The 'White Tree', Jena 6 and Untold Stories

The tree that started all the trouble was one of those beautiful old Southern oaks with thick outspread boughs offering a haven of cool shade in the noon heat.

It stood outside the high school in rural Jena, La., where it was known as the White Tree.

At a school assembly in August 2006, one of Jena's few black students asked a vice principal if he could sit under it. Sure, he was told. Sit anywhere you like.

The next day, three nooses dangled from the oak's branches and some very ugly old ghosts came riding back into Jena.

In the following months, there were dozens of black-white fistfights, the school burned down and eventually six black teens - now known as the Jena 6 - were charged with attempted murder for punching a white teenager....

....The trouble began in September 2006, with the appearance of the nooses. The school principal wanted to expel the three white students responsible. But the school superintendent, seeing it as a harmless prank, commuted their sentence to a three-day suspension.

In response, angry black students held a sit-in under the tree. The Jena 6, all members of the Jena Giants football team, were among them.

Amid rising tensions, LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters was called in to calm things down. Instead, he worsened matters by threatening the students, "See this pen? I can take away your lives with the stroke of a pen."

Throughout the fall, racial scuffles broke out both in and out of school. On Nov. 30, a still-unknown arsonist destroyed the school's main building.

The next day, 17-year-old Robert Bailey, who would become one of the Jena 6, showed up at an all-white party and was attacked. A white man who broke a beer bottle over his head was given probation.

The next night, outside a convenience store, Bailey and two friends ran into one of the white party guests. Fearing retaliation, he brandished a shotgun. Bailey wrestled the gun away from him and was then arrested and charged with stealing it.

On Dec. 4, 2006, 17-year-old white student Justin Barker was allegedly overheard at school crowing about the attack on Bailey. Bailey and the other five football players jumped him.

Barker was knocked unconscious by a single punch, allegedly by Bell, and then kicked repeatedly. He was treated at a hospital and discharged in time to attend a school ceremony that night.

"This is a flagrant example of the new Jim Crow: the use of the criminal justice system for poverty control," Bean said. "What happened to Mychal Bell happens to people every day in this country. Jena is America."

In Paris, Tex., last year, a white teenager who killed a black woman and her grandson in a negligent car accident was sentenced to sending her family Christmas cards, while a black teen who shoved a hall monitor went to prison for seven years.

In Jena, the big old oak is gone now, razed in a bid for what school board member Billy Fowler called "a clean slate."

All that remains is a stump - and roots of old pain still deep under the surface....

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	Thousands 'march for justice' in Jena, court orders hearing on teen	CNN	Fri Sep 21	0
	Racially biased justice still infects American courtrooms	Chicago Sun-Times	Tue Sep 18	1
	Waking up from the Dream	wonderlandornot.net	Thu Sep 20	1
	Locals Dispute Growing Story of Jena 6	Associated Press	Sat Sep 22	2
	U.S. attorney: Nooses, beating at Jena High not related - CNN.com	CNN	Wed Sep 19	0