Help Build The Dream

It Not Always About A Party!!!

While watching news coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he turned to his wife, Coretta, and told her, "This is what is going to happen to me." All his adult life, this practitioner of nonviolence had been threatened, assaulted, and surrounded by people — most of them white, some of them black — who considered him their enemy. The FBI routinely released memos documenting his activities, with the heading "Martin Luther King — Communist." Andrew Young, one of the leaders of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference, observed that King had questioned "fundamental patterns of American life" and had therefore "become the enemy" to many Americans.

So as he headed to Memphis in the spring of 1968, to hold what he hoped would be a peaceful demonstration in support of the sanitation workers’ strike here, King knew his life was in grave danger. "There’s no way in the world you can keep somebody from killing you," he told a reporter, "if they really want to kill you."

And he knew Memphis would be a challenge. The sanitation strike had dragged on into its fifth week, and the situation seemed hopeless. Jerry Wurf, international head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) had complained bitterly, "I spent half my time trying to keep that city from burning down, while the god-damned mayor was pouring gasoline on the situation as I ran around pulling matches out of people’s hands."

The Story

Last fall in Jena, Louisiana, the day after two Black high school
students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung
from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District
Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and
demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be
your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."1

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA
did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard
fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted
murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the
stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the
next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of
Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same
weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The
next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a
young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran
away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students
were arrested for the theft of the gun.2

That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter
of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was
beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black
students "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked
by black students. He was taken to the hospital but was released and was
well enough to go to a social event that evening.3

Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin
Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified
minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with
second-degree attempted murder. Bail was set so high -- between $70,000
and $138,000 -- that the boys were left in prison for months as families
went deep into debt to release them.4

The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in
prison since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and
conspiracy to commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white
jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During
his trial, Mychal's parents were ordered not to speak to the media and
the court prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or
where the judge could see them.

Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jail
for 22 years.5 Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bail this
week.

The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting
tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are
standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their
sons will be a long time coming home. They will lose precious years to
Jena's outrageous attempt to maintain a racist status quo. But if we act
now, we can make a difference.

Please add your voice to the voices of these families in Jena, and help
bring Mychal, Theo, Robert, Carwin, and Bryant home. By clicking below,
you can demand that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to
make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed
Walters drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial,
Go to www.freethejena6.org/ -