack in between the whites-only barber shop and the all-white bank sits Jena’s white mayor, Murphy McMillin, behind his desk at City Hall. Yet the retired oil industry executive says he’s baffled at why tens of thousands of African-Americans journeyed here in September to protest alleged racial discrimination in the town he’s always known as quiet and contented.

“There seems to be harmony among all the races here, so you can see why I’ve been surprised that the nation doesn’t seem to think that’s true,” McMillin said. “There’s a story being told by the national media that says we are very racist. I don’t believe that. But I also don’t believe we are perfect.”

Jena may not think it has a problem. But much of the rest of the nation appears to have made up its mind.

In fact, if there is a ground zero for the Internet-powered civil rights movement of the 21st Century, Jena would have to be it.

The central Louisiana lumber town, with its infamous nooses hung from a tree and its controversial prosecution of six black high school students for beating up a white classmate, seems destined to join Selma and Birmingham in the rarefied lexicon of Southern cities whose very names stand as shorthand for the struggles of black Americans to be treated equally.

Many of the black residents here — they constitute 12 percent of the town’s population of about 3,000 people and live mostly clustered in blighted neighborhoods — say they long ago learned to keep their heads low and not ask for much from Jena’s dominant whites.

“If you walk into a bank in Jena, you don’t see but one black face behind the counter — and we have five banks here,” said Rev. Brian Moran, whose Antioch Baptist Church was vandalized, allegedly by two white men, a few hours after an NAACP meeting was held there in July. “And in any type of business, black customers are treated differently than whites.”

Now, after a measure of introspection forced on the town by all the national attention, a few whites in Jena say they are coming to understand why blacks feel discriminated against.

“There’s a lot of white people who have not genuinely seen the issue,” said Eddie Thompson, a local Pentecostal pastor. “If you’re living in the majority, then everything looks fine to you.”

For his part, McMillin says he’s determined to discover what, if anything, is wrong in his town. In November, the mayor convened a seven-member multiracial “community relations panel” and directed it to closely examine the state of race relations in Jena — a topic the town has never before openly broached.

McMillin said he started with a list of nearly 40 potential committee members.

“We asked, ‘If you find out something you didn’t know before, are you willing to change your mind?'” McMillin said. “Only the ones who said yes were selected.”

The new committee has its work cut out for it. Most of the Jena 6 defendants face court proceedings in coming months, ensuring fresh waves of scrutiny focused on the town. And white supremacists have announced plans to stage a pro-white march through Jena on Jan. 21 — the national holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

– – –

Update: The Jena 6

One of the Jena 6 defendants, Mychal Bell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree battery for the attack on a white student at Jena High School and was sentenced to 18 months in juvenile detention. The others — Robert Bailey, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw and an unnamed juvenile — have yet to stand trial. The Jena district attorney has opened plea bargain negotiations with each of them.

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune <http://www.chicagotribune.com

Jena figures prominently in a number of end-of-the-year-wrap-up stories, most of which are content to recap the basic facts and move on.  This piece from Media Matters highlights comments from prominent media personalities that give Don Imus a run for his “nappy-headed hos” money.  Topping the list is Fox News host John Gibson who was appalled by the sight of over 20,000 black Americans descending on a sleepy little Southern town.

“What they’re worried about is a mirage of 1950s-style American segregation, racism from the South,” Gibson surmised.  “They wanna fight the white devil. … [T]here’s no — can’t go fight the black devil. Black devils stalking their streets every night gunning down their own people — can’t go fight that. That would be snitchin’.”

This comment (like many others chronicled in this article) demonstrates that Gibson has virtually no insight into the thoughts and feelings of African Americans.   Why would twenty thousand people march against black-on-black violence?  You march to change public policy decisions.  That means powerful white males will generally be on the receiving end.  Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just that powerful white males, not black hoodlums, make the policy decisions (or in-decisions) that lead to tragedies like Jena.

Also featured in this chronicle of tasteless, boneheaded remarks, is Bill O’Reilly’s wonderment that black patrons of a Harlem restaurant could behave like normal (white) Americans.  I guess he expected a little bitch-slapping and gun play.  O’Reilly and Gibson make these stupid comments because they have little first-hand experience with black America.  This makes them dependent on the very media stereotypes their ignorant rants perpetuate.

The comments highlighted below are important for the same reason Jena is important–they serve as egregious examples of normal white American perception.  O’Reilly, Gibson et al see white values and etiquette as normative.  To the extent minorities can assimilate to white standards they are accepted as citizens; to the extent they cannot (or will not) assimilate they are written off as thugs, perps and miscreants. 

Misinformation of the Year

It’s still not just Imus

Media Matters for America usually takes the opportunity at the end of the year to name a Misinformer of the Year, an individual or media entity who in that year has made a noteworthy “contribution” to the advancement of conservative misinformation. This year — a year in which Don Imus was removed from his decades-long radio program following a reference to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” (Imus returned to the air in December) — Media Matters has decided to change the focus of the year-end item. The Imus controversy resulted in intense media attention to the subject of speech concerning race and gender. At the time, Media Matters thought it necessary to remind the media that “It’s not just Imus” — that speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity permeates the airwaves, through personalities including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Savage. But offensive and degrading speech is not limited to conservative media personalities and “shock jocks,” although they are, of course, well-represented on any such list. As Media Matters has documented throughout this year, speech that targets or casts in a negative light race, gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin, and sexual orientation can be found throughout the media, and it often bears directly on politics and policy. That speech has earned the title of Misinformation of the Year 2007.

Race or national origin

• Fox News host John Gibson, discussing events surrounding the so-called Jena Six during the September 21 broadcast of his nationally syndicated Fox News Radio show, asserted that the demonstrators who had gathered the previous week in Jena, Louisiana, “wanna fight the white devil.” Gibson aired news coverage of the Jena 6 protests and challenged protestors’ claims that the incidents in Jena were representative of ongoing racism in this country. He said: “[W]hat they’re worried about is a mirage of 1950s-style American segregation, racism from the South. They wanna fight the white devil. … [T]here’s no — can’t go fight the black devil. Black devils stalking their streets every night gunning down their own people — can’t go fight that. That would be snitchin’.”

  Gibson also stated during the October 10 broadcast of his radio show, while discussing an incident in which a student shot four people at his Cleveland high school before killing himself, that “I know the shooter was white. I knew it as soon as he shot himself. Hip-hoppers don’t do that. They shoot and move on to shoot again.”

• Nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage claimed on Martin Luther King Day (January 15) that “civil rights” has become a “con” and asserted, “It’s a racket that is used to exploit primarily heterosexual, Christian, white males’ birthright and steal from them what is their birthright and give it to people who didn’t qualify for it.”
• On the February 7 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said that people who have received too much plastic surgery “got the eyes like they’re Oriental” while he put his fingers up to the side of his face.
• Discussing a dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at the Harlem restaurant Sylvia’s, during the September 19 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Bill O’Reilly statedthat he “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.” Later, during a discussion with National Public Radio senior correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams about the effect of rap on culture, O’Reilly said: “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’ You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.” O’Reilly also stated: “I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They’re getting away from the Sharptons and the [Rev. Jesse] Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They’re just trying to figure it out. ‘Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it.'” (more…)

Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus are asking Louisiana Governor, Kathleen Blanco, to pardon Mychal Bell and the Jena 6.  Governer Blanco says she can’t issue a pardon without a recommendation from the State Pardon Board.  Since such a recommendation is unlikely to materialize, the CBC’s request is best interpreted as a statement of concern and support.  As such, it is most welcome.  At least it shows that some of the folks who rallied around the Jena 6 in September are still thinking ab0ut the boys two months later.

Meanwhile, the white supremacists who are planning to march on Jena on Martin Luther King Day are now suing the central Louisiana town.  They don’t see why they can’t disrupt the traditional route of Jena’s traditional MLK parade or why they can’t show up on the streets of Jena fully armed. 

After initially welcoming the support of the unapologetically racist Nationalist Movement, Jena mayor Murphy McMillin has recovered his senses.  He isn’t denouncing the Nationalists (who once rallied in support of the cops who beat up Rodney King), but he isn’t sidling up to them either . . . a marked improvement in form, you will agree.

The Nationalist Movement says that if their demands aren’t met they won’t be marching in January; sort of a “my way or we won’t hit the highway” proposition.

That will be just fine with the folks in Jena and everybody else.  The last thing Jena needs is a bunch of jackbooted thugs marching in support of law, order, guns, God, and Justin Barker. 

In the end, neither the Congressional Black Congress nor the Nationalist Movement will decide how this saga plays out.  The only players that matter are the attorneys representing the Jena 6, district attorney Reed Walters, and Judge JP Mauffray.  Don’t expect major developments in the dwindling days of 2007, but January should be an interesting month.

Black Caucus Seeks Pardon for Jena 6

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Members of the Congressional Black Caucus called on Gov. Kathleen Blanco to pardon Mychal Bell and five other teenagers known as the “Jena 6.”

Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said in a letter to Blanco this week that Bell and the other teens have paid their debt to society and should be immediately pardoned.

“They and their families have suffered enough, as has the State of Louisiana and the town of Jena,” the letter reads.

Blanco’s press secretary, Marie Centanni, said Friday in a statement the governor cannot grant a pardon or commutation without a recommendation to do so from the state Pardon Board.

Blanco leaves office Jan. 14. The next Pardon Board meeting is scheduled for Jan. 17.

Fourteen other members of the caucus joined Lee in urging Blanco to support releasing Bell, who was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile facility on Dec. 3 for his role in an assault last year on Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School.

An e-mailed request for comment from Blanco was not immediately returned.

Bell pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery in return for a deal that gave him credit for the 10 months he had already served. Without the deal, the 17-year-old faced being placed in a juvenile facility until his 21st birthday.

Although he has only about eight months left to serve in the case, Bell is serving a separate 18-month sentence for previous juvenile charges unrelated to the Barker dispute. He has about 16 months left on that sentence, which runs concurrently with the sentence in the Barker case.

The charges against Bell and the others sparked a huge civil-rights demonstration in Jena in September. The activists said prosecutors treated blacks more harshly than whites.

Three months before the attack on Barker, three other white teens were accused of hanging nooses from a tree at the high school. The three were suspended from school but were never criminally charged.

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, in an e-mailed statement Thursday, said the attack on Barker was not just a schoolyard fight “but rather an unprovoked, unforeseen assault on a young man who had nothing to do with the hanging of the nooses.”

Charges against Robert Bailey Jr., 18; Carwin Jones, 19; Theo Shaw, 18 and Bryant Purvis, 18 have been reduced from attempted murder to aggravated second-degree battery. The last suspect was charged as a juvenile and not identified.

James Cone and I have something in common–we both want to start a conversation between black and white Americans in general, and between those who go by the name of Christian in particular.  In late November, Dr. Cone, a theology professor at Union Seminary in New York City, was interviewed by Bill Moyers.  Although I have provided the full transcript of their conversation, I recommend that you listen rather than read.

James Cone was invited to appear on the Journalbecause Bill Moyers heard a sermon on the cross and the lynching tree that professor Cone delivered last year at Harvard Divinity School.  Excerpts from that sermon are woven into the Journal conversation.   The context, obviously, was Jena and the weird proliferation of noose hangings that followed in the story’s wake.  Here’s a quick excerpt.

BILL MOYERS: How do you explain the current spate of the appearance of the noose again? Up comes this story right here from the suburbs of New York. A noose found in the basement-a locker room of the village police department. The deputy chief of police is black. And then you’ve got Jena and you got what happened at the Columbia, near your office. You think these people who– do you think they understand what that’s the symbol of? Of what actually happened to human beings when that noose was placed around the neck? Or is this just some kind of– you know, some kind of grim game?

JAMES CONE: Well, you know, you don’t have to know all about the Nazi hol– Holocaust to understand what a swastika is. You don’t have to understand all about the history of lynching to know what a noose is. Everybody knows that. Somehow, that– that gets– you don’t have to know that history. It’s in– it’s in American culture. As you say, it’s in the DNA. It’s our– it’s white America’s original sin and it’s deep. Like, for a long time, we didn’t want to talk about slavery. They don’t like to talk about 246 years of it. Then a hundred years of legal segregation and lynching.

Now, you don’t get away from that by not talking about it. That’s too deep. Germany is not going to get away from the Holocaust by not talking about it. It’s too deep. So, America must face up that we are one community. We– you know, if anybody in this society– if anybody is brother and sister to the other, it’s black people and white people because there is a– there is a tussle there that you cannot get out of. It is a– it is deeply engrained in our relationship to each other in a way that’s not with anybody else–

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

JAMES CONE: Because 246 years of slavery, number one. We have built this country. White people know that. Then, after slavery, segregation and lynching, we still helped build this country. So, it’s a history of violence, a history of black people fighting in every American war– even the Civil War.

BILL MOYERS: Like the Jews and the Arabs, right?

JAMES CONE: That’s right.

BILL MOYERS: ‘Cause, I mean, they come out of the same–

JAMES CONE: That– out of the same matrix.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, yeah, and they can’t–

JAMES CONE: And you can’t–

JAMES CONE: You can’t let each other go. I don’t care what you do. And that’s why–those nooses create that kind of response.

Cone tells Moyers that black and white Americans need to have a conversation.  It is “a tussle that you cannot get out of” because black and white Americans “can’t let each other go.”

Reinhold Niebuhr, a Union Seminary theology professor who influenced people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and a long list of powerful public officials, comes into the conversation a lot.  Niebuhr insisted that if America wants to be a great nation it needs to lose its innocence.  Reinhold Niebuhr, and his equally influential brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, constructed a politically informed theology of the cross between the 1920s and 1960.  They still figured prominently when I attended seminary between 1975 and 1979, but had largely faded from the academic scene by the time I came back for doctoral work in 1989. 

As Cone suggests, Reinhold Niebuhr is staging a come back.  The columns of David Brooks, a conservative columnist with the New York Times, quotes Niebuhr frequently.  If black and white Christians want to engage one another in serious conversation, James Cone argues, we can’t ignore the history of slavery and lynchings.  For that to happen, white Christians have got to abandon the myth of American innocence.  Here is where Niebuhr can help more than any contemporary theologian or social analyst.

I wish the conversation didn’t need to move through such dangerous territory, but I fear it does.  Until white Christians are ready to handle the truth in all its stark ugliness we will remain estranged from black America.  Tragically, as the typical white response to Jena demonstrates, we’re not ready for the truth and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

So how do you get a conversation started when one conversation partner insists that all the critical issues remain off the table?  Damned if I know; but that’s the challenge.

November 23, 2007

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. Our subject in this hour is one you don’t hear discussed very often in politics or around the dining table. It’s buried so deeply in the American psyche that rarely does anyone bring it front and center. Our silence on it is one reason we have so much difficulty coming to terms with race in America. I’m reluctant to raise it even now, because it’s anything but a comfortable subject for television. But I went online not long ago and listened to a speech at Harvard University that I simply can’t forget and I wanted you to meet the man who delivered it.

JAMES CONE: …blacks and whites and other Americans who want to understand the meaning of the American experience need to remember lynching.

BILL MOYERS: His name is James Cone and he has a powerful message about seeing America through the experience of the cross and the lynching tree.

JAMES CONE: ..to make sense out of the cross, the central symbol of the Christian faith, and the lynching tree…

BILL MOYERS: That’s right – the cross on which Christians believe Jesus Christ was crucified in the Roman Empire, and the lynching tree that meant agony and death for thousands of black people. Their connection is the subject of our broadcast. Be forewarned: you will see some disturbing images.

JAMES CONE: Yes, that is a noose…

BILL MOYERS: In the past few months we’ve all seen these chilling reports:

REPORTER: …one in Farmingdale and just yesterday in Roosevelt. Those two…”

BILL MOYERS: Nooses tied to a school yard tree in Jena, Louisiana.

REPORTER: …historically reserved for white students…

BILL MOYERS: Nooses left for a black member of the US Coast Guard.

REPORTER: …at New London, Connecticut…

BILL MOYERS: A noose on the door of a university professor’s office here in New York City.

REPORTER: …here at Columbia University…

VOICE: …because today it’s a noose and tomorrow they trying to put some bodies head in it…

BILL MOYERS: The reappearance of nooses is a haunting reminder of the dark side of American history, when after the civil war black Americans were forced to live in the shadow of the lynching tree. Thousands of human beings, tortured and hanged by the neck until dead.

BILLIE HOLIDAY SINGING Southern trees bear strange fruit… …blood on the leaves and blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze…

JAMES CONE: …’fruit hanging from the poplar trees’. Billie singing her signature song.

BILL MOYERS: James Cone knows that song well. As one of America’s pioneers of black theology, he has never been able to forget its message, and he wants his students at Union Theological Seminary here in New York City, to remember it, too.

JAMES CONE: …so that the brutal facts of history, keeps that from being a sort of pie in the sky thing. (more…)

Jena is currently a “happened” story.  The mainstream media reports on events, developments, action.  A story has a somewhat longer shelf-life with columnists in search of “news hooks” for their commentary–big, iconic events the reader can be presumed to know something about.  Toss together three or four news hooks related by a common theme and your column is half written–now you just have to come up with a point. 

Joseph Evans is a black pastor in Washington, DC.  His use of the Jena saga tells us a great deal about the settled state of public opinion.  What happened to people like the Jena 6 and Megan Williams in West Virginia, Rev. Evans says, “serve as constant reminders that we have not arrived to the founder’s ideal of ‘a more perfect union'”. 

People like Alan Bean and Craig Franklin can pontificate endlessly on what really happened in Jena, but hardly anybody is listening.  News consumers like the Rev. Joseph Evans checked out a few days after the September 20th march, and this is their verdict: what happened in Jena was a legal travesty.

That’s where the consensus ends.  Some go on argue that the rural South hasn’t changed as much as we were inclined to believe.  Some say that Jena is symptomatic of the unequal justice dispensed by the American legal system.  And then there are folks like Rev. Evans who acknowledge horrors like the Jena 6 and Megan Williams, insert a semi-colon, and move on to some form of “on the other hand” observation.

Jena is bad, Joseph Evans admits; on the other hand, black-on-black crime is worse. 

To make the point, Evans brings up another news hook: the case of slain Washington Redskins star, Sean Taylor; a black male killed by other black males.  If we’re going to be marching, the preacher says, we ought to be marching in protest of young hoodlums who spray bullets throughout their own communities.  Heck, you could probably draft the sainted Bill Cosby to lead a march like that!

But who and what would we be protesting?  Punks with guns?  Are the bangers going to see 20,000, placard waving zealots marching through their poor DC neighborhood and realize that the jig is up.  “Oh my God,” banger A says to banger B, “it appears that mainstream society frowns upon our irresponsible antics and is demanding change.  I guess we’ll have to turn our pieces over to the appropriate authorities and re-enroll in high school.”

Public protest doesn’t address the Megan Williams and Sean Taylor tragedies for a simple reason–these cases bear no relation to public policy or to the actions of public officials.  Jena isn’t primarily about black kids beating on a white kid, nor is it about white kids hanging nooses; Jena is a story about the abuse of power.  Public officials sometimes respond to public protest; racist sickos and ghetto thugs do not.

We should be concerned about grotesque expressions of white racism and we should care about black-on-black violence; but the response needs to be qualitatively different.  Organized protest and “ain’t-it-awful” hand-wringing will have no effect on these problems . . . except to establish the moral superiority of the hand-wringers.

Noose hangings and violent assaults are symptoms of a toxic social environment.  Rev. Evans calls for “quiet community-based results oriented, discussions within the African American community.”  A good idea, but if the discussion never addresses public policy, and the white politicians who shape it, we won’t get anywhere.  The black community can’t solve this problem on its own.  Nor can white politicians.  Conversations should begin in poor black neighborhoods and within the corridors of power, but eventually the poor and the powerful must listen to one another.

So long as we see the madness within society as a sign that poor people are making bad decisions nothing will change.  Similarly, if we assume that rich white folks share the full weight of responsibility for the problems of poor, black America, progress will be impossible.  We are dealing with a toxic social environment.  Because everybody is part of the problem, everybody must be part of the solution. 

Black-on-black crime?

By Joseph Evans

Few would argue that race relations in America remain in dire straits in many social stratus and classes. The so-called “Jena Six” in Jena, Louisiana, and the shameless event in southern West Virginia, involving a young African America woman, Megan Williams, serve as constant reminders that we have not arrived to the founder’s ideal of “a more perfect union.”
 

These horrific events attracted warranted public outrage and media coverage. Leaders from all segments of American culture were present to protest racism, perceived or otherwise. They should be applauded for civic responsibility and loudly denouncing these kinds of behavior as un-American and uncivil. Grassroots organizations and humble citizens — black, white, Asian, female and male — came from various sections of the nation unified to say no to these kinds of activities and to rightly demand justice.
 

Familiar African American public figures were at the forefront. They ardently spoke against what seems to be a too often reoccurring theme in American culture, whites victimizing blacks. Many of them are perceived to be leaders in African American public life; and by proxy, they are believed to serve as authoritative voices on African American contemporary culture and guardians of civil rights and African American pathos.
 

In light of these two incidents in Louisiana and West Virginia, how do we process Sean Taylor’s tragedy? Because he died, it seems to truncate these other crimes. Maybe it’s the distressing way his death happened. Many of the details surrounding this heinous act are still unclear. Sadly, details about those arrested for the crime are not. They are very clear. Mr. Taylor was slain with his girl friend and child in his home and the alleged assailants are young African American men. It seems like “black on black” crime.
 

Understandably, across the land, many are grieving; some participate in the National Football League and some are simply moved by this violation of privacy and property that resulted in murder. Maybe it’s because his life was a symbol of what hard work and getting the right breaks complimented by God-given talents can produce. Mr. Taylor found material success. He was living the American dream, proving that all things are possible. His American dream was ascending but eclipsed by needless violence, apparently at the hands of African American males. Maybe that is why so many of us are depressed.
 

Statistics reveal that more African American men are in a penal system for similar crimes than in colleges, universities or trade schools. Still, staggering numbers are commonplace as Bill Cosby states in his book “Come on People: On the Path From Victims to Victors”: “Homicide is the number one cause of death for black men between fifteen and twenty – nine years of age and has been for decades.” Where is the public outrage and demand for justice and answers? Is public ambivalence – black and white — a sign that “black on black” violence is not as offensive? Can blacks, whites, Asians, females and males convene around a proverbial table and say “No more. We want justice”?
 

Is it too much to hope that Mr. Taylor’s needless murder causes diverse leadership across this nation to begin honest dialogue about African American male rage, dysfunction and displacement? Can we ask some of the familiar African American public figures to organize rallies in some of the most plagued cities where murder and crime occur mostly at the hands of our young African American men? Can they lead high profile or quiet community-based results oriented, discussions within the African American community, stating that “we cannot survive like this?”
 

Is there a correlation between inner-city schools failing to educate and prepare young people for their futures and the fact that currently much of African American family life is at its lowest ebb, partly because fathers are not in many homes? We do know that there is a clear and present danger of fatalism threatening to destroy our thinly veiled fabric of African American social stability. Can we find some leaders who will call for a moratorium finally, to discover if these plagues are causes and effects for African American males’ rage?

As disgusting as the Jena Six and Meagan Williams’ episodes remain, Sean Taylor died. Perhaps his death will force American culture to face this reoccurring nightmare, African American men are killing each other. Why?
 

The Rev. Joseph Evans is pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Washington.

Andrew Sullivan’s article on Barack Obama is the best piece of political writing I have seen in this election season.  Consider this:

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war – not so much the war in Iraq, which will continue into the next decade – but the civil war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and has crippled the country at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war – and culture and religion and race. And in that war, Obama – and Obama alone – offers the possibility of a truce.

Sullivan’s take on Obama’s religion reveals a rare sensitivity and insight.  His treatment of Obama’s measured response to Jena is brilliant.

Friends of Justice is politically non-partisan; as an organization we have no political affiliation and we don’t endorse candidates.   Here, I write as a Canadian who is trying to become an American citizen so he can vote.   Unfortunately, the Homeland Security people don’t seem to like my criminal justice reform work.  At any rate, my application has been on hold now for over three years because, I am told, I have failed to obtain security clearance.  I doubt Jena helped my candidacy that much.  Although I cannot vote, I have a powerful investment in the coming election. 

Three of us Beans heard the leading three candidates debate in June (my wife, Nancy, and my daughter, Lydia were with me in Washington).  At the time I was leaning toward John Edwards.  Hillary Clinton was by far the most polished performer–on that occasion at least.  But there is something about Obama that moves me, and this article helped me understand why. 

From The Sunday Times

December 16, 2007

The new face of America

Once written off, Barack Obama is suddenly surging in the polls and could become the first African-American president . The reason is because he is the only man who can halt the racial, religious and cultural civil war that is tearing America apart. (more…)

This Commonweal article by Joe Petit came as a great relief.  Finally, somebody in America appears to understand the true significance of Jena.  Throwing charges of racism at people like Jena prosecutor Reed Walters can be counterproductive, Pettit argues, because it deflects attention from the systemic nature of American injustice.  Changing hearts isn’t enough; we need to change public policy.  On the other hand, Pettit understands that you can’t change public policy without changing hearts and minds–particularly the hearts and minds of white people.  Pettit’s black students ask him why white America is so unconcerned about the plight of poor black Americans.  Jena raises the same question.

This penetrating column focuses on the nature of freedom.  When we say, “Free the Jena 6!” what are we saying?  To me, the phrase meant that justice would not be served until the Jena 6 were freed from the spiteful prosecution of Reed Walters and the overheated and grossly biased judicial context of LaSalle Parish.  But many white observers have taken the phrase to mean that black offenders should not be held accountable.

The misunderstanding, Pettit suggests, is rooted in the underreporting of critically important events–primarily Reed Walters’ September threat to destroy the lives of those who continued to protest the school’s handling of the noose incident.   This bizarre statement suggests that (a) Walters helped create the toxic atmosphere that led to a weekend of racial violence, and that (b) the prosecutor’s bias means he cannot fairly represent the interests of justice.  Only when these facts are understood can we get a feel for the familiar cry, “Free the Jena 6”.

November 23, 2007 / Volume CXXXIV, Number 20  

SHORT TAKE

Free at Last?

YES & NO

Joe Pettit

 Late last year six black teenagers were charged-as adults-with attempted murder, for beating a white classmate in rural Jena, Louisiana. The beating followed a series of racially charged incidents, including the hanging of nooses from a tree on school property. Though the district attorney eventually reduced the excessive charge to battery, widespread outrage had already been aroused, and in August tens of thousands of civil-rights protestors descended on Jena, bringing with them intense national media coverage.

Large-scale civil-rights marches are uncommon these days, and the protests against the treatment of the “Jena 6,” as the young men came to be known, provided a glimpse of racial tensions that all too often get papered over. This revelation followed on the heels of a hotly contested Supreme Court decision narrowly overturning school integration plans in Seattle and Louisville. Taken together, the two events make it clear that Americans remain as divided as ever over how to think about the legacy of racism in the United States-and what to do about it.

As a white professor who teaches social ethics at a historically black university, I reflect on this question almost daily. The debate is unnecessarily confused. Everyone seems to be talking about freedom, yet few acknowledge that the word is being used in very different ways. The difference lies in how freedom relates to opportunity. On the one hand, freedom can mean the choices we make with the opportunities we are given. But it can also mean the amount of opportunity available to us. Being born into a community rich in opportunity-or one lacking in it-has profound implications for our freedom. Many white people think that the thirty-odd years since most legal discrimination was abolished, plus the decades of social-assistance programs, mean we can stop worrying about race. And many black people know that a disproportionately high number of African Americans remain mired in poverty, crime, and hopelessness.

The scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam contain another way to frame the two dimensions of freedom. Each religious tradition exhorts its adherents to live up to divine expectations of righteousness. God, speaking through the prophets, also expects that the poor and the vulnerable will be protected by a commitment to justice. In biblical times, whenever societies allowed this justice to fail, and the poor to remain isolated and ignored, they incurred the prophet’s wrath. But how would a prophet speak today about race and social justice in a way that would enable Americans to move beyond the current impasse?

First, despite the enduring legacy and the persistence of racism, it needs to be said that lobbing accusations of racism is not helpful. Indeed, such accusations can have the paradoxical effect of reducing the problem to the need for a change of heart, rather than the need for a change in public policy. Instead, we should focus on responsibility. Both the rich and the poor have responsibilities. Those who live in opportunity-rich communities, for example, often work to keep lower-cost housing out of their neighborhoods. They need to be reminded that “personal responsibility” should include not only taking care of one’s own family but also addressing injustice.

On a broader scale, we need to recognize that the very structure of our political system perpetuates the isolation of those who live in opportunity-poor neighborhoods, concentrating poverty and hopelessness in relatively few political districts, thereby further diminishing the political power of the residents. And the courts haven’t helped much of late. The Supreme Court ruling on public-school integration in Louisville and Seattle failed to help us understand how to reduce racial inequality. Chief Justice John Roberts’s attempt to minimize the scope, meaning, and implications of Brown v. Board of Education was, at best, naive. In fact, Brown was a judicial intervention designed to curtail the ability of federal, state, and local governments to perpetuate racial inequality by giving blacks an inferior education.

Yet the dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer was not as “eloquent and unanswerable” as Justice John Paul Stevens seemed to believe. Breyer spent over half his sixty-eight-page opinion arguing that integration programs are permissible. But lots of unfortunate things are constitutionally permissible; and Breyer’s attempt to clarify why such programs might be desirable was unconvincing. He cited no instance of actual harm caused by the Seattle and Louisville school systems. (In fact, both systems offered an unsually wide choice of schools for all students, making them something of a racial Shangri-La compared with systems in which students are limited to the school district in which they reside.) Finally, although Breyer appealed to the “democratic” value of creating educational systems that reflect a “pluralistic society”-an argument that makes racial diversity a legitimate concern-he never explained how much diversity is enough. Nor did he help us understand the rather confusing claim by the Louisville school administration that schools where 85 percent of the students are white are racially acceptable, while schools where 51 percent of the students are black are unacceptable. What’s a self-respecting black student to make of that?

The Jena 6 protests were another missed opportunity to advance the discussion on racial inequality. The protests made clear that racism still drastically affects people’s lives, especially when it is bolstered by judicial and political power. But the demand to “Free the Jena 6” gave many outsiders the impression that protestors thought the six teens should not be held responsible for the attack on the white student. What casual observers could not see was the background of the incident: that groups of white students had previously attacked blacks with impunity; that the white district attorney in Jena had allegedly threatened black students at the school, warning them he could ruin their lives with the “stroke of a pen.” These facts were underreported, and so the message the wider public took away from “Free the Jena 6” was that demands for racial justice are at odds with the demands of personal responsibility.

A different slogan-say, “Equal Lives, Equal Justice”-could have focused more clearly on the problem of racial disparity in the criminal-justice system. But in the end, will anyone change his or her political convictions in order to defend criminals? Reducing racial inequality requires seeing the consequences of history and policy not on criminals, but on human beings. And while much can be accomplished through changes in public policy, what’s most lacking is what’s most needed: the sympathy and support of mainstream white America. This is what perplexes my students. While many of them are willing to accept that greater attention to personal responsibility is necessary in many poor black neighborhoods, they also wonder why so few white people feel a responsibility to eliminate the legacies of slavery and discrimination.

We hear it all the time: Americans are a believing people. But belief in God demands empathy and solidarity with those who suffer, even when this means supporting people who have made bad choices. Too many Americans have concluded that persistent racial inequality is not their problem. This denial of responsibility lies at the heart of our abiding racial problem.

Barack Obama is currently running neck-and-neck with Hillary Clinton . . . among black voters.  His caution on issues like race and justice is understandable (white voters like to believe that racial equality is a done deal in America).  Obama may have figured that black voters would support him simply because Hillary is white, but that reasoning hasn’t worked, so the first African American presidential candidate with a fighting chance of success is reaching out to the black community . . . and Jena is part of his pitch.

This suggests that the Obama camp is making two assumptions: (1) their candidate must address the issues raised by the Jena case forthrightly if he hopes to win the hearts of black voters; and (2) that doing so won’t hurt him with the white voters currently supporting his candidacy. 

I suspect the Obama people are right on both counts.

I was particularly gratified by a statement at the very end of this piece in the Chicago Tribune: “I’m tired of reading about Jena.  I’m tired of reading about nooses and I’m tired of hearing about a Justice Department that doesn’t understand justice.”

Barack Obama may be the only presidential candidate (in either party) capable of inspiring passion in his followers.  To win, he needs to feed that passion.

Obama brings his message to Harlem

By Mike Dorning | Tribune national correspondent

November 30, 2007

NEW YORK – Sen. Barack Obama invoked Rev. Martin Luther King’s “fierce urgency of now” as he made his first visit as a presidential candidate to America’s most famous black neighborhood, Harlem, venturing within sight of Bill Clinton’s office.

“I want to stand up for those who still hunger for opportunity, who still thirst for justice,” Obama said Thursday night. “I don’t want to wake up and find out four years from now that we missed this opportunity. … We cannot wait.” The last quote is a reference to King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Most of the local African-American political leadership, led by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charles Rangel, have lined up behind New York’s favorite daughter, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But long lines of overwhelmingly black supporters waited outside for a $50-a-seat fundraiser at the Apollo Theater, a cultural institution. The Harlem Gospel Choir sang the gospel standard “Oh Happy Day” while waiting for the candidate.

“How does it feel to be part of history?” asked scholar Cornel West, bringing the crowd to its feet.

“You’d be real embarrassed if he won and we wasn’t down,” said comedian Chris Rock, introducing Obama. “I had that white lady. What was I thinking? What was I thinking?”

Obama also spoke about the Jena 6 case of black teens charged in a racially tinged incident in Louisiana.

“I’m tired of reading about Jena,’ he said. “I’m tired of reading about nooses and I’m tired of hearing about a Justice Department that doesn’t understand justice.”

Obama used the visit to pay homage to Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the few prominent local leaders who has not yet chosen whom to back, though he said he will “very shortly.”

The two dined on corn bread, coconut shrimp and fried chicken wings at Sylvia’s, a famous soul food restaurant.

Speaking later with reporters, Sharpton said, ‘Tonight he came to Harlem, and he came with a message that Harlem likes [and] wants someone to discuss at a presidential level, that is hate crimes.”

If you have been looking for the precise details of Mychal Bell’s plea agreement this piece by Sherrel Wheeler Stewart should answer all your questions.  

Jena Six’s Mychal Bell Accepts Plea Deal, Gets 18 Months in Juvenile Custody for Beating

Date: Tuesday, December 04, 2007
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Mychal Bell, a former standout high school football player in Jena, Louisiana, was sentenced Monday to 18 months in juvenile custody for his role in the beating of a white classmate one year ago.

The sentence is part of a plea agreement accepted by LaSalle Parish Judge J.P. Mauffrey three days before Bell was set to go to trial in juvenile court for the fight with Justin Barker on Dec. 4, 2006. The case captured national attention because of the severity of the initial charges and the fact that whites who committed offenses in the town were handled differently, parents and activists said.

Under the plea, Bell:

· Admitted to second degree battery, which would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison if he in adult.

· Was ordered to serve 18 months in the custody of the Office of Youth Development, receiving credit for time already served.

· Agreed to pay his pro rata share of restitution to the Barker family for medical costs not covered by insurance.

· Agreed to pay court costs.

· Agreed to testify truthfully in the cases of any of the five co-defendants who goes to trial.

Bell’s parents also agreed to continue paying the state child support until their son reaches the age of 18. He is 17 now.

Bell’s share of Barker’s medical bill is about $935, said Bill Furlow, a spokesman for LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters. The amount of court costs is yet to be determined, Furlow told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Bell is one of six youths charged in the case that touched off one of the largest civil rights protests in recent history. He and Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw, Robert Bailey Jr., and an unnamed juvenile were charged in the fight, which followed weeks of unrest in the rural Louisiana town of 3,000. Originally five of the six were charged with felonies in adult court.

The amount of their bonds ranged as high as $135,000, and the potential sentences on the felony charges for those being handled as adults could have ranged as high as 75 years, attorneys have said.

Bell was the first to be convicted as an adult in June, but an appeals court overturned that conviction, saying that the matter should have been handled in juvenile court because of Bell’s age at the time of the incident.

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said in a prepared statement Monday that he hopes to wrap up the other cases early next year.

A trial date of Jan. 28 has been set for both Jones and Shaw, said Bill Furrow, a spokesman for Walters.

Alan Bean, head of Friends of Justice, a group that began working in January to bring attention to the case, said Bell’s agreement sets a pattern, but not a blueprint for the handling of the remaining cases.

“This shows that the D.A. is willing to consider plea agreements in the best interest of the people of Jena, the defendants and himself,” Bean told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Bell‘s team of lawyers, led by Louis Scott, were getting ready for trial and the opportunity to call witnesses to Bell‘s defense. In his earlier trial, a court-appointed lawyer did not call witnesses in defense of Bell.

His new lawyers say the plea was best for their client.

“We were prepared to go forward with the trial, but you have to do what’s best for the client,” said Carol Powell Lexing, one of Bell’s attorneys.

Attempts to reach Scott were unsuccessful.

Several activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, had said previously that Bell should be released based on the time he already has served. He was locked up on adult charges immediately following the incident last year. He remained in jail until late September after his conviction was overturned.

Days later, the judge ordered Bell to a juvenile facility, saying that by fighting on Dec. 4, he had violated the terms of probation for earlier unrelated offenses. He was given 18 months of juvenile time for those offenses. With the acceptance of the plea agreement, the time served will now run concurrently. Still, however, Bell could be in jail at least another year. He also will be given credit for time served on the sentence in connection with the Dec. 4 incident.

Bean said that there is an upside to the plea agreement. “At least now there is some certainty. Mychal Bell knows that there is a date where he can return to the free world,“ he said.
 
Walters said he would try to work out plea deals with the other teens charged in Barker’s beating. He said his decision to work out a deal was not influenced by the intense media coverage and civil rights demonstrations.

Barker spent several hours in the emergency room after the attack, but was discharged and attended a school event soon afterward.

Critics said prosecutors have treated blacks more harshly than whites in LaSalle Parish, pointing to an incident three months before the attack on Barker in which three white teens were accused of hanging nooses from a tree at the high school. The three were suspended from school but never criminally charged.

—

Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mychal Bell’s plea bargain caught me, and almost everyone else, by surprise.  Mr. Bell’s attorneys were talking tough–as if they were prepared to go to trial this Thursday; a surprising move considering that any competent attorney would have been putting off the day of reckoning by filing motions to recuse Reed Walters and change the venue.

Mychal’s attorneys were able to get a reasonable plea offer from the LaSalle Parish District Attorney because Reed Walters doesn’t want to face a recusal hearing that would draw media attention to his complicity in the sad events of December 4, 2006.  It was a year ago today that Justin Barker was felled by a single punch; but the animosity between black and white students dated back to the first week of September when Walters tried to intimidate black students into dropping their protest with a stroke of his pen. 

When the legal process in Mychal’s case was opened to public scrutiny, Reed Walters saw the writing on the wall.  Plea agreements draw a few lines of passing interest from the media; a full-blown trial would have placed the Jena 6 back on the front page and on the evening news.  That wouldn’t have been good for Walters, it wouldn’t have been good for Jena, and it probably wouldn’t have helped the defendants either.

Hopefully, yesterday’s plea agreement has sucked the wind from the sails of the March for Hate scheduled for Jena on Martin Luther King Day.  Read Craig Franklin’s recent article on the event (at the bottom of the page–you have to wait a minute for it to come up) and tell me if he sounds enthusiastic about the impending event, horrified by it, or if he has mixed feelings.  Franklin clearly spent a long time chatting with event organizers.  Jena officials aren’t officially endorsing the march-from-hell; but they aren’t distancing themselves from it either.

Hopefully, if all these cases are resolved (or near resolution) by mid-January, these twisted individuals will keep their confederate flags flapping in the back yard instead of parading them down main street.  If so, Jena will have dodged a bullet.  A well-publicized hate march would solidify the community’s reputation as the most racist town in America.  It is time for community leaders to take the stand against overt bigotry they failed to take in September of 2006.  I can’t think of a better way to change public perception.

Did Mychal Bell administer the knock out punch to Justin Barker?  I still don’t know.  True, his plea agreement involves a frank, and presumably sincere, admission of guilt.  But innocent people frequently admit to crimes they didn’t commit if they think it will improve their legal standing.  Nonetheless, as a point of law, it is now established that Mychal Bell knocked Justin Barker cold. 

Like me, the parents of the Jena 6 have mixed feelings about yesterday’s ruling.  Something there is that loves a court fight.  The media is praying for such a dispensation.  But, as I suggest below in Howard Witt’s article in the Chicago Tribune, it would be in the best interest of all if this saga is resolved out of court.  My prayer is that none of the remaining defendants will face additional prison time–but I don’t get to make that call.

It has always been my primary concern to see these kids represented by competent legal counsel with the media (mainstream and independent) looking on.  The legal system tends to work properly when attorneys know their business and the public takes an lively interest.  Stay tuned.

chicagotribune.com

TRIBUNE UPDATE

Plea deal arranged for teen in Jena 6

No trial, lesser charge may ease way for rest

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

December 4, 2007

HOUSTON

The district attorney in the racially-charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana agreed to a plea bargain Monday that sharply reduced the charges against the first of the six black teenagers who was facing trial, while attorneys for other defendants said the prosecutor appeared eager to settle their cases as well.

LaSalle Parish District Atty. Reed Walters, whose initial decision to charge the black teenagers with attempted murder for beating a white youth was condemned as excessive by civil rights leaders, dropped a conspiracy charge against Mychal Bell, 17, and agreed to let him plead guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery, with a sentence of 18 months and credit for time he has served in jail.

District Judge J.P. Mauffray approved the plea agreement Monday afternoon, just three days before Bell’s trial in juvenile court was to have begun. Bell’s attorneys said Walters offered them the plea agreement Thursday, a week after a coalition of U.S. media companies, led by the Chicago Tribune, successfully sued Mauffray to force him to open the trial to the public and the press.

“This case has been a very difficult chapter in the town’s life and for the individuals involved,” said David Utter, an attorney for another of the Jena 6 defendants who was charged as a juvenile. “My sense is that the district attorney would like to close this chapter now.”

Utter and attorneys for several other Jena 6 defendants confirmed that they were engaged in plea negotiations with the district attorney, heralding a potential conclusion to the controversial case that drew more than 20,000 protesters to Jena in September and earned the small Louisiana town a portrayal by civil rights leaders and the national media as a racist backwater.

The latest turnabout

The decision to reduce the charges against Bell was the latest turnabout for Walters, who had vowed to aggressively prosecute the six black youths for their alleged roles in assaulting Justin Barker at Jena High School on Dec. 4, 2006, and kicking him while he lay unconscious.

The incident capped months of racial unrest in the town set off when three white students hung nooses from a tree traditionally used by whites at the high school after black students sought permission to sit beneath its shade.

Black students and their parents regarded the noose incident as a hate crime and demanded that the white perpetrators be expelled, but school officials dismissed the incident as a prank and issued lesser punishments. A series of fights ensued between black and white youths, but civil rights leaders asserted that the schools and the courts in Jena treated black students more harshly than whites for similar offenses.

After the Jena story gained national attention last spring, Walters backed away from the attempted murder charges and instead charged the six teenagers with aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. He tried Bell on those charges as an adult in June and won a conviction, but an appeals court reversed the verdict in September, ruling that Bell should have been prosecuted as a juvenile.

Since then, Walters has come under growing political pressure to conclude the Jena 6 cases. Local leaders have been dreading a drawn-out series of criminal trials that would keep Jena in the spotlight throughout 2008. And Louisiana’s departing governor, Kathleen Blanco, directly pressed Walters not to pursue an appeal of the decision that struck down Bell’s adult conviction.

Walters did not address the question of political pressure, but he said in a statement Monday that he hopes to have the remaining Jena 6 cases resolved early next year.

“My goal and intention has always been to find appropriate justice for Justin Barker, and I believe this plea accomplishes that,” Walters said.

A potential perfect storm

Before Walters made his plea offer, Bell’s attorneys said they had been preparing pretrial motions seeking to recuse both the prosecutor and Mauffray from the case. The attorneys said evidence contained in those motions would have embarrassed both men.

“A trial would be very bad for the town, very bad for Reed Walters, very bad for anybody in Jena associated with the process, and it could turn out very bad for the defendants as well,” said Alan Bean, head of a small civil rights group called Friends of Justice who was the first activist to call attention to the Jena case. “It had the potential for being a perfect storm in which everybody lost.”

Parents on both sides of the case agreed.

“If the district attorney makes an offer to us and my son doesn’t have to do any jail time, that would be fine,” said Tina Jones, who insists that her son, Bryant Purvis, was not involved in the school attack. “I’m ready to get this all over with.”

Plea bargains “would be the best solution, as long as they don’t get away with no punishment at all,” said David Barker, the father of Justin. “This case has taken its toll on everybody. Justin has ulcers now. Letting it drag on for years would just be additional stress for him.”

Bell’s attorneys said they urged their client to agreed to the plea bargain to spare the former high school football star the danger of being convicted of more serious charges.

In October, Mauffray sentenced Bell to 18 months for four prior juvenile convictions for battery and destruction of property. But under the plea deal, that time will be served concurrently with the new sentence for the 2006 attack, and Bell will get credit for the nine months he spent in jail while awaiting trial. His attorneys said the teen could be released by June.