Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

'You've got to do something'

By NICOLE HUTCHESON, Times Staff Writer
Published September 21, 2007

Ernest Wood (left, foreground) and Orlando Pizana (second from left), of St. Petersburg, take part in a rally in front of the La Salle Parish Courthouse in Jena La. Thursday's protest is being described as one of the most significant non-violent protests since the civil rights marches of the 1960s.
	[LARA CERRI | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [LARA CERRI | Times] As William Lafayette Mundey (left) catches some sleep, Ernest Wood takes command of the RV that carries 6 Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers to Jena to show their support.

JENA, La. - It was almost 5 p.m. Thursday when Ernest Wood wheeled the RV into this small Louisiana town.

They had missed the height of the one of the country's biggest civil rights demonstrations in years, but after 20 hours of driving and a few wrong turns, they were relieved to finally be there.

The eight-person Tampa contingent mingled among the hundreds of stragglers filtering through the streets, sweaty and tired looking from a day of marching and protesting.

With Wood behind the wheel, it had been a bumpy ride to Louisiana, with mistaken side trips into places were cotton fields stretched into the distance.

Wood, an elementary and middle school teacher in Hillsborough County, had made the 11th-hour decision to come. He felt he needed to act.

He called Travis Brooks and along with four others in the Tampa fraternity Omega Psi Phi, the men rented an RV and drove through the night to protest charges against six black teenagers in rural Louisiana.

"I said 'I'm not going to miss this one,'" said Brooks, 29, a real estate consultant. "You get to a point where you feel you've got to do something."

The men in the RV were educators, business owners, fathers and husbands, but they say they've looked racism dead in the eye.

They believe it easily could have been one of them in the Jena 6. That's what motivated them to sleep in shifts while each took a turn driving.

"The prison is the new reservation system for the black man," said William Mundey, 49, a passenger on the van. "That's why I'm going."

"Frederick Douglass said it best: 'Without struggle, there's no progress,'" said Orlando Pizana, 34, an English teacher at St. Petersburg College.

Driving down U.S. 61, passing through the small sleepy towns there is a sense that people care what's happening in Jena. Folks wear black T-shirts and give out directions freely. But in the larger towns, there is not as much awareness.

"That's what makes me mad," said Brooks, leaving a Popeye's Chicken restaurant perplexed by the staff's ignorance about the Jena 6, less than three hours down the road. "We're in Baton Rouge, and they're looking at me like I'm crazy when I say Jena."

"The case brought to mind everything my mother went through," said Pizana, who said his mother was the first black woman in a top leadership position at the New England Telephone Co. in Boston.

"I might as well fight the cause while I can fight the cause," said Brian "Sleepy" Harris, a senior at Florida A&M. "Because maybe later on, my kids will be fighting the cause, so I'm just serving my time."

FOR MAP

At a glance: Jena

Population: 2,971

Racial make-up: 86 percent white, 12 percent black

Median household income: $30,938

Source: U.S. Census 2000

[Last modified September 20, 2007, 23:56:47]