About Me
This all began September 2006, when Black students challenged the school official about being able to sit under the WHITE TREE in the school yard! The official reportedly told the kids to feel free to sit wherever they wanted. The day after the black kids sat under the tree, three hangman’s nooses were found hanging from the tree.The three white students responsible for hanging nooses in a tree in the school courtyard were punished with a few days of in-school suspension. The noose incident was dismissed as a childish prank. The following day, black students staged a spontaneous protest rally under the tree where the nooses had been discovered. Several black male athletes took the lead in this protest.….the same students who were eventually accused of attacking Justin Barker.Shortly after that incident, District Attorney Reed Walters addressed an emergency school assembly called in response to the spontaneous student protest. With a dozen fully uniformed (and I’m assuming, armed) police officers in the auditorium, Walters warned protest organizers that with a stroke of his pen he could take their lives away. Walters has admitted under oath that he made this remark. His words were not aimed at the entire student body, nor at black students in general, he was speaking to the student athletes we now call the Jena 6. After the demonstration under the tree, Robert Bailey, Carwin Jones, Mychal Bell, Theodore Shaw, Jesse Beard and Bryant Ray Purvis became notorious.In signed statements, several white and black students mentioned a series of verbal altercations during the lunch hour preceding the attack on Justin Barker. The trash-talking was directly related to a fight at the Fair Barn three days earlier. On that occasion, Robert Bailey and a few of his friends were invited to an all-white student party by some of their white friends. When Robert entered the building, he was punched in the face by a 22 year-old white male. In seconds, Robert was assaulted with beer bottles, punches and kicks in a virtual mirror image of the altercation at the high school three days later. The only differences were that the identity of the instigator in the Fair Barn incident was undisputed and that Robert remained conscious after the initial blow and was thus able to minimize the impact of the attack.The following morning, Robert Bailey and two of the friends who had come to his aid during the Fair Barn assault were leaving a local convenience store when they encountered one of the country white males who had jumped Robert the night before. Fearing retaliation, the boy retreated to his truck and pulled out a pump-action, pistol-grip shotgun that looks like something the Terminator might have fancied. When Robert and his friends wrestled the weapon away from their would-be assailant they were charged with assault and theft. Once again, Jena’s New Jim Crow regime was reinforced.The violent assault at the Fair Barn, the convenience store incident, and the assault at the school followed in the wake of a traumatic school fire in late November. Everyone associated with the school was in a state of shock akin to post traumatic stress syndrome. Concerned by the wave of violence, several teachers asked administrators not to reopen the school the Monday morning of the assault.Student statements suggest that the student who attacked Justin Barker was responding to taunts that Robert Bailey “had his butt kicked†at the Fair Barn. In the course of this verbal jousting, several students report that Justin Barker “got up in Mychal’s face†and gave Mychal the finger. Tony Knapp, one of three boys who admitted to hanging nooses earlier in the school year, was also involved in this lunch hour altercation. At trial, District Attorney Reed Walters created the misleading impression that Barker was attacked by black thugs looking for a random white victim. He knew better…* Several eyewitnesses recall that the initial punch was preceded by the shouted words, “This will teach you to run your mother f***ing mouth.†This statement, repeated by too many witnesses to be seriously doubted, makes no sense apart from the trash talking described in student statements.Justin Cooper was the only witness at trial to testify that Mychal Bell kicked Justin Barker as the victim lay unconscious on the ground. Since Justin Cooper was one of the boys who admitted to hanging the nooses at Jena High School, is he a reliable witness?Jessica Hooter was one of four trial witnesses who identified Mychal as the person who threw the first punch at Justin Barker. Two days after the assault occurred, Jessica was unable to identify the initial attacker. But as she explained at trial, “After I thought about it more, I remembered more.â€
He was judged by an all white jury in a racial incident, I ask you as a white person, would you want to be judged by a jury of all blacks?The single male juror graduated from High School with Justin Barker’s father.There was very shady and conflicting witness testimony about who threw the punch and who instigated the fight.Last but not least, the public defender, who represented Mychal Bell, who is black, never called a single witness in his defense, in fact, the parents were not even allowed into the court room until the verdict was in.We need to become the Freedom Writers, Freedom callers, Freedom Marchers, and Freedom donators, because too many black, brown, and poor white people are getting the shaft in this so-called justice system!.
