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Racial unrest fuels protest in Louisiana

Thousands are expected in a small town after an incident with a noose and a beating.

JENA, La. - The streets around this tiny town's courthouse began filling with protesters Wednesday, a day ahead of a planned march in support of six black teenagers jailed in the December beating of a white classmate.

Today's march was expected to draw thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people, dwarfing Jena's population of about 3,500. Participants said they hoped to rekindle the spirit of the civil rights movement.

At the center of the protests are the black teenagers who have come to be called the Jena Six.

Racial tensions in Jena were inflamed more than a year ago when nooses were hung on a tree at Jena High School. They appeared after a black student expressed interest in sitting under a tree where whites usually congregated.

Three white students accused of hanging the nooses were briefly suspended, but local prosecutors declined to press charges. Months later, they did charge five of the six black teens with attempted second-degree murder in the beating of a white student. The sixth defendant's case is sealed because he is charged as a juvenile.

Today's march is to take protesters past the school - and the stump of the tree, which authorities had removed in July.

Critics allege the cases show authorities in this predominantly white town are disproportionately harsh toward blacks. District Attorney Reed Walters, breaking a long public silence Wednesday at a news conference, denied racism was involved.

Walters said the suffering of the beating victim, Justin Barker, has been largely ignored. Barker was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function that night.

Walters also said the reason he did not prosecute the white students is because he could find no Louisiana law they could be charged with.

"I cannot overemphasize what a villainous act that was. The people that did it should be ashamed of what they unleashed on this town," Walters said.

He also noted that four defendants in the beating case were of adult age under Louisiana law, and that the only juvenile charged as an adult, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

Bell, 16 at the time of the attack, is the only one of the Jena Six to be tried so far. He was convicted on an aggravated second-degree battery count that could have sent him to prison for 15 years, but the conviction was overturned last week when a state appeals court said he should not have been tried as an adult.

Today's protest had been planned to coincide with Bell's sentencing, but organizers decided to press ahead after the conviction was thrown out.

[Last modified September 20, 2007, 01:40:59]