"I really didn't take education that seriously," Shaw said in a Garden District coffee shop Friday morning. "Because of what happened, I grew up. Descriptions of the fight on Saturday December 2 vary. Give us feedback, share a story tip or update, or report an error. Was it a hate crime or just a prank? We know of no contemporaneous news coverage of protests about this case before May 2007. [6] Purvis said racial division and segregation had long been an issue in Jena, for as long as he could remember, but the experiences of the Jena Six shined a national spotlight on the tensions that were building up. [5] Some early reporting indicated that students of different races seldom sat together, for instance in the cafeteria, although this has been disputed. Theo Shaw, 21, is attending the University of Louisiana at Monroe and planning to attend law school. "I was like, 'Whoa!' We can find no other news coverage of Jena events in the month of June. The arson story was covered by AP. It took him a while to share the confidence they had in him. list ColorOfChange as the crucial organizer and also cite Black political blogs Oliver Willis and Pams House Blend as central. Retrieved January 26, 2009 from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-jena_blog_web19,0,4309628.story, [11] Oliver, Pamela. Shaw, now 25, counsels juvenile offenders in Harrison County, Miss., as part of his job with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, on Dr. Phil,the families of the six black teens arrested and charged with the assault of a white teen in Jena, Louisiana last December sound off. The other story is about how the movement grew. in political science. The document has no reference to events after the end of January 2007, although the blog includes a picture of the September Jena protest and also of the infamous tree which was later chopped down in mid-2007 but was still standing when the picture was taken. The other says that Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III have marched on Jena in protest without dating those events, describes a grassroots movement growing, cites the website seeingBlack.com as featuring the Jena 6, mentions the Facebook page with 35,000 members as well as Black radio, Black college campuses and Web sites form YouTube to Facebook, and describes rallies or planned rallies at Howard University in Washington and in Chicago and Boston. The Jena Six: Of nooses, fights, narratives, and movement building And what is the central injustice in the case? 5 years later, Jena 6 move on - NBC News The Jena Six mobilization swelled because it linked the unfair charges to the powerful symbol of noose-hanging as racial intimidation. News sources also say that there were other fights between Black and White students or young adults on the same weekend that did not involve the students who became the Jena Six. There is no evidence that bloggers played any role in these early efforts, unless Jordan Flahertys May 5 article is counted as a blog, and Flaherty is based in Louisiana. We can find no record of this essay or whether or how it connected to a broader Internet campaign. The Town Talk quotes Sharpton as saying he heard about the case about four weeks ago and that Sharpton also claimed that the Bell family had reached out to him; he says that Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III plan to visit soon. He tells them "they have some power in creating the person that they want to be. He was knocked unconscious, and some accounts say he did not wake up until he was in the hospital. The next year, 2008, was the year Obama won the presidency, and most organizing attention was focused on voter registration. Even so, he spent seven months in jail. After the national protests and after the charges were reduced, Shaw and four others eventually pleaded no contest to simple battery, a misdemeanor. Some sources say he was hit with a beer bottle and that multiple people were beating him. An article by Ser Seshs Ab Heter in the Washington Informer reported: Representatives of numerous organizations such as Malcolm X Grassroots, Friends of Justice, Louisiana Families of Incarcerated Prisoners, Interfaith for Justice, Common Ground of New Orleans, Community Defenders of Lafayette, NCORBRA, ACLU and Concordia-Catahoula and LaSalle Parishes NAACP swelled the crowd. This implies that ColorOfChange was involved but the in-person mobilization was still largely regional. And then the episode was over. News reports specifically mentioned the organizing that was happening to get people to Jena and other locations for rallies on September 20, including claims that the Nation of Islam was organizing, that there was a preparatory meeting in Dallas, and that there were multiple letter writing and petition campaigns. A number of writers have worked to disentangle what really happened from the narratives about the nooses and the fights, and contemporaneous local newspaper coverage makes it possible to reconstruct a basic timeline of events, although not to resolve all disputes about what happened. But the people who were in high school or college in 2007 would be ages 21-29 seven years later in 2014 when the Ferguson protests brought Black Lives Matter to public attention. In an August 15 story[8], Jordan Flaherty says that more support for the Jena case has come in after the July 31 demonstration. It is true that there was no early national corporate media coverage of the case, but it is not clear that the May 20 BBC documentary and Chicago Tribune article should be treated as non-corporate. "At the time, it was just so much emotion," Purvis, who now lives in Dallas and has a 9-year-old son, told ABC News. Theo Shaw, One of the Jena 6, Is Now Officially a Lawyer - The Root The first news stories about the case were published in May. 2023 Belmont Stakes results, winner: Arcangelo sprints by National He and five other Black teens were accused and later convicted of attacking a white student at a high school in Jena, Louisiana, a town with a large majority of white residents, after a series of racially charged incidents there. Several other cases of hate crimes or unfair justice or police violence were folded into the discourse. Black students Robert Bailey, Theo Shaw, and Ryan Simmons (later part of the Jena Six) were later arrested and charged with stealing the firearm. Al Sharpton organized a rally on November 16 followed by a November 17 free concert, with numerous pre-rallies in the DC area in preceding weeks to build support; estimates were that about 10,000 people showed up for these events. All were booked on the felony charge of aggravated second-degree battery. This article says a key speaker was lawyer Krystal Todd and that parent Renea Ogletree has contacted representatives with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples national action network about the incident.[2] It describes the nooses as reportedly following a question and answer session at an assembly about whether Black students could sit next to White students under the tree. An article published September 1 in the Crisis quotes Ernest Johnson of the Louisiana NAACP and Alan Bean and cites the support of national leaders for the case, and says thousands are planning to attend the protest on September 20. On the same day the LAT/WP newswire also printed a longer recap of the narrative of the case, and said that Bloggers and student activists have taken up the Jena Six case, and the Nation of Islam and other religious organizations are orchestrating a bus trip to Jena. This article also covered White Jena residents perceptions of events and their fears of unrest from the protest. He is planning to apply for law school this fall. It does have a Concrete Loop story dated August 15 about the protest and links to petitions. The APs writer Mary Foster covered the trial with stories on June 26, 27 and 28. It wouldn't matter. Among his former teen attackers, at least one aspires to become an attorney. What You Need to Know about Your Child's Behavior Away from Home. The case against the teens became for many a symbol of racial discrimination in the justice system -- attempted murder charges for what supporters called a schoolyard fight. Bell, a highly recruited football player before the beating, is a cornerback on Southern University's team. Kvasney et al (2008) quotes a 2007 Washington Post op ed as saying: We still might not know about what was happening in Jena if the case hadnt been noticed by bloggers, who sounded the alarm. They also cite Chicago Tribune reporter Witt[10] writing on September 17 as saying that the Blackosphere created a formidable grassroots organization that has collected 220,000 petition signatures and $130,000 in donations in a few weeks. "We hope our actions today help to resolve this matter for Justin, Mr. and Mrs. Barker, and all others affected, including the Town of Jena.". On September 6, The Los Angeles Sentinel published two stories recounting the narrative of the case and saying that events are planned for the September 20 sentencing date: National radio personalities Tom Joyner and Michael Baisden will broadcast their shows live from the courthouse and several civil rights leaders will also be present. A Philadelphia Tribune article dated September 11 recounts the case narrative but makes no mention of a planned protest. Other delegations from across Louisiana included members of INCITE Women of Colour Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Common Ground and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Many stories stress that he attended an awards ceremony later that day, although other stories stress that his jaw was broken and his eye was swollen shut. JENA, La. Sponsored: Dr. Phil McGraw Teams Up With Sundae To Help Homeowners Sell As-Is. That shooting and two more arrests have made Coulter infamous in New Orleans. He plans to go to grad school on the west coast and eventually work as a sports agent. I learned things too, like doing things the right way," Bailey said. The Philadelphia Tribune on September 18 reported that the NAACP reports 60,000 are planning to go to Jena, cites Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, and Al Sharpton as involved, and quotes Sharpton as claiming that the parents of Mychal Bell reached out to him and the NAN, consistent with reports of his August 5 visit to Jena. As an anecdotal data point suggesting that the interest was multigenerational and that the mobilizing was done on a short timeline, sociologist Aisha Upton-Azzam said in a personal communication that she took a Chicago bus to the Jena protest after her grandmother learned about it from the Facebook page. "It is not and never has been about race," Walters said, according to an AP report at the time. Want Dr. Phil to Investigate a Situation or Possible Scam? The population was 2,971 at the 2000 census. LaSalle Parish School District officials said they had found no teachers considering such an action and did not know where such information came from. Bail for the non-juveniles was set at $70,000 to $138,000. Two articles about the Jena mobilization were published in the Miami Times on September 12. The charges were later reduced. Family Member, Friend or Colleague of a Guest. "I don't think I did a very good job of that.". Beyond the Jena Six Shaw and four other members of the Jena Six ultimately pleaded no contest to simple battery, a misdemeanor, in 2009. 'My Story as a Jena 6': Racism and justice in a small Louisiana town He's seen plenty of young people like Marshall Coulter, he said. Around September 12-13, several Black newspapers printed an article by Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Childrens Defense Fund, that described the case but did not mention a protest in Jena, instead suggesting that people call the LaSalle Parish District Attorney. Are You Involved in a Story Making Headlines? One says thousands of demonstrators from across the nation are planning to descend on Jena. CRIME 'My Story as a Jena 6': Racism and justice in a small Louisiana town Lex Talamo Shreveport Times 0:04 0:59 Bryant Purvis was 17 years old when he was charged with attempted murder for the. The white victim of the Jena 6 attack, Justin Barker, is now 22 and working on an oil rig. It makes no mention of parents protests. He had an important work meeting Friday morning; else, he'd have been in North Louisiana watching his friend, Robert Bailey, become the second of the Jena 6 to graduate from Grambling State.
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