To most people, the “Jena 6″ are black students at a noose-hanging Louisiana high school who were charged with attempted murder for a schoolyard fight. That account is based on media myths, writes Craig Franklin, associate editor of the Jena Times in the Christian Science Monitor.
The myths started when a Jena High student asked a silly question about who could sit under a campus tree to extend a school assembly, writes Franklin, whose wife teaches at Jena High. Blacks and whites routinely sat under the tree.
The next day, three white students put nooses on the tree. They said it was a prank aimed at white friends on the school rodeo team. They’d got the idea from watching “Lonesome Dove.”
The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. When informed of this history by school officials, they became visibly remorseful because they had many black friends.
Three months later, when six blacks ambushed a white student and beat him unconscious, nobody mentioned the noose incident as a reason for the attack. The victim had nothing to do with the nooses.
They can’t be teaching much history at Jena High if students haven’t heard of lynching. And Franklin’s clearly a partisan of the town and the school. Still, I suspect his account is more accurate than the story of misunderstood youths fighting racism, six to one.
Six on one is a lynching. It grieves me that the lessons of the civil rights movement have been flushed down the toilet and replaced by the lessons of racial privilege.
I agree with you Walter. I was also shocked to learn that 2 of the Jena 6 were guest presenters at a music awards show.
Well, certain communities make a habit of glorifying those who advocate violence as a way to gainr espect and privelege. I’m not surprised about the intentional ignorance by the media and NAACP, who make it a habit to take advantage of the ill-informed.
My black American history teacher never said anything about nooses. He spent a long time discussing Dubois vs. Booker T Washington.
And while lynchings were committed by hanging, other lynchings occurred by breaking into the jail and beating the guy to death. I vaguely recall lynchings being mentioned but not a digression into all the manners of death that a lynching might take.
I personally associate hanging with the Wild West.
Push day had a place 50 years ago.
I always associated nooses with “hang em high” cowboy movies, and wasn’t aware of the connection until a few years ago.
It is of no surprise to me that the three boys didn’t know the significance.
Oh well, sooner or later, the media will succeed in finding the perfect victim.
Four probations for four felonies, eh? Why was this young man allowed to walk after his second battery adjudication only to commit yet another? Oh, yeah, the DA and the judge are racists.
… and two property destruction charges? Say, wasn’t the school burned? Hmmm…