For those unaware of Trackside's reference.(Sunday Times)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Fifty years after Little Rock, thousands march again for equal rights and justice
Tom Baldwin in Washington
The civil rights movement was marching once more yesterday, filling the streets of a little town in the Deep South that has become a symbol of the racial injustice supposed to have been buried by the protests of previous generations.
Thousands arrived in Jena, Louisiana, wearing black in mock mourning for the segregation laws against which, 50 years ago this month in Little Rock, Arkansas, their forebears had fought so hard.
But yesterday the protests were not about being denied access to white-only schools or the ballot box. Instead, they were against the unequal application of justice in America that leaves black children with a grossly disproportionate chance of ending up in jail.
So they marched in support of the “Jena Six”, a group of black teenagers who were initially charged with attempted murder for a high-school fight during which a white boy was knocked unconscious.
Even President Bush weighed in yesterday from a White House press conference, saying: “The events in Louisiana have saddened me. And I understand the emotions . . . And all of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice.”
The Jena Six campaign has garnered international support, with the rock star David Bowie sending it $10,000 (£5,000) to help to pay the legal bills. “There is clearly a separate and unequal judicial process going on in the town of Jena,” he said.
Much of the anger is directed at the local prosecutor who had previously declined to charge three white children who hung nooses in a tree on Jena High School grounds. Although this was a chilling reminder of the lynchings in the American South, they were punished with an in-school suspension for what the education board insisted was a prank. The ropes hanging from that tree triggered a cycle of interracial violence which culminated in Justin Barker, a white teenager, being beaten unconscious. Although he was well enough to attend a school event the same evening, his attackers were charged with trying to kill him.
White children appeared to have been treated more leniently. For instance, when one pulled out a gun before being disarmed by a black school student, he escaped punishment altogether. But Robert Bailey – now one of the Jena Six – was charged with theft of a firearm.
The attempted murder charges were reduced to assault this month for all but one of the six black teenagers, and so far only one has so far faced trial. Mychal Bell, convicted by an all-white jury for aggravated assault, remains in jail despite a court ruling last week that he should never have been charged as an adult.
District Attorney Reed Walters, breaking a long public silence, this week claimed he could not prosecute the students who hung the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law they had broken. He said: “It is not and never has been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.”
But the Rev Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights leader, said: “We didn’t bring race in it. Those that hung the nooses brought the race into it. This is the most blatant example of disparity in the justice system that we’ve seen. You can’t have two standards of justice.” He wants Mr Walters summoned to Congress to explain himself. “What we need is federal intervention to protect people from Southern injustice. Our fathers in the 1960s had to penetrate the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. We have to do the same thing.”
Another civil rights leader, the Rev Jesse Jackson, had earlier criticised presidential hopeful Barack Obama for “acting like he’s white” and making a tepid response to the case.
Mr Obama, who has urged African Americans to take more responsibility for themselves and move on from the old civil rights battles, replied: “Outrage over an injustice like the Jena Six isn’t a matter of black and white. It’s a matter of right and wrong.”
But yesterday in Jena the Rev Jackson invoked the great marches of the 1950s and 1960s as he declared: “Just as Little Rock defined desegregation . . . today we march fighting for criminal justice equality.”
According to a report by the New York-based Urban League, African-American men are three times more likely than white men to face jail once they have been arrested, and receive jail sentences that are on average 15 per cent longer than whites convicted of the same crime.
12% of the American population is black
45% of the US prison population is black
