Louisiana case stirs outcry of race bias

WASHINGTON - Spurred by the Internet and a nationwide urban radio program by a popular disc jockey, tens of thousands of people are expected to descend on a sleepy rural Louisiana town today to protest what they say are excessive criminal charges against six black teenagers involved in a schoolyard brawl.

About 500 tour buses bearing thousands of riders were scheduled to depart from cities across the United States in the wee hours this morning for Jena, La., about 230 miles northwest of New Orleans. They will join others who will travel by airplane, automobile caravans, and motorcycle convoys in what organizers say is a protest reminiscent of the Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

The demonstration was originally scheduled to coincide with the sentencing of one of the defendants. But, even though a state appeals court dismissed his battery conviction last week, organizers decided to go ahead with the rally. In addition, they asked people across the country to dress in black today to show solidarity with the demonstrators.

As of yesterday, according to the local NAACP and news reports, organizers said they were hoping up to 40,000 people would converge on Jena, a two-lane-highway town of 3,500. Though no one is sure whether the crowd will be that large, Democratic Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has ordered the chief of the State Police to work with the LaSalle Parish sheriff on crowd control.

Even if the numbers do not reach the organizers' hopes, the march is another example - the immigration rights protests of last year being another - of how radio, the Internet, and word of mouth can create a buzz and a unity of purpose.

The prosecutions in Jena, which at one point included charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and the racial clashes that preceded them received scant news coverage but roared through the Web. Google searches for "Jena 6" and "Jena Six" yield nearly 2 million hits.

Earlier this month at Howard University, more than 1,500 students rallied in support of the Jena Six, packing an auditorium with hundreds outside. Yesterday morning, 50 students, all dressed in black, left by bus for Louisiana. Two buses from Prince George's County, Md., paid for in part by donations from area politicians, are also en route.

At first, organizers saw the rally as a protest to the sentencing of Mychal Bell, 17, who was tried as an adult and convicted of aggravated second-degree battery by an all-white jury in June. But last week, a state appeals court threw out that conviction, saying Bell should have been tried in a juvenile court. He was 16 at the time of the altercation. He spent a year in jail, and had faced up to 15 more years in a state prison.

In December, Bell and five other black teenagers - Robert Bailey, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theodore Shaw and Jesse Beard - beat up a white student at Jena High School, knocking him out and blackening one of his eyes.

The victim, Justin Barker, was treated at a hospital and released after two hours. He attended a class-ring ceremony later that night. His attackers were charged by prosecutor Reed Walters, who is white, with conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and aggravated battery. The charges were reduced to conspiracy and battery after activists protested.

The fight at the school followed highly charged racial incidents that started last September when white students placed three hangman's nooses in what was known as "the white tree" at Jena High School. Black parents wanted the white students expelled, but the white school superintendent suspended them for three days, calling the nooses a prank.

Racial disturbances followed, starting in late November. White partygoers attacked a black student in one clash but were not charged, according to police statements. The next day, the same black student and some friends spotted one of his attackers and, they said, chased him. The students told police that the white student pulled an unloaded shotgun but they wrested it away. The student who pulled the weapon was not charged. But police arrested the students who took it on theft charges.