A More Nuanced Look at the Jena Six

Associated Press writer Todd Lewan offers a fair and balanced report on the Jena Six.

It defuses the emotions fueling the protests of the National Day of Action this past week with facts.

JENA, La. -- It's got all the elements of a Delta blues ballad from the days of Jim Crow: hangman's nooses dangling from a shade tree; a mysterious fire in the night; swift deliberations by a condemning, all-white jury.

And drawn by this story, which evokes the worst of a nightmarish past, they came by the thousands this past week to Jena, La. — to demand justice, to show strength, to beat back the forces of racism as did their parents and grandparents.

But there are many in Jena who say the tale of the "Jena Six" — the black teenagers who were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy for attacking a white classmate at Jena High School last December — is not as simple as all that.

Black and white, they say that in its repeated retelling — enhanced by omissions and alterations of fact — the story has taken on a life of its own. It has transformed a school-yard stomping into an international cause celebre, and those accused of participating in it into what one major Southern daily came to describe as "latter-day Scottsboro Boys."

And they say that while their town's race relations are not unblemished, this is not the cauldron of bigotry that has been depicted.

To Ben Reid, 61, who set down roots in Jena in 1957 and lived here throughout the civil rights era, "this whole thing ain't no downright, racial affair."

Reid, who is black, presently serves on the LaSalle Parish council. He reads the papers. He hears the talk outside of church on Sundays about how the Jena Six business is dividing his hometown down racial lines.

He doesn't buy it.

"You have good people here and bad people here, on both sides. This thing has been blown out of proportion. What we ought to do is sit down and talk this thing out, 'cause once all is said and done and you media folks leave, we're the ones who're going to have to live here."

Todd Lewan explains that the story of the Jena Six is not as black and white as the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the lib media would have you believe.

Consider:

_The so-called "white tree" at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.

_Two nooses — not three — were found dangling from the tree. Beyond being offensive to blacks, the nooses were cut down because black and white students "were playing with them, pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them," according to a black teacher who witnessed the scene.

_There was no connection between the September noose incident and December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.

_The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days — they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.

_The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.

The protesters and the media have not emphasized these points.

Most townsfolk, [Billy Wayne Fowler, a white school-board member,] says, interpreted the events of last year pretty much the same way — that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white, got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren't always on the mark.

The boys who hung the nooses "probably should have been expelled," Fowler says, and the murder charges brought against the black teenagers were "too harsh, too severe."

Tommy Farris, 27, an oil driller, and his wife, Nikki, 29, a registered nurse, concur — to a point. "Those boys should have expelled," says Nikki, who is white. "It was no innocent prank. I think those boys knew what they were starting by hanging those nooses from a tree."

Tommy, who is black, agrees. But free the Jena Six?

"That's not going to happen," he says, adding that he thinks the black teenagers are being given a fair chance to defend themselves against the charges.

Johnny Wilkinson, 44, a platform officer on an oil rig, and his wife, Karen, a 47-year-old director of nurses at the local hospital, are, like many couples in town, wrestling with that question of fairness.

The noose hanging was wrong, say the Wilkinsons, who are white, and the boys who did it should have been more severely punished.

Still, "They knocked that boy out cold and were stomping on him," Johnny says. "They might have killed him. I believe punishment would have been measured the same way if it had been the opposite way around and six whites had attacked a black kid."

I agree with these residents of Jena. All involved deserve to be held accountable for their actions. They are entitled to equal and appropriate treatment under the law.

I also think it's wrong to distort facts to fit an agenda, and that's what's happening in this case.

The "Free the Jena Six" became a circus, a carnival with funhouse mirrors.

That's unfortunate. Such distortions do a disservice to the real racial struggles of the past and the present.

Liberty and justice for all. Not liberty and justice for whites. Not liberty and justice for blacks.

Liberty and justice for all.