JENA – Colorful imagery splayed across national media notwithstanding, nothing much happened during a much-heralded, media-driven “race rally” that drew thousands of people from across the nation.
JENA – Colorful imagery splayed across national media notwithstanding, nothing much happened during a much-heralded, media-driven “race rally” that drew thousands of people from across the nation.
Participants began arriving an hour before dawn. By noon, 20,000 or more people milled about the town of 3,000. The single “protest walk” planned by national event organizers broke into four, according to some news media, with the participants’ calm behavior being met with the townspeople’s placid demeanor.
“I watched God deliver us today,” First Jena Pastor Dominick DiCarlo Jr. said Thursday evening. He had worked as a reserve police officer throughout the day. “He delivered us from the fear of what could have occurred.
“This is really the very beginning of the national attention,” DiCarlo continued. “Congress is just now engaging this, so we’re on the front end. … Personally, I have learned that a town should not dismiss the power of public opinion. While we are a secluded, small town, we are now in plain view of America.”
Jena will be the better for the media spotlight, said the pastor, who also is moderator for LaSalle Baptist Association.
“Since December of 2006, I have watched the growing bond of brotherhood between the local pastors,” Dominick said. “They have encouraged each other and have prayed for each other. … After the December 2006 school beating, I witnessed a white and black community assure each, of the unity that exists in Jena.”
That unity was strained at the beginning of the 2006-07 school year.
Three nooses hung the first day of classes from an oak tree that provided shade on the center of the high school campus started it all.
White supporters say the nooses hung by white student athletes were meant to convey a “Hang ‘em high” message related to that week’s football game with the “Mustangs.” The nooses to black adults – who read into it the same “Hang ‘em high” message – were much more sinister. They remembered a time in the first half of the 20th century when thousands of blacks were lynched, mostly across the South.
“Outsiders tend to stereotype a town like Jena,” said James Jenkins, strategist with African Americans for the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
“I know the people in this town. I visit there regularly with black and with white pastors,” Jenkins said. “This is not a racially divided town. The local churches both black and white in Jena get along with each other.
“Good is going to come out of this,” Jenkins added. “This [national attention] is going to affect relationships in the town, and that will affect the community in a positive way. After the hoopla dies down, the churches are going to be seen as with each other for the cause of Christ. We’re here; we’re community; we’re family; and we’re going to get along.”
The people in Jena were there for more than a good time, said Kelly Boggs, editor of the Baptist Message.
“The fact so many people are responding tells me they still believe racism is alive,” Boggs said while watching reports of the day’s proceedings. “Racial tension remains a reality in America today.”
DiCarlo said the situation revolved more around equality – equal treatment; equal consideration – than overt racism. Jena evokes a quiet cordiality, he said. Blacks – who mostly live just outside of town – and whites in town – shop, eat and learn at the same places, though like most towns and cities across the nation, most blacks and whites attend monocultural churches.
The strife grew from a tree in the center of the schoolyard square at the high school, which since has been chopped down and used as firewood. The tree had been one of the places teens had congregated on the campus.
At a pre-school assembly about dress codes, a black youth known for “cutting up” asked if blacks could sit under the tree and was told anyone could sit anywhere.
Later that week the three nooses were in the tree. The white principal, on Sept. 7, 2006, recommended the three white “culprits” who hung the nooses be expelled; the white school superintendent instead recommended suspension and called it “a childish prank.”
On Nov. 30, a fire destroyed the main academic building of the high school, which fire officials determined was the work of an arsonist.
A review of newspaper articles indicates racial tension escalated over the weekend. When school reopened Monday, a black student knocked a white student against a wall. He hit his head and fell to the ground, unconscious. Five other black students were reported to have viciously kicked the white boy.
Charges against the black students – who became known as the “Jena Six” – were ratcheted up to attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. One of the students, Mychal Bell, 16, was charged as an adult.
Many people thought the “attempted second-degree murder” charge was too stiff for what essentially was an altercation between the first two young men involved, and by the time Bell appeared in court June 25 of this year, the charges had been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit the same.
When the jury was convened June 26, only 50 of 150 potential jurors showed up in court. All who appeared were white. They convicted Bell on June 28 after three hours of deliberation.
Drawn by the drama of “three nooses,” “an all-white jury,” and “racial injustice,” black activist Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III visited Jena in August. Jesse Jackson announced on Sept. 9 that a march on Jena would take place Sept. 20, the day of Bell’s sentencing. Bell’s conviction was overturned by an appeals court Sept. 14, but the organizers vowed the rally would take place anyway.
According to local news reports, about 500 people rallied in Oklahoma City in support of the Jena rally. Thirteen people did so in Denver.
“The church must engage this community issue,” DiCarlo said. “Our solution is not found in the court house, nor is it found in the school house. Legislation and education, while helpful, cannot change a person’s heart. Heart-level change occurs in the church house.
“God charged the church with the task of reconciliation; that is our commission,” the pastor continued. “The New Testament teaches that. We’re about reconciling man with God through Jesus Christ. Then we help reconcile man to man, group to group. That is simply a byproduct of the former – reconciling man with God through Jesus.”
Southern Baptists in LaSalle Baptist Association were to spend Friday, Sept. 21, picking up debris from the rally for Jena businessmen, but townspeople beat them to it early in the morning. By mid-afternoon Friday, there was little sign that tens of thousands of people had descended the previous day on the town.
“Pastors want to remain where God called us; therefore, we refrained from engaging this community issue in the political and criminal justice arenas,” DiCarlo said. “We believe the pulpit is the place to engage this community issue. We see the gold medal to be the gospel, communicating the gospel. We could work toward a social end, but that’s not the gold medal. The gold medal is to see a life transformed by the Lord Jesus.”
That’s not to say pastors should never address controversy, the pastor/moderator said. After the 6-on-1 school fight in December 2006, 34 pastors from the area – white and black, and across denominational lines – gathered for prayer and discussion, and the following week all of them set aside their planned Christmas-season sermons to preach on racial reconciliation.
“There is a role the church plays in defending the rights of the defenseless,” DiCarlo said. “The Old Testament prophets spoke against injustice.”
“We don’t want to lose the moral authority to preach the gospel by becoming involved in the legal system,” DiCarlo continued. “We need to stay in the venue God has given us, and that venue is the gospel.”
Others would disagree with him, the pastor/moderator said. They would advocate for getting involved in the political realm and effecting change from that direction. Sharpton and Jackson would be among that group, DiCarlo said.