2008 Woodie Awards
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In Jena, La., thousands gathered to support the Jena 6 Thursday. Here at ISU, students gathered for a candlelight.Students held candles and there was a moment of silence for the Jena 6 and their families.
"I'm so happy that more than one race sees this as a problem," LaToya Torrence, a senior public relations major, said.
According to the Associated Press, the story behind the Jena 6 starts in 2006.At Jena High School, located in Jena, La., a black freshman male asked the vice principal if the student could sit under the tree that was referred to as the white tree, where traditionally only white students sat.
The next day three nooses decorated in the school colors were hanging from the tree. The students who placed the noses there were found, and the principal, recommended expulsion for the three white boys.The school board and superintendent reduced the sentence to three days in school suspension.
In November, the main building caught fire. The district attorney, Reed Walters, came to talk to the students and, reportedly, said that he had the power to affect their life with a stroke of a pen. Fighting broke out between both whites and blacks. In December 2006, a black student, Robert Bailey, was beaten at a party.
A white man with a gun threatened three black boys. The boys took the gun from him and were charged with robbery.
The fighting escalated until on Dec. 4, 2006, Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School, started bragging about how Bailey was beaten.
Six boys, Mychal Bell, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Byrant Purvis, Robert Bailey Jr., and a juvenile some have identified as Jesse Ray Beard, attacked Barker. Barker went to the hospital and was treated for facial injuries and released the same day.
The six boys, now referred to as the Jena 6, were arrested and charged with assault. Walters then raised the charges to attempted second degree murder with the deadly weapon being a tennis shoe and conspiracy to commit.
Mychal Bell was convicted of aggravated battery in June 2007. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. On Sept. 14, a judge overturned the attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder, stating that Bell should have been tried in juvenile court.
U.S. District Attorney for western Louisiana, Donald Washington, said Wednesday that he could see no connection between the noose incident and the beating of Barker.
On Thursday, a large rally took place in Jena. Thousands of protesters are present. At ISU, the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held a candlelight vigil on Thursday night.
"In order to make a change, we have to do it," Ebony Roberts, the president of the ISU chapter of the NAACP, said at the vigil.
The information about this has been getting around through word of mouth, Leanda Rivera, a freshman speech pathology major said. "It makes me very upset," Rivera said.
Some students know about what is going on in Jena, Jeff Brown, vice president of the Student Government Association and a senior English teaching major, said. "If more of the student body knew, there would be more than the 100 here tonight," Brown said.
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