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.
   

It’s 5:00 am and I’m about to jump in the car for Louisiana, but this is something you need to know. What does this stunning development tell us about the rest of the cases?  More later.

Lawyer: ‘Jena Six’ Teen Near Plea Deal
By MARY FOSTER – 7 hours ago

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A black teenager whose prosecution in the beating of a white classmate led to one of the largest civil rights protests in years is close to a deal that would allow him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and avoid a second trial, his attorney said Sunday.

Mychal Bell, 17, could enter the plea as early as Monday, said attorney Carol Powell Lexing. He has been charged with aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy.

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

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters did not return a call Sunday evening requesting comment.

Bell, who is black, is scheduled to go to trial Thursday on the felony charges for his suspected role in an attack on Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School in central Louisiana.

Barker spent several hours in the emergency room after the attack but was discharged and attended a school event the night after the attack, which occurred about a year ago.

Bell was originally charged as an adult with attempted murder. That charge was reduced before a jury convicted him in June of aggravated second-degree battery. In September, that verdict was thrown out by an appeals court that said Bell should be tried as a juvenile.

The charges against Bell and five other black students led to a civil-rights demonstration in Jena in September. Felony charges against the other students are pending.

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.

Walters has said there was no state crime to charge them with.

This informative piece, published in the New York Times highlights the research of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Particularly helpful, is a map graphic dealing with the most disturbing noose hanging incidents in the post-September 20th period.

The title of Juan Williams’ recent book,  Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America, tells you everything you need to know about his political philosophy.  This New York Times op-edpresents Obama as the champion of “the rising number of black people who tell pollsters they find themselves in sync with most white Americans on values and priorities”.  From Juan Williams’ perspective, that’s a good thing.

Mr. Williams is a senior correspondent with National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.  Significantly, he also provides commentary for Fox News Channel.   It may be a stretch to call Williams a “black conservative”, but he has little appreciation for prominent black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and he uses this quote from Obama to suggest that America’s first serious black presidential hopeful shares his perspective: “In the history of African-American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African-American community,” he said. “By virtue of my background, you know, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.”

Barack Obama has been derided for issuing guarded statements about the legal travesty in Jena, Louisiana.  Jesse Jackson even suggested that Obama was talking like a white man.

I was neither surprised nor offended by Obama’s caution.  Presidential candidates who harbor serious aspirations must be cautious.  True, if Jackson and Sharpton were running for president this year, they would make Jena the centerpiece of their campaigns.  But then, Jackson and Sharpton threw their hats into the presidential ring, they weren’t really trying to get elected; they were trying (successfully) to increase their visibility and credibility as self-appointed spokesmen for black America.

Maybe that’s what Williams is getting at here.  Much of the rhetoric we hear from black civil rights leaders is self-referential; that is, it is aimed primarily at their base in the black community.  There is little serious attempt to connect with Middle America.  This allows men like Sharpton and Jackson to dish out the kind of strident, unequivocal statements CNN and NBC love to capture for the evening news, and it also ensures that Al and Jesse will maintain their status as media go-to-guys for every prominent race-related story.

White Republicans (thus far at least) have been able to serve up red meat for the political base and still capture that magical 51% of the vote.  Black politicians like Barack Obama don’t have that luxury.  Martin Luther King Jr. reached out to mainstream, white America because he knew that public policy change would prove illusive without white support. 

Barack Obama is following King’s example.  As Juan Williams notes, “The alienation, anger and pessimism that mark speeches from major black American leaders are missing from Mr. Obama’s speeches.”

Much of the “alienation, anger and pessimism” that forms the subtext of high-profile civil rights rhetoric is rooted in the realization that the message, however on-point, will never penetrate to the corridors of power.  Al Sharpton’s popularity with disaffected African Americans ensures that he will be written off by the vast majority of white Americans (which is precisely why Bill O’Reilly gives Sharpton airtime).   But celebrity comes with a steep price–for both Mr. Sharpton and his followers.

Black leaders should not be blamed for playing the hand white America has dealt them.  There are many things Barack Obama cannot say if he seriously hopes to be our next president–things that desperately need to be said.  I don’t share Williams’ naive enthusiasm for post-civil rights America  We need our prophets. 

But, somehow, some way, reformers must enlist the support and active involvement of Americans, white, black and Latino, who identify with Middle America.  If we don’t, the problems that haunt the poor and the powerless will flourish unchecked.  Only a broad-based coalition of progressives and moderates can effect change; and if we’re not about change, what are we about?

November 30, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Obama’s Color Line

By JUAN WILLIAMS

BARACK OBAMA is running an astonishing campaign. Not only is he doing far better in the polls than any black presidential candidate in American history, but he has also raised more money than any of the candidates in either party except Hillary Clinton.

Most amazing, Mr. Obama has built his political base among white voters. He relies on unprecedented support among whites for a black candidate. Among black voters nationwide, he actually trails Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points, according to one recent poll.

At first glance, the black-white response to Mr. Obama appears to represent breathtaking progress toward the day when candidates and voters are able to get beyond race. But to say the least, it is very odd that black voters are split over Mr. Obama’s strong and realistic effort to reach where no black candidate has gone before. Their reaction looks less like post-racial political idealism than the latest in self-defeating black politics.

Mr. Obama’s success is creating anxiety, uncertainty and more than a little jealousy among older black politicians. Black political and community activists still rooted in the politics of the 1960s civil rights movement are suspicious about why so many white people find this black man so acceptable.

Much of this suspicion springs from Mr. Obama’s background. He was too young to march with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His mother is white and his father was a black Kenyan. Mr. Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, then went on to the Ivy League, attending Columbia for college and Harvard for law school. He did not work his way up the political ladder through black politics, and in fact he lost a race for a Chicago Congressional seat to Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther.

In an interview with National Public Radio earlier this year, Mr. Obama acknowledged being out of step with the way most black politicians approach white America. “In the history of African-American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African-American community,” he said. “By virtue of my background, you know, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.”

The alienation, anger and pessimism that mark speeches from major black American leaders are missing from Mr. Obama’s speeches. He talks about America as a “magical place” of diversity and immigration. He appeals to the King-like dream of getting past the racial divide to a place where the sons of slaves and the sons of slave owners can pick the best president without regard to skin color.

Mr. Obama’s biography and rhetoric have led to mean-spirited questions about whether he is “black enough,” whether he is “acting like he’s white,” as a South Carolina newspaper reported Jesse Jackson said of him. But the more serious question being asked about Mr. Obama by skeptical black voters is this: Whose values and priorities will he represent if he wins the White House?

As he claims to proudly represent a historically oppressed minority, Mr. Obama has to answer the question. Too many black politicians have hidden behind their skin color to avoid it.

Fifty percent of black Americans say Mr. Obama shares their values, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. But that still leaves another half who dismiss him as having only “some” or “not much/not at all” in common with the values of black Americans.

There is a widening split over values inside black America. Sixty-one percent of black Americans, according to the Pew poll, believe that the values of middle-class and poor blacks are becoming “more different.” Inside black America, people with at least some college education are the most likely to see Mr. Obama as “sharing the black community’s values and interests a lot.” But only 41 percent of blacks with a high school education or less see Mr. Obama as part of the black community.

Overall, only 29 percent of people of all colors say Mr. Obama reflects black values. He is viewed as the epitome of what Senator Joe Biden artlessly called the “clean” and “articulate” part of black America — the rising number of black people who tell pollsters they find themselves in sync with most white Americans on values and priorities.

And in a nation where a third of the population is now made up of people of color, Mr. Obama is in the vanguard of a new brand of multi-racial politics. He is asking voters to move with him beyond race and beyond the civil rights movement to a politics of shared values. If black and white voters alike react to Mr. Obama’s values, then he will really have taken the nation into post-racial politics.

Whether he and America will get there is still an open question.

Juan Williams, a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News Channel, is the author of “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America.”

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

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

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

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

_____________________________________

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hwitt@tribune.com
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wide differences in reporting by the states has provoked criticism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Context is everything. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To whom was he speaking? 

It doesn’t matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Context is everything. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Context is everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-chief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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