Mike Huckabee is a study in contradiction.  He’s a bible-believing Southern Baptist who plays base guitar and jokes about asking the Rolling Stones to play at his inaugural.  His conservative credentials on hot-button issues like abortion and gay rights are impeccable; yet he seems genuinely concerned about the environment and social justice issues.

In Baptist circles, “social justice” used to be code for “liberal”.  Real conservatives were too concerned about personal responsibility to care about poor people.  To give “those people” a hand up was to deprive them of a precious opportunity to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps”.

Like me, Mike Huckabee is a former Baptist minister.  We both attended Southern Baptist seminaries in the 1970s.  Baptists are a tiny minority in my native Western Canada; in 1975 there were probably more Baptists in Louisville, Kentucky than in the entire Dominion of Canada.  In the dark days following the Civil War, southerners rallied around the Southern Baptist Convention, making it the nation’s dominant evangelical denomination.

When I arrived in Louisville in the summer of 1975, the SBC was a good-old-boy network that maintained the appearance of unity by trampling on “extremists”, be they liberal or fundamentalist.  The controlling personalities in the Convention at that time were conservative, traditional, and politically and sociologically savvy.  Their primary goal was to hold a massive denomination together, and that meant focusing on the basics: preaching, missions, evangelism and church growth.

Then it all fell apart.  By the late 1970s, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (known affectionally to fundamentalists as “the whore on the hill”) was under seige.  When Roy Lee Honeycutt became seminary president, he tried to placate the fundamentalist wing by inviting some of their firebrand preachers to address Wednesday morning chapel.

So it was that a tall, dark and handsome Texas evangelist named James Robison came to “Southern”.  Robison was loud, rambunctious and eloquent.  He was also half-crazy.  In one sermon he described a blood-drenched vision of his  wife and young children nailed to the wall of his study accompanied by a personal message from God written in blood.

Robison now admits that during these years he had “a claw” in his brain.  He also had a talented young press agent named Mike Huckabee.  It wasn’t long before Robison suffered a complete physical and emotional collapse, re-emerging as a soft-spoken “Bapti-costal” television personality more concerned with feeding children in Africa than with scaring folks into heaven.

Has Mike Huckabee undergone a similar transformation?

Perhaps.  It was hard to be a Baptist in the 1980s–and it didn’t matter if you were a conservative or a moderate (the handful of genuine Southern Baptist liberals had long since headed for the exits).  The Bible was a problem for everybody.  The Good Book didn’t say much about abortion, one way or the other.  You could find passages that appeared to condemn gay sex; but there were far more texts focused on God’s love for the poor.  No matter where you stood theologically, there were large chunks of the Bible that were best ignored.

The situation was aggravated by the dirty little secret of the fundamentalist resurgence.  Conservative Southern Baptists could rise to national prominence, but only as part of a loose coalition controlled by pro-business republicans.  The result: a marriage of convenience between soul-winning preachers and supply-side economics.  “Values voters” concentrated on homosexuality and abortion to the virtual exclusion of all other issues.  It was the only way to maintain an tentative consensus between conservative Roman Catholics and old style evangelicals.  A movement that eschewed evolutionary science found itself in the dark embrace of social Darwinism. 

Pro-business orthodoxy, with its stress on entrepreneurial passion and personal responsibility, provided the perfect answer to the civil rights movement.  Rejecting the carrot of affirmative action (popularly associated with moral drift and welfare dependency), southerners reached for the stick of mass incarceration. 

Here we see the roots of what the New Jim Crow.  Poor African Americans no longer had to eat in the kitchen or ride at the back of the bus; but the slightest departure from the straight-and-narrow earned a one-way ticket to hell.  While LBJ’s war on poverty receded into the shadows, the prisons filled up with poor black males whose primary sin was an inability to adapt to the rigors of high-tech capitalism.  Texas had 40,000 state prisoners in 1980; we now have 160,000.

Through the ministrations of a smiling and beneficent Ronald Reagan, this marriage between southern evangelicals and corporate Republicans becaming the regnant orthodoxy of America.

The Southern Baptist Convention tied itself to corporate Republicans by driving its moderate minority into exile.  When I returned to Southern Seminary to work on a doctorate in Church History, hard-featured young zealots were forcing the professors I remembered from a decade earlier to walk the plank.   

During my five-year stint as a Ph.D student, the halls of Southern seminary ran with blood.  Those days are now long over.  Under the guidance of the politically flexible Albert Mohler, Southern Seminary has emerged as a bastion of Republican evangelicalism.

It was during this period that Mike Huckabee became president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention.  Leaning on his wit and charm, the Baptist preacher generally avoided the theological rancor of the period.  But it wasn’t long before he left off being a preacher and went into politics.  Like me, he sees his new vocation as Christian ministry by other means.

By all outward signs, Huckabee remains an orthodox evangelical and a socially conservative Republican.  But there are signs that he is no longer driven by the crude compromise underlying the old marriage of convenience.  

Huckabee recently won almost 50% of the African American vote in Arkansas.  As a Baptist pastor he took a stand against the de facto segregation of Southern religious life; a fact black voters appreciated.  But there was more.  Huckabee frequently used his gubernatorial powers to commute the harsh sentences routinely dealt to Arkansas inmates.  The slightest sign of a jailhouse conversion and the Governor was waiting with his pen. 

Huckabee remains a fiscally conservative, small government Republican.  He recently turned down an invitation to appear at the New Baptist Covenant gathering in Atlanta, perhaps fearing that the event was too closely associated with Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.  Still, as the son of dirt-poor southerners, the presidential candidate consistently identifies with common folk.  People would rather vote for the candidate who looks like the guy they work next to, he likes to say on the stump, rather than the candidate who looks like the guy who laid them off.   Can you imagine Ronald Reagan saying that?

David Kirkpartick of the New York Times has recently noted that Huckabee’s candidacy has received a lukewarm reception from prominent evangelical opinion leaders like James Dobson and Pat Robertson.  Last night, Kirkpatrick expressed similar views on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. 

The unenthusiastic reviews Mike Huckabee is drawing from the champions of evangelical orthodoxy is similar to the cool reception Barack Obama is receiving from the guardians of the civil rights movement.  Evangelical republicans don’t disagree with Huckabee on theological grounds; their concern is practical.  Huckabee, to their way of thinking, threatens to break asunder the marriage between evangelicals and big business Republicans.  The Arkansas governor generally agrees with fiscal conservatives, but he doesn’t bow and scrape in their presence.  Worse than that, he tilts dangerously toward the environmentalist camp and his “tough on crime” credentials are suspect.

Barack Obama fails to spark enthusiasm among civil rights leaders from Al Sharpton to John Lewis because he refuses to define himself as the champion of black America.  Obama is questionable, in this view, because he transcends the red state-blue state culture war that defined the issues for a generation of politicians and activists.

Barack Obama can preach the civil rights gospel as well as any black leader in America; but civil rights is only part of his vision.  Mike Huckabee can reach out to “values voters” as effectively as any right wing culture warrior; but his heart isn’t in the culture war. 

Obama and Huckabee disagree on the issues, make no mistake, but they are united by a willingness to cross ideological lines in search for votes and a sense of purpose.  Unlike their opponents, these two candidates don’t fit the old culture war categories.

Friends of Justice is a criminal justice reform organization.  When we bring instances of unequal justice to national attention we aren’t just trying to win justice for a few isolated individuals; we are creating transformative narratives with the power to change the bedrock assumptions that drive public policy. 

The corruption of the criminal justice system has been a bi-partisan effort.  Democrats and Republicans have been equally afraid of being labeled “soft on crime”.  But the winds are beginning to shift.  We are seeing the advent of a new kind of politician.  It is possible, perhaps likely, that neither Obama nor Huckabee will be the next president of these United States.  But they represent the wave of the future.

Young evangelicals might agree (sort of) with their parents about gay rights and abortion, but they are growing concerned about the environmental crisis and talking about social justice.  For the first time in my life experience, Christians are reading the whole Bible.  This fact might draw a shrug of indifference from secular America; but for battle-scarred Baptists like me it’s an exciting development.

Mainstream white America rewards any black opinion leader willing to tell us what we desperately want to hear.  “Tell us that race isn’t a big deal,” we moan.  “Tell us that centuries of slavery have had no lasting impact.  Tell us that generations of Jim Crow segregation have left no footprint in the America soil.  Tell us we are color blind, innocent and evolving.  Tell us . . . please! please! . . . that we don’t have to feel guilty.”

Larry Elder has fashioned a career out of telling white folks what we want to believe. 

Just as importantly, Elder tells upwardly mobile black folks what they want to hear–that they have no obligations to their less fortunate brothers and sisters.  

Elder is the anti-Sharpton . . . or, at least that’s how he’s trying to brand himself.  “This guy says black folks are responsible for their own problems,” white readers exclaim, “and he’s black.” 

Bill Cosby, unwittingly, plays much the same role in America’s racial melodrama.

The Beans recently broke down and subscribed to cable.  Last week I was introduced to Southpark, the Comedy Central show my sons have been telling me about for years. 

The father of one of the program’s rolly-polly anti-heroes is solving the final puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.  The category: “people you find annonying”.  All the letters but one have been provided: “n-_-g-g-e-r-s”.

“I think I can solve the puzzle,” the sweating contestant blurts out, “but I’m not sure I should.”

“Two seconds,” Pat replies, eyebrows arched in expectation.

“Niggers!” the contestant roars.

The audience falls silent. 

The “sorry-not-this-time” buzzer buzzes. 

An “a” falls into place. 

“The correct answer was “naggers,” Pat says.

On the way home, the father assures his family that he never would have uttered the n-word on national television if $30,000 wasn’t on the line.

The next day, the ‘nigger guy’ has is a national pariah.  Stand-up comics crack wise at his expense, store clerks refuse to service him, he is heckled on the street.  Finally, in a classic act of white American contrition, he appears with Jesse Jackson. 

He assures Jackson that he is no racist.  He says he’s mortified to think he may have caused the African American public any pain.

Jesse is satisfied . . . almost.

Jackson pulls down his pants, drops his briefs and says, “Kiss it!”  When the humiliated “nigger guy” hesitates, the civil rights legend wiggles his cheeks provocatively and repeats his demand: “Kiss it!”

The white man complies.

White people see race as a mine field.  The slightest departure from political correctness and everything blows up in your face.  We’re tired of apologizing.  We’re tired of feeling guilty.  We have decided that we’re not going to feel guilty and that’s that.  We’ve moved into a post-racial, color blind society.  The past is irrelevant. 

Must we choose between an Al Sharpton manipulating white guilt and a Larry Elder blathering on about a color blind America? 

No.  White America should be feel free to speak its mind.  Black America should be free to disagree.  We need honest conversation, give-and-take, dialogue.  

But our civil life is highly segregated.  The walls go higher every day. 

Most of us don’t talk about race that much because we don’t have to.  The racial no mans land separating white and black America can be crossed, but only by those willing to keep their mouths shut.  Race is one of those things (like sex, religion, death and politics) we’re not supposed to talk about in mixed company.

Al Sharpton and Larry Elder trading insults in the media is no substitute for a national conversation.  Al cranks up the guilt; Larry cranks it down.  Nothing is accomplished. 

Blacks like Barack Obama because he is black . . . at least he’s blacker than his opponents.  Whites like Obama because his success proves that race doesn’t matter. 

The fact that a black candidate has a serious shot at the presidency shows you how far we’ve come; the fact that Mr. Obama is forced to sidestep the race issue demonstrates how far we have to go.

Obama Surge Creates Problems for Jesse and Al

Amy Waldman spent a month in Jena but only talked to one of the Jena 6 families.  Or, if she ever met the rest of the defendants she doesn’t let on.  Essentially, this is a story about Mychal Bell and Reed Walters.  Both men are presented as human beings–there are no heroes and villains in this piece; and that’s as it should be.

As a journalist, Ms. Waldman enjoys considerably more access to folks like Reed Walters than partisan activists like me possess, and she has made the most of it.  Her portrayal of Reed Walter’s theology is absolutely priceless . . . and utterly frightening.  Walters is a practitioner of what I call “Sunday school theology,” the belief that Jesus came into the world to lay down the law and to damn all those who fail at perfection to eternal hellfire.

I call this “Sunday school” theology because it is the perfect antithesis of the amazing grace we encounter in the Christian Gospels, the letters of the Apostle Paul, and much of the Hebrew Scriptures.   This kind of harsh legalism thrives in small towns because it comports perfectly with common prejudice.  

Since perfection is the standard, Reed Walters cannot admit to any personal failing whatsoever.  Asked if he has ever made a mistake, the man scratches his head and shrugs his shoulders.  This reminds me of one of my wife’s Methodist relatives who often prayed, “Dear Lord, forgive us of our sins . . . if we have any.”

This is also a story about the movement inspired by the Jena 6, personified by Mychal Bell, the only defendant to stand trial thus far.  “Free Mychal Bell!” the crowd chanted on September 20th.  I was never comfortable with that message.  I too wanted to see Mychal back in the free world (he had already spent almost a year behind bars), but the ultimate goal was to free the Jena 6 from a legal regime that threatened to destroy their lives.  I didn’t want to get them off; I wanted to get them some justice.

But the message got muddled.  Amy Waldman wants to know why “the movement” didn’t rail against the woeful state of indigent defense in places like Jena; why there was no call to reform of the criminal justice system as a whole.

Good questions, all.  But I don’t blame the folks who rode the buses for the message problem.  These folks were profoundly and painfully aware of the systemic legal issues–that’s why they came to Jena.  Everyone had a loved one who had run afoul of the system.

The real “movement” problem was that high-profile leaders didn’t stop to check the facts before they shaped the message.  Turning troubled young men like Mychal Bell into heroes is a very bad idea.  What happened to Mychal during his brief trial was abhorrent, but so was what happened to Justin Barker.  In the end we were dealing with a melodramatic script–a clash between good and evil.  Ms. Waldman gives us shades of gray.

If you want to know Jena, this piece in the Atlantic Monthly is a great place to start.  Amy Waldman didn’t mention the remaining Jena 5 much–I suppose it would have dulled the cutting edge of her story; but she comes out at about the same place I came in.  Her Jena, for better or for worse, is the real Jena.

In the end, we accomplished what we set out to accomplish; the justice system is now working the way it is designed to work–for Mychal Bell, and the remaining five defendants. 

I like Barrack Obama’s take on Jena because it is informed and nuanced.  The presidential contender doesn’t believe in fairy tales.  And if Obama gets it, I think most thinking Americans who care about justice get it too.  The simplistic, good-vs.-evil storyline was destined to crumble–it simply couldn’t bear the weight of scrutiny.  But time and trial haven’t changed a line of the story I told almost a year ago.  Jena is a story about real people, black and white, poor and powerful, doing dreadful things.  Until this fact is fully grasped, Jena fails as an American metaphor.

 Why America’s black-and-white narratives about race don’t reflect reality

The Truth About Jena

By Amy Waldman

In the fall of 2006, Mychal Bell was a football hero, and his hometown, Jena, Louisiana, loved him for it. As his high-school team posted its best season in six years, Bell scored 21 touchdowns, rushed for 1,006 yards, and was named player of the week three times by The Jena Times. The paper celebrated his triumphs in articles and photographs, including a dramatic one in which Bell, who’s black, stiff-arms a white defender by clutching his face guard. But within weeks after the season’s end, Bell was transformed into a villain, accused of knocking out a white student, Justin Barker, who was then beaten by a group of black students. The parish’s white district attorney charged Bell and five others with attempted second-degree murder. Six months later—after the DA had reduced the charges against Bell—a white jury convicted him, as an adult, of aggravated second-degree battery, a crime that carried a possible 22-year prison sentence. By then, he, along with his co-defendants, had been transformed yet again: together, they’d been dubbed the Jena Six and had become icons of a 21st-century civil-rights movement.

That movement swelled through an electronic underground of blogs and black radio and Web sites, then burst into the national spotlight. On September 20, 2007, it culminated in a protest march that drew some 20,000 people to Jena, a town of roughly 3,000. The movement’s grievance wasn’t just the severe treatment of the Jena Six, but the light treatment of white youths who’d been in fights or hung nooses on a school tree—the “white tree”—after a black student asked if he could sit under it. Together, the galvanizing facts tapped into a larger ache: the record incarceration of African American males—the shift “from plantations to penitentiaries,” as the Reverend Al Sharpton put it at the protest. All of the frustration at the disproportionate imprisonment of black men seemed to find its way to Jena, as if here, at last, in a small town’s idea of justice, was an explanation. At home and around the world, the media found answers in the black-and-white clarity of Race Hate in America, as the British Broadcasting Corporation called an early documentary.

But soon the simple narrative began to fray. For every fact, a countervailing one emerged. Blacks had sometimes sat under the “white tree.” Justin Barker had not been involved in the noose-hanging or in the interracial fights that had occurred over the weekend before he was attacked. Mychal Bell, described in news reports as an “honor student,” turned out to have racked up, along with good grades, at least four previous juvenile offenses. He was said to be living with a white friend, suggesting that black-white relations in Jena were more complex than people assumed, and so on. Skeptics seized on each such revelation to argue that the case was more about black criminality than white racism—a manufactured racial drama à la Tawana Brawley (with Sharpton once again playing a role) or the Duke rape case. (more…)

Barack Obama chooses his words carefully, especially when he is talking about the criminal justice system.  Appearing soft on crime is a death sentence for any American politician seeking higher office. 

But make no mistake, Mr. Obama understands the desperate need to reform our system of criminal justice.  Moreover, he gets Jena.  As exhibit 1 I present this convocation address, delivered at Howard University in September, a couple of days after I appeared on the same stage with several Jena 6 parents.   

This excerpt deals explicitly with Jena:

There are some who will make Jena about the fight itself. And it’s true that we have to do more as parents to instill our children with the idea that violence is always wrong: It’s wrong when it happens on the streets of Chicago; it’s wrong when it happens in a schoolyard in Louisiana. Violence is not the answer. And all of us know that more violence is perpetrated between blacks than between blacks and whites. Our community has suffered more than anything from the slow, chronic tolerance of violence. Nonviolence was the soul of the civil rights movement. We have to do a better job of teaching our children that virtue.

But we also know that to truly understand Jena you have to look at what happened both before and after that fight. You have to listen to the hateful slurs that flew through the hallways of that school. You have to know the full measure of the damage done by that arson; you have to look at those nooses hanging on that schoolyard tree, and you have to understand how badly our system of justice failed those six boys in the days after that fight. The outrageous charges, the unreasonable and excessive sentences, the public defender who did not call a single witness.

When a politician with a serious shot at the presidency can speak this way I find the courage to believe that meaningful reform is as possible as it is necessary.  The entire text of Obama’s late September address to the students and faculty of Howard University is printed below.  Thanks to “The Daily Dish” for making the text available in a recent post.

Barack Obama’s Address at Howard University

“To all of the honored and distinguished guests faculty staff and students, it is a privilege to be a part of today’s convocation, and an honor to receive this degree from Howard. 

Now there are few other universities that have played so central a role in breaking down yesterday’s barriers, and inching this country closer to the ideals we see inscribed on the monuments throughout the city.

 It is because of those victories that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama can stand before you today as candidate for President of the United States. I am not just running to make history. I am running because I believe that together we can change history’s course. It’s not enough just to look back and wonder how far we’ve come; I want us to look ahead with fierce urgency at how far we have to go. I believe its time for this generation to make its own mark, to write our own chapter in the American story. Those who came before us did not strike a blow against injustice only so that we would let injustice fester in our time. Thurgood Marshall did not argue Brown so that we could accept a country where too many African American men end up in prison because we’d rather spend more to jail a 25-year-old than to educate a 5-year-old. Dr. King did not take us to the mountaintop so that we would allow a terrible storm to ravage those who were stranded in the valley. He did not expect that it would take a breach in the levees to reveal a breach in our compassion; that it would take a hurricane to reveal the hungry God asked us to feed, the sick he asks us to care for, the least of these he asks us to treat as our own. I am certain that nine children did not walk through the doors of a school in Little Rock so that our children would have to see nooses hanging at a school in Louisiana. It’s a fitting reminder that the 50th anniversary of Little Rock fell on this week. Because when the doors of that school finally opened, a nation responded. The President sent the United States Army to stand on the side of justice. The Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Department of Justice created a civil rights division and millions of Americans took to the streets in the following months and years so that more children could walk through more doors. 

These weren’t easy choices to make at the time. President Eisenhower was warned by some that sending the army down to Little Rock would be political suicide. Resistance to civil rights reform was fierce. We know that those who marched for freedom did so at great risk, for themselves and their families–but they did it because they understood that there are some times in our history, there are moments when what’s truly risky is not to act. What’s truly risky is to let the same injustice remain year after year after year. What’s truly risky is to walk away and pretend it never happened. What’s truly risky is to accept things as they are, instead of working for what they could be. In a media driven culture that’s more obsessed with who’s beating who in Washington, or how long Paris Hilton is going to be in jail, these moments are harder to spot. But every so often they do appear.

Sometimes it takes a hurricane, sometimes it takes a travesty of justice like the one we’ve seen in Jena, Louisiana. There are some who will make Jena about the fight itself. And it’s true that we have to do more as parents to instill our children with the idea that violence is always wrong: It’s wrong when it happens on the streets of Chicago; it’s wrong when it happens in a schoolyard in Louisiana.

Violence is not the answer. And all of us know that more violence is perpetrated between blacks than between blacks and whites. Our community has suffered more than anything from the slow, chronic tolerance of violence. Nonviolence was the soul of the civil rights movement. We have to do a better job of teaching our children that virtue. But we also know that to truly understand Jena you have to look at what happened both before and after that fight. You have to listen to the hateful slurs that flew through the hallways of that school. You have to know the full measure of the damage done by that arson; you have to look at those nooses hanging on that schoolyard tree, and you have to understand how badly our system of justice failed those six boys in the days after that fight. The outrageous charges, the unreasonable and excessive sentences, the public defender who did not call a single witness. 

Like Katrina did with poverty, Jena exposed glaring inequalities in our justice system that were around long before that schoolyard fight broke out. It reminds us of the fact that we have a system that locks away too many young first time nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives; a decision that’s not made by a judge in a courtroom but all too often by politicians in Washington and state capitals across the country. It reminds us that we have certain sentences that are based less than on the kind of crime you commit than where you come from, or what you look like. It reminds us that we have a Justice Department whose idea of prosecuting civil rights violations is to roll back affirmative action programs at our colleges and universities; a Justice Department whose idea of prosecuting voter fraud is to look for voting fraud in black and Latino communities where voting fraud does not exist. (more…)

Last Thursday, Charles Chatman became the 15th Dallas County inmate to be exonerated after DNA tests proved conclusively that they could not have committed the rape or murder of which they been accused.  Chatman was twenty when the rape occurred; now he’s forty-seven.

Chatman’s case came up for parole review three times.  Each time he was asked to confess and take personal responsibility for his actions.  Each time he refused.  You have to admire the guy.  When freedom demands that you own up to a crime you didn’t commit, most people would confess.  Chatman refused.

This case has received considerable coverage in the media; the best stories are in the Houston Chronicle , the Dallas Morning News, and the New York Times.  Like many victims of wrongful accusation, Chatman was identified by the rape victim.  I’m sure the unfortunate woman was convinced she had the right guy.  Chatman’s sister testified that the defendant was doing janitorial work for her in Arlington, Texas at the time of the crime.  Moreover, Chatman has two prominent teeth missing–the rapist did not.

So why was Chatman convicted? 

Race figures into the equation–there was only one black person on his jury.  It didn’t help that Chatman was on probation at the time.  Defendants who are already in the system are usually presumed guilty, especially if they are black and the victim is white.

But there are other factors.  Victims of violent crime naturally want to see their assailants punished, and that passionate desire often adds a false concreteness to an ambiguous set of facts.  Eyewitnesses are far more fallible than is commonly believed, even when they are trying to get it right.  And then there is the fact that police officers, eager to close a case, frequently push eyewitnesses toward a suspect.

Tragically, if the accused is poor, black and in the system, they will be convicted unless they can prove innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.

The rash of exonerations in DNA cases raises questions about the credibility of the criminal justice system in cases not involving DNA evidence.  How often are drug defendants, for instance, sent to prison on the uncorroborated word of a police officer or, even worse, a convicted criminal receiving a generous time cut in payment for testimony?

Far more than you imagine.

Finally, I would like to note that Jeff Blackburn, Mr. Chatman’s lead attorney, was also heavily involved in the Tulia case.

Many thanks to Wade Goodwyn of National Public Radio (and Craig Franklin of the Jena Times) for making this Weekend Edition piece sizzle.  Franklin insists that no one was paying attention to the Jena story, nor would anyone ever have paid any attention, had Alan Bean stayed in Texas. 

Midway through the almost ten-minute report Mr. Goodwyn filed this morning, Franklin quotes from a document from February of last year in which I predicted that the trophy for the “most racist town in America” would soon be transfered from Tulia, Texas to Jena, Louisiana.  “The awards ceremony,” I said, “is tentatively scheduled for soon after The New York Times, 60 Minutes and other national media outlets wake up to the doings in Jena, Louisiana.” 

Franklin conveniently ignores the next line: “Tulia never deserved the Most Racist Town award, and I doubt Jena (pronounced JEAN-ah) does either.  But, like the Texas panhandle community I call home, the isolated central Louisiana town in the pines seems determined to bring home the trophy regardless off the cost.” 

The good folks in little towns like Tulia and Jena are frequently their own worst enemies.  I can’t help liking these folks.  They take their religion very seriously and most of them are trying to be the best people they can possibly be (something I can’t say for the city slicker cynics who routinely put them down).  These aren’t snarling Southern bigots straight off the set of Mississippi Burning–for the most part, they’re kind, polite and gentle. 

Unfortunately, they are also blind to their own blindness.  A lot of people took DA Reed Walters for just another zealous prosecutor until he announced on CNN that the 20,000 black people who descended on Jena in September would have reduced his town to a smoking ruin had not the Lord Jesus Christ thwarted their evil designs.  “You can quote me on that,” he announced (I have actually paraphrased–but I think I caught the spirit of his weird remark).

Reed Walters never understood that the folks who rode the buses to Jena were motivated by their devotion to the same Jesus he worships.  The experiences of the last year have convinced me of the need for inter-racial dialogue, starting in the churches and moving out from there.  

Craig Franklin makes it sound as if I snuck into Jena under false pretences.  I attended the white First Baptist Church my first weekend in Jena and spent over an hour introducing my unorthodox ministry to pastor Dominic DiCarlo.  The next day I spent a good part of the afternoon with Sammy and Craig Franklin at the Jena Times.  I told them about my work in Tulia and said I intended to advocate for the Jena 6  and their families just as I had stood up for Joe Moore and his friends in Tulia.  I told them that the media could not always be counted on to be fair, so it behooved them to talk Reed Walters into reducing the charges.  They didn’t think that would be necessary.

Wade Goodwyn did an excellent eight-minute synopsis of the Jena story for NPR’s All Things Considered in July that became the most emailed NPR piece for several weeks running.  Goodwyn’s reporting was remarkably even-handed; he just laid out the facts, featuring comments from people on both sides of the developing controversy.  Black bloggers used Wade’s piece as a succinct-yet-thorough vehicle for spreading the word.

Craig Franklin is right about one thing: a lot of fluff and nonsense has been written about his home town.  Wade Goodwyn is effective because he tells it straight.

I am deeply grateful to journalist Sheldon Alberts for this thorough treatment of my work with Friends of Justice.  The media tends to believe that the blatant injustice in little places like Tulia, Texas and Jena, Louisiana naturally rises to public attention.  It ain’t so.  I was supposed to hook up with Mr. Alberts on September 20th in Jena, but the lack of cell phone contact that day made it impossible for us to find each other.  So, last month, he made a special trip to Arlington to interview me.

 Sheldon Alberts is from Melfort, Saskatchewan, a town just down the road from Weyburn, my father’s hometown, so he was deeply interested in the influence of Tommy Douglas in shaping my outlook.  Douglas, for all you non-Canadians, became Premier of Saskatchewan in 1944, and introduced a province-wide heathcare system in 1961 that became the model for Canada’s current medicare system.  Prior to his career in politics, Douglas was pastor of Weyburn’s First Baptist Church and my father, Gordon Bean’s Sunday school teacher.  Although his New Democratic Party never gained power at the national level, Douglas was voted the greatest Canadian of the 20th century.

Although no one, to my knowledge, has ever made note of the fact, the rise of the Cooperative Commonwealth party was the Canadian equivalent of the civil rights movement; an improbable movement focused on justice for the little guy.  At 54 (I’ll be 55 in a few days) I have just recently come the age where I start wondering why I am driven to do what I do.

I should note that three families were involved in overturning the injustice in Tulia: the Beans, the Gardners, and the Kikers.  Charles and Patricia Kiker (my wife, Nancy’s parents), aren’t mentioned below, but they played a pivotal role in that fight.

‘A nose for injustice’

CREDIT: Canadian Dr. Alan Bean has been influential in the investigation of the trial involving six black teenagers who beat a white student in Jena, Louisiana.

JENA, La. — The highway leading into Jena, La., from the west is a narrow, curvy stretch of blacktop surrounded by towering southern pines that block the horizon. In the morning, with heavy fog pressing tight against the treetops, it is a landscape that can inspire a sense of dread.

It was like that last Jan. 26 when Alan Bean first drove into this little oil and lumber town to investigate reports of a brewing race scandal.

Bean, an unassuming 54-year-old Canadian, arrived here knowing only the sketchy details of the town’s troubles. He’d been told of nooses hanging from a tree, of racial clashes between whites and blacks, and of a local prosecutor’s overzealous pursuit of a half-dozen African-American teenagers.

“I had the sense that I should be scared. Had I done this five or six years ago even, I would have been petrified,” says Bean. “There was this fog hanging from the trees and covering the road. It really does create an eerie aspect. But I realized I had become good at this. I knew what to do.”

Bean, the executive director of the Texas-based Friends of Justice, had been invited to Jena by the parents of six black students in a heap of legal trouble.

In December 2006, LaSalle County district attorney Reed Walters had charged the six teens with attempted murder for beating a white student named Justin Barker.

Bean sensed the adult-court charges were excessive. Although Barker was knocked unconscious, he was discharged from hospital within hours of the assault.

After more than a dozen trips to Jena throughout the early months of 2007, Bean linked the attack on Barker to an incident the previous September, when white students hung nooses from a tree black students had asked permission to sit under. It would transform the “Jena Six” from local controversy into an internationally known case that in September spurred the largest civil rights rally in the U.S. since the 1960s.

“Alan was the first one in Jena. He has been there on the ground, repeatedly, on a shoestring budget, talking to witnesses, talking to families, figuring out what happened,” says Richard Cohen, executive director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Atlanta.

“Alan is like a human divining rod. He has a nose for injustice, and a talent to bring it to light.”

But the story of how Bean came to uncover the Jena Six story is as long and winding as the roads he has travelled in Louisiana.

Born in Calgary in 1953, Bean moved three years later with his family to Yellowknife, where his father was a radio operator for the Department of Transport.

It was there that Bean began hearing his father’s stories about the social gospel of Tommy Douglas, who had taught Sunday school to a young Gordon Bean in Weyburn, Sask.

“Tommy Douglas was my father’s hero,” Bean says. “Even though my father was kind of a fundamentalist Baptist, he had a very progressive Ôhelp the little guy’ view.”

When the family moved to Edmonton in the early 1960s, one of the first things Bean saw on the family’s new black-and-white television was Martin Luther King’s speech at the March on Washington. Although not yet a teenager, Bean felt a calling. “Even now, I cannot talk about King’s ÔI Have a Dream’ speech without becoming emotional,” says Bean.

“When I see systems that are so clearly racist in their effect, if not in their intention, it just makes my blood boil.”

Determined to emulate Douglas and King, Bean became an ordained Baptist minister and preached in churches from Medicine Hat, Alta., to British Columbia.

He moved to the U.S. in 1986 with his wife, Nancy, an American, after becoming disillusioned with the Baptist Union of Western Canada.

The couple eventually settled in the Texas panhandle town of Tulia, population 5,000, where their lives took the dramatic turn that ultimately led Bean to Jena.

Bean and an associate, Gary Gardner, played key roles in bringing national attention to the 1999 arrests in Tulia of 46 men — 39 of them black — in a massive cocaine sting. The arrests were made by an undercover cop hailed in the Tulia newspaper for getting the “scumbags” off the streets.

The Tulia drug case devastated the town’s small black community. One man received a 60-year prison term for allegedly selling one-eighth of an ounce (about three grams) of cocaine; dozens more were convicted and received lengthy sentences.

But what Bean and Gardner discovered was that the undercover detective who broke the case fabricated most of the drug buys, and had himself been arrested on theft charges. No drugs, moreover, were found on any of the defendants. In 2003, Texas Gov. Rick Perry pardoned the defendants.

“We didn’t have any funding. We were basically subsidizing the work out of our family’s savings account,” says Bean. “But a tremendous amount of good came out of it.”

The Tulia case left Bean convinced African-Americans were victims of a “new Jim Crow” segregation — a legal system that routinely over-prosecutes blacks.

“It’s the American reliance on the strategy of mass incarceration as a response to poverty-related dysfunction,” Bean says. Inspired by the results in Tulia, but ostracized by the town’s white community, Bean relocated to Arlington, Tex., where he runs Friends of Justice from his home.

“I think this is a really meaningful way of doing ministry as a Christian pastor,” Bean says. “I never really felt I was accomplishing anything in traditional pastoral ministry.”

Bean’s work in Tulia drew the attention of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, which in early 2007 urged him to take a closer look at an obscure case stirring emotions in central Louisiana.

Long before civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson could even pronounce Jena — it’s JEENA — Bean spent hours in the county courthouse, reading witness statements and interviewing the jailed teens.

The result of Bean’s investigation was a 5,000-word narrative that concluded Justin Barker’s beating was the violent climax of a months-long conflict that began with the noose incident.

More significantly, Bean pointed to prosecutor Walters as a central antagonist. Walters had warned students at a school assembly that he could ruin their lives “with a stroke of a pen,” a threat Bean says the prosecutor carried out by unnecessarily charging the Jena Six with attempted murder.

Armed with his version of events in Jena, Bean contacted Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune and Tom Mangold of the BBC, whose early reports on the Jena Six sparked international media interest.

“We never wanted to say, in Tulia or in Jena, that these people were necessarily guilty or innocent,” Bean says in an interview at his Texas home. “The question is, are they getting equal justice? Are they being railroaded?”

The Jena Six case has been Bean’s greatest success in eight years as a criminal justice reform activist. But he is resented by many white residents of Jena, who reject Bean’s assertion that Barker’s beating was spawned by earlier racist incidents. “Alan Bean is seen as the one who created the illusion of Jena, La., as this racist town,” says Craig Franklin, editor of the Jena Times and a critic of Bean and the Jena Six.

“I am sure that some of the families of the Jena Six hold him in pretty high regard. To the rest of us, his version of events is filled with a lot of untruths.”

Bean stands by his investigation. Moreover, he believes he’s filling a vital role among justice reform activists in the U.S. — ferreting out new facts and crafting public opinion in order to ensure defendants get a fair shake from the legal system.

“Almost never does anybody intervene for drug defendants or people accused of a violent crime at a pre-trial level, where the evidence is still ambiguous and nobody can tell whether they are innocent or guilty,” Bean says.

“Nobody intervenes and says, ÔThis process stinks.’ In places like Jena, it’s important to tell the whole story.”

Prosecutors eventually dropped the attempted murder charges against five of the Jena Six and transferred their cases to juvenile court. The adult-court conviction of one student, Mychal Bell, was overturned.

The Sept. 20 protest in Jena attracted more than 20,000 people. But at the height of publicity surrounding the case, Bean slipped quietly into the background.

The spotlight fell instead on Sharpton and Jackson who — despite having never been to Jena until days before the rally — were eager to take centre stage.

“I realized that when we were able to bring people of national prominence into the story, it would be a cutthroat competition for the microphone,” Bean says. “It was inevitable we would be pushed aside.”

The fire that ripped through Jena High School on November 30, 2006 has never received much attention from the media.  But you can’t understand the chaos that reigned the morning of December 4th unless you smell the smoke in the air.  Who-done-it rumors were circulating wildly through the school the morning before Justin Barker was attacked.  Everyone, black and white, felt violated and vulnerable.  I have always maintained that Robert Bailey would never have been assaulted at the Fair Barn if the school hadn’t been torched the day before.

Jena residents have always assured me that some members of the Jena 6 were responsible for the fire.  I have also been told that Reed Walter’s weird overcharging of Justin Barker’s alleged assailants was rooted in his belief that these students were also responsible for the fire.

No one knows what motivated Mr. Walters to charge the Jena 6 with attempted murder–a charge that could have placed some of the defendants behind bars for over fifty years without parole.  My guess is that the fire at Jena High placed the entire community, Mr. Walters included, in a state of collective post traumatic stress disorder.  In other words, the same affliction that sparked the assaults on Bailey and Barker was behind the overcharging of the Jena defendants.  Like many prosecutors, Mr. Walters has a tendency to charge the max in order to achieve a strong bargaining position for negotiating plea agreements.  Nonetheless, the attempted murder charge required a stronger explanation and, to my mind, the fire, not racism, has always been the best candidate.

Now we learn that the alleged arsonists are a racially diverse group of young males.  My guess is that some of these charges are stronger than others and that, following a process of defendants flipping on one another, some charges will be dropped. 

The suggestion that the fire was motivated by a desire to destroy grade records doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.  Why were fires set in various parts of the building if the goal was to destroy school records?  Besides, the ringleaders are a bit old to be worried about their high school records.  This was the work of arsonists with a deep grudge against the school.  The nature of that grudge may eventually come to light.  The bi-racial composition of the defendant group suggests that Sheriff Franklin can legitimately claim that racial malice was not a primary factor. 

For the sake of Jena residents I am glad that investigators appear to have cracked this case.  Let’s hope they have real evidence; this case has been hanging like a pall over Jena for well over a year.  We can now lay to rest the unfounded suggestion that the Jena 6 can be tied to the arson.

Abbey Brown’s excellent article is followed by a few illuminating comments from TownTalk readers and accompanied by several photos.

8 face charges in Jena High fire

2006 blaze was not related to ‘Jena Six’ case
By Abbey Brown
abrown@thetowntalk.com
(318) 487-6387

 JENA — A plot to get rid of bad grades and get out of school may land eight people — including three juveniles — in prison for no less than two years. After more than a year, eight people will be charged with arson in connection with the fire that destroyed the main building of Jena High School in November 2006, authorities said Friday.

The motivation for the fire wasn’t racial, as many suspected, but solely to destroy records of bad grades and shut down the school, said LaSalle Parish Sheriff-elect Scott Franklin, who is CEO of the Sheriff’s Office. “Some of the students involved were doing poorly in school and decided that setting the school on fire would be a great way to get rid of their records and not have to go to school for a long time,” Franklin said.

“They did not take into consideration the strong resiliency of the administration, faculty, staff and students of Jena High School, who were back in classes at the campus just three days later.”

The arson is not connected to the “Jena Six” case, none of the six defendants in that case are suspects in the arson, and the arson was not racially motivated, Franklin said. The group of suspects in the arson case is racially diverse.

Investigators had been hopeful that in a community as small as Jena someone would eventually talk, giving investigators a break in the case.

Finally someone did.

An undercover narcotics operation led to information about the suspects in the school arson, Franklin said during a press conference at the LaSalle Parish Courthouse.

Three Jena men have been arrested, and two more men are being sought. The other three suspects are juveniles. All are males.

Four of the eight suspects were students at Jena High School at the time of the fire, and two are currently students at the school, Franklin said.

When Franklin announced the 13-month-old arson case was solved, an audible sigh of relief and applause could be heard from the courtroom packed with Jena residents.

“I’m glad it’s over,” said Sylvia Norris, who works in the LaSalle Parish School System. “We needed closure, and we’re all very excited to hear this news.”

The arrests

The three adults arrested are Marcus Lee, 20, Joshua McGee, 18, and Dakota Graham, 19, all of Jena, according to Franklin. All are still being housed in the LaSalle Parish Jail, pending bond.

The names of the other two adult suspects have not been released because they have not yet been arrested, and the names of the juveniles won’t be released.

Franklin said authorities have good leads on the whereabouts of the two men at large and foresee their arrests in the near future.

All three of the adults already arrested are charged with aggravated arson and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Lee also is charged with three counts of distribution of marijuana, police said, and McGee also faces charges of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

The felony charge of aggravated arson carries a sentence of six to 20 years in prison with at least two years having to be served without probation or parole, LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said.

“These are very serious crimes,” he pointed out. “(The District Attorney’s Office) will move forward on this as quickly as possible.”

The school fire occurred on Nov. 30, 2006, and a year after the blaze, investigators said there were still no suspects or new leads in the arson probe.

But when Franklin assumed his position as CEO a little more than a month ago, he implemented a narcotics enforcement operation that included undercover narcotics work. Through one of those undercover operations, information was obtained that led to the naming of four suspects, Franklin said.

With that information, the Sheriff’s Office launched a full-scale investigation using all available resources, leading to even more suspects. The three arrests took place Thursday afternoon.

Information sought

During authorities’ investigation, Franklin said, they discovered that “several students” at Jena High who weren’t involved in the arson had personal knowledge about who did it.

“Let me share this with all the parents — talk with your children if they were at Jena High last fall in the days following the fire,” Franklin said. “If they have any information, it would behoove them to come forward now.”

Franklin said “there is a strong possibility” that those who knew of the arsonists but did not come forward could face criminal charges.

“The arsonists have been revealed, and the time for protecting them or choosing not to get involved is over,” he said. “Again, I warn those that have information — come forward now before officers from our department come knocking on your door.”

The $5,000 Crime Stoppers reward will be paid to the person who led investigators to the suspects, but Franklin didn’t release the person’s name. He also said officials would be calling on the Rev. P.A. “Fox” Paul, a Jena minister who has collected “several thousands of dollars” in reward money, to be paid to the unidentified informant.

‘Always optimistic’

School Board member Dolan Pendarvis said the community is close-knit, has gone through a lot of emotions this past year and is grateful to hear of the arrests.

“I was always optimistic that eventually it would get solved,” he said.

Others in the community had been convinced the crime would remain cold since all attention was focused on the Jena Six case and not the arson. But state and local investigators didn’t give up.

“Even a year later, these kinds of crimes can be solved,” Marc Reech, lead investigator for the State Fire Marshal’s Office in Baton Rouge, said during a late November interview with The Town Talk. And sheriff’s investigators then said they continued to work hard on solving the case.

Reech said investigators knew the fire was arson because the fire started in several different places in the building — in the first-floor office area and in at least one classroom upstairs.

The building was a total loss, and investigators said the majority of the classrooms were gutted.

The main academic building held the math, science, English and art departments, as well as the school’s main offices. The building was demolished this summer, and the spot is now bare.

Tentative plans call for the school to have more classrooms than the old building, just one story and an updated look, Schools Superintendent Roy Breithaupt said. But he stressed that it won’t be here anytime soon and that the process is a lengthy one.

“I’m very glad to hear that those who committed the crimes will be brought to justice,” Breithaupt said after the announcement.

Dec. 4, 2006

After the fire, students returned to what many called “chaos” on Dec. 4, 2006. That was the day that authorities say six black high school students — who became known as the Jena Six — attacked white student Justin Barker. Barker was knocked unconscious and treated at a local emergency room for about three hours.

The incident and the legal system’s response to it thrust the high school and entire community into the national spotlight.

The six were arrested and initially charged with attempted murder, but the charges eventually were reduced.

More than 20,000 marched through the streets of Jena on Sept. 20 to protest what they called unequal justice.

Only one of the cases has made its way through the justice system.

Mychal Bell pleaded guilty to second-degree battery after admitting in court on Dec. 3 that he did hit Barker, knocking him unconscious. As part of his plea agreement, Bell will have to “truthfully testify” in any of the cases involving the other members of the Jena Six.

Bell was sentenced in December to 18 months in a juvenile facility to run concurrently, where possible, with the previous sentence of 18 months that Bell had received for three previous crimes.

The other five members — Robert Bailey Jr., Jesse Ray Beard, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw — have yet to face trial, and no trial dates have been set.

Post a Comment   View All Comments Because white kids hang around blacks kid ,their ways are rubbing off on the white kids are just foolish to blame blacks for this. Where are the parents in this matter,where are the parent to give their children direction in life and leading their kids the right way. It’s evident, the parent these days are doing a horrible job raising their kids(black and white). Until we as responsible parents start guiding and teaching our children how to conduct themselves in the right way, this foolish behavior will continue. The problem is the children are running over the parent and getting away with it. NO PUNISHMENT,NO NOTHING Put that rod on their butt!!!!!!!! Don’t feel sorry for them when their acting up. SHOW THEM WHO IS BOSS They will think you in a long run for caring. The Bible says spare the rod spoil the child Our children are spoil and running over us. So don’t blame the blacks, blame the parents (both black and white) Posted by: smith on Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:00 am Yes there are good and bad in both races Nonviolent Diet. But the majority of bad kids comes from the colored race. The prisons are full of coloreds. Some Caucasian are influenced by the black ghetto values. Those are usually your white trailer trash. Roger your screws are looose.. White trailer trash–they can’t afford the cloths.bling or circus rides. Also you cannot blame the current trends on just the blacks. You must not get out much or know any teenagers. As a kid you must have stayed in a closet (guthook to) or were yall the “nerds” and didn;t fit in. There is a new fad,new toys new everything nowdays–get your head out of the dark space between your legs and grow up. Next time there is a shortage of some grocery item you will probably blame the black race for that–what a shame. Posted by: rreds on Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:56 am to Rodger Ray- what part of the back side of the 1930’s did you come from??? You sound like a racist to me. And I suppose you are Albino meaning you dont have any color in your skin???? Only one suffering from Albinism can truly call another colored——-DUH we are all colored DUH DUH DUH>L.O.L.———L..O..LL. Posted by: freedomforall on Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:33 am Posted by: Nonviolent Diet on Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:29 am I have to agree with Rodger Day on his post. He may be the hardcore racist here, but he tells the truth. Since the white kids started hanging around the colored kids, things have changed. They have taken what were nice cars and turned them into junk circus wagons, started wearing pants that let their butts hang out, wear their hats funny, talk in ebonics, listen to ghetto racket they music, smoke more dope than ever before and get into more trouble than they ever did. The new lifestyle the white kids are living came as the direct result of hanging around with the coloreds. The proof is there, just open your eyes and see it !! Posted by: guthook6 on Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:26 am Post a Comment   View All Comments

Thoughtful treatments of Barack Obama’s “postracial” politics inevitably turn to Jena.  This feature article from the New York Times cuts much deeper than earlier journalistic discussions of the Chicago politician’s racial dilemma.   Consider this quote:

In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama recalls sitting with a white, liberal Democrat in the Senate and listening to a black, inner-city legislator, whom he identified only as John Doe, speechifying on how the elimination of a particular program was blatant racism. The white colleague turned to Mr. Obama and said, “You know what the problem is with John? Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white.”

Mr. Obama finds a lesson in that moment: White guilt has exhausted itself. Even fair-minded whites resist suggestions of racial victimization. Proposals that benefit minorities alone cannot be a basis for the broad coalitions needed to transform the country, he concluded. Only “universal appeals” for approaches that help all Americans, he wrote in his book, “schools that teach, jobs that pay, health care for everyone who needs it” can do that, “even if such strategies disproportionately help all Americans.”

True, white guilt has exhausted itself.  Whites have a lot to feel guilty about, but the issues have grown so complex that, as a practical matter, there are few opportunities for pressing that case.  Discuss the ways slavery and Jim Crow racism have been perpetuated in America (particularly in the legal system) with  the typical white American for an hour or two once a week and it would take you half a year to break through the resistance.  Unfortunately, most white Americans aren’t close enough to black Americans for this kind of conversation to even begin.

Herein lies Mr. Obama’s dilemma: he understands Jena from a black perspective, but he can’t press the case without losing white support.  The best response is to call for an improved justice system for all Americans.  The same point could be made in relation to all social programs.  If only a minority of Americans benefit from a proposed solution it will never muster majority support.  That’s the new American reality.  That’s just one of many reasons why only universally applicable solutions to the health care crisis make any sense.

In the meantime, black and white Americans still need to talk–long and hard.  The conversation we need won’t happen in the mainstream media.  Bill Moyers might be able to scratch the surface, and the article below is a good starting place, but the issues are just too complex and personal for most media venues.  Sooner or later, real people need to sit down and talk.  Until that happens, black presidential candidates will have to walk the fine line Mr. Obama is walking.

A Biracial Candidate Walks His Own Fine Line

The incumbent was an aging party loyalist, mayoral confederate and institution in black Chicago. His opponent was younger and white, a reform-minded independent Democrat who had helped Barack Obama in his Senate race two years earlier.

Both sides wanted the support of Mr. Obama, a vote magnet in Chicago. The challenger, Forrest Claypool, 48, had the backing of the major newspapers and a couple of liberal members of Congress. The incumbent, John Stroger, 76, had the party organization, many of the city’s blacks and Mr. Obama’s political benefactor, the State Senate president, Emil Jones.

So Mr. Obama remained neutral. He was blasted in blogs and newspapers for hedging rather than risk alienating people he needed, though others said he had made the only shrewd choice.

“Those relationships are complex,” said Mr. Claypool, who lost the primary race to Mr. Stroger (who never served because of illness) and is now working on Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign. “No politician takes important relationships for granted.”

Much of Mr. Obama’s success as a politician has come from walking a fine line — as an independent Democrat and a progressive in a state dominated by the party organization and the political machine, and as a biracial American whose political ambitions require that he appeal to whites while still satisfying the hopes and expectations of blacks.

Like others of his generation, he is a member of a new class of black politicians. Too young to have experienced segregation, he has thrived in white institutions. His style is more conciliatory than confrontational, more technocrat than preacher. Compared with many older politicians, he tends to speak about race indirectly or implicitly, when he speaks about it at all.

After Hurricane Katrina, he did not attribute the lumbering federal response to the race of most of the storm’s victims. “The incompetence was color-blind,” he said, adding that the real stumbling block was indifference to the problems of the poor. After six black teenagers were charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white schoolmate in the “Jena Six” case in Louisiana, he said the criminal justice system needed fixing to ensure equal justice “regardless of race, wealth or circumstances.”

And when Mr. Obama announced his candidacy in February, he chose the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., a place imbued with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He spoke of his work in “Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods” and of ending poverty; race came up only glancingly, as in, “Beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people.”

But the postracial style has its pitfalls.

‘Acting Like He’s White’

Earlier this fall, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an Obama supporter who ran for president twice, was quoted by a reporter as saying Mr. Obama “needs to stop acting like he’s white” (words that Mr. Jackson has variously said that he would never say and that were taken out of context).

He added, “If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena.”

More recently, Mr. Jackson accused the Democratic candidates except for John Edwards of having “virtually ignored” the plight of blacks. (His son, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, fired back in an op-ed column in The Chicago Sun-Times under the headline, “You’re wrong on Obama, Dad.”)

“A black candidate doesn’t want to look like he’s only a black candidate,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, who ran for president in 2004, said in an interview about Mr. Obama. “If he overidentifies with Sharpton, he looks like he’s only a black candidate. A white candidate reaches out to a Sharpton and looks like they have the ability to reach out. It looks like they’re presidential. That’s the dichotomy.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Obama denied that he had spoken less about race issues than other candidates. But he said he focused when possible on “the universal issues that all Americans care about.” His aim, he said, is “to build broader coalitions that can actually deliver health care for all people or jobs that pay a living wage or all the issues that face not only black Americans but Americans generally.”

He suggested that his critics were comparing him not with Mr. Edwards or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton but with Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton. “That comparison is one that isn’t appropriate,” he said. “Because neither Reverend Jackson nor Reverend Sharpton is running for president of the United States. They are serving an important role as activists and catalysts but they’re not trying to build a coalition to actually govern.”

Mr. Obama’s legislative record does not diverge sharply from that of other black legislators, some who have studied it say. For example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which grades members of Congress on their support for its agenda, gave Mr. Obama a 100 percent score. The difference between him and some others lies more in life experience, approach to politics and style.

And while Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is entirely comfortable with his identity — as he has said, proud to be an African-American but not limited by that — he carries a peculiar burden as a presidential candidate: whether or not he calibrates his words, blacks as well as whites are likely to parse them for anything they might signal about racial issues.

“There is a special expectation and opportunity that we have to talk about the ways race works in America,” said Gov. Deval Patrick, a friend of Mr. Obama and the first black to lead Massachusetts.

But, Mr. Patrick said, “sometimes I think advocates want one note from us. I think our experience in our lives and in our politics has been that there’s much more than the one note — and sometimes a cacophony.”

There was a time when black politicians had little in common with white politicians. They had been educated in segregated schools and historically black colleges; many had entered politics through the civil rights movement, social activism or the black church. Their districts and constituents were overwhelmingly African-American. They were “race men” who had built their careers advocating for blacks.

Winning a Mixed District

They tended to be more liberal and militant than the Democratic Party as a whole, said Michael C. Dawson, a University of Chicago political scientist. They opposed rising military budgets and military intervention abroad, favored economic redistribution and were willing to consider such things as demands for reparation for slavery.

Hanes Walton Jr., a University of Michigan political scientist, said, “Once you got African-American elected officials in the 1960s and 1970s, there was huge demand from the black community about getting things done. Some of these elected officials came on with fairly rough edges because they were making consistent and hard demands. In many ways, that couldn’t be escaped. These elected officials knew that they were elected from the black community.”

Mr. Obama, by contrast, grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, far from any center of black life. He graduated from a private prep school in Honolulu, Columbia College and Harvard Law School. Though he has belonged to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago since 1987, he was not raised in the traditions of the black church, which Ange-Marie Hancock, a Yale political scientist, says “nurtured generations of black politicians” and “that almost exclusive emphasis on race — and race in a black/white framework.”

Mr. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 — not from an overwhelmingly black district like those that elected early black legislators but from a racially and economically mixed neighborhood, Hyde Park, home of the University of Chicago. In a state where Irish-American dynasties dominate Democratic Party politics, he sprang up as an outsider — a former community organizer without party or machine support.

Mr. Obama never fit any easily recognizable model of a black politician during his seven years in Springfield. He was a progressive Democrat who worked with Republicans; a black man whose weekly poker-game partners were white; an independent Democrat whose mentor, Mr. Jones, was one of the most powerful black politicians in the state and supported by the Chicago machine.

In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama recalls sitting with a white, liberal Democrat in the Senate and listening to a black, inner-city legislator, whom he identified only as John Doe, speechifying on how the elimination of a particular program was blatant racism. The white colleague turned to Mr. Obama and said, “You know what the problem is with John? Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white.”

Mr. Obama finds a lesson in that moment: White guilt has exhausted itself. Even fair-minded whites resist suggestions of racial victimization. Proposals that benefit minorities alone cannot be a basis for the broad coalitions needed to transform the country, he concluded. Only “universal appeals” for approaches that help all Americans, he wrote in his book, “schools that teach, jobs that pay, health care for everyone who needs it” can do that, “even if such strategies disproportionately help all Americans.”

Mr. Obama has never had difficulty appealing to whites. In his ill-fated 1999 campaign against Representative Bobby L. Rush, a four-term Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, Mr. Obama won the white vote but lost the black vote in a district that was overwhelmingly black. Abner J. Mikva, a former Illinois congressman and longtime supporter, said, “It took him a while to realize that it’s a vote that has to be courted.”

Hermene Hartman, the publisher of N’Digo, a weekly newspaper in Chicago, recalls advising Mr. Obama to talk less about his experience as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. “What I was saying early on was, ‘Harvard Review will play at the University of Chicago, it won’t play on 55th and King Drive,’” Ms. Hartman said.

Mr. Mikva says Mr. Obama learned to campaign in different ways without changing the substance of what he was saying. He learned to use rhythms, analogies, “quotes that resonate better.” Others say he simply worked hard at becoming better known, consolidating his support among black elected officials, black ministers, labor organizations and community groups, skating nimbly among factions.

Straddling Interests

Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Jackson extends back at least to the early 1990s. Mr. Jackson’s daughter, Santita, was a friend of Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, and was a bridesmaid at their wedding. The Congressional district of Representative Jackson included Mr. Obama’s State Senate district; they have worked together on issues, endorsed some of the same reform-minded candidates against the party slate and sought each other’s advice.

At the same time, Mr. Obama has remained close to his longtime mentor, Mr. Jones — an old antagonist of Representative Jackson, who defeated him for Congress in 1995. Alan Gitelson, a political scientist at Loyola University in Chicago, said, “The skill of Obama is that he’s been able to straddle the two major factions among blacks in Illinois.”

Mr. Obama has also cultivated a working relationship with Mayor Richard M. Daley. Mr. Daley, who backed an opponent of Mr. Obama in the 2004 Senate primary, this year endorsed Mr. Obama for president — around the time that Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Daley for re-election, annoying some supporters and passing over two black candidates considered unlikely to win.

“I can tell you, having worked for both of them, they are both pragmatists who want to get things done,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist and a longtime consultant to Mr. Daley.

By the time Mr. Obama began running for the United States Senate, he “didn’t have to run as a black candidate,” said Don Rose, a longtime political consultant in Chicago. Illinois had already elected one black senator, Carol Moseley Braun, and Mr. Obama had nailed down overwhelming black support. According to Mr. Axelrod, he ended up with 92 percent of the black vote in a competitive field.

Yet race was a subtext of a television advertisement widely believed to have helped Mr. Obama win, Mr. Rose believes. The advertisement featured Sheila Simon, the daughter of former Senator Paul Simon, a Democrat who was a revered figure in Illinois politics, lionized by white progressives and admired by some conservatives. Mr. Simon, who had worked with Mr. Obama on ethics reform, had intended to endorse him but had died unexpectedly after heart surgery in 2003.

So Mr. Axelrod had asked Ms. Simon to make an advertisement about the similarities between her father and Mr. Obama. He said the commercial might help explain Mr. Obama’s unexpected success in white, working class neighborhoods on Chicago’s Northwest Side, which had been hostile to black candidates in the past. Mr. Rose believes that the advertisement’s subtext, intentionally or not, was gender and race: “It is saying, ‘People, I’m a white woman, and I’m not afraid of him.’”

Dining With Sharpton

In Washington, Mr. Obama made it clear almost immediately that his career would not be defined by his race. One of the first acts of the new Congress was to certify the results of the Electoral College. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus moved to contest the certification of the Ohio votes. Mr. Obama did not join them. In a hastily arranged maiden speech, he said he was convinced that President Bush had won but he also urged Congress to address the need for voting reform.

In his office, he hung paintings of Lincoln, Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom he calls his heroes.

In recent weeks, Mr. Obama has turned some of his attention to courting black voters. Nine months into his campaign, he held his first fund-raiser in Harlem, at the Apollo Theater, where he said, among other things, he was in the race because he was “tired of reading about Jena.” Then he went on tour with Oprah Winfrey, whom he had gotten to know when she interviewed him after his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

Mr. Sharpton, who has yet to endorse anyone, says Mr. Obama began his campaign as “the alternative to guys like me.” But in recent months, Mr. Sharpton said, “he’s been calling us.”

Mr. Obama also arranged to dine with Mr. Sharpton, in the presence of a herd of reporters, before his appearance at the Apollo.

“A portion of black voters want Obama to give them some raw meat,” said Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the N.A.A.C.P. “Because they want so badly to have their concerns addressed and highlighted, and they expect it of him because he’s black.”

Bestselling author, John Grisham has been added to the list of keynote speakers for the upcoming New Baptist Covenant gathering in Atlanta.  Since I will be presenting in a couple of (much smaller) venues at this late-January conference this piece from the Associated Baptist Press caught my attention. 

Convened by moderate Baptists, especially driven into exile when the Southern Baptist Convention lurched to the right in the 1980s, the New Baptist Covenant is an attempt to re-brand the word “Baptist”.  Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have given their blessing to the Atlanta meeting and it should attract around 20,000 people.

I will be talking about criminal justice reform–hardly a hot topic among Protestant Christians.  Like my wife, Nancy, and my father-in-law, Charles Kiker, I am an ordained American Baptist Pastor.  The American Baptist Churches (formerly known as the Northern Baptists) are a diverse network embracing black, white and Latino congregations.  We are evangelical, liberal and everything in between.  Like most established Christian communions, we spat about hot-button issues like the inspiration of Scripture and homosexuality.  We are Republicans, Democrats and independents. 

For the past several decades, a loose coalition of moderate (that is, not fundamentalist) Baptist leaders have been inching toward a new kind of organized Baptist identity.  They aren’t trying to create a new denomination, exactly; just a safe place for moderate-to-liberal Baptists who are weary of fighting the culture war. 

John Grisham is one of those people.  He will be talking about the justice system.

Author John Grisham joins lineup of New Baptist Covenant speakers

By Greg Warner

Published: December 21, 2007