Jena And The Crazy DA

Whenever you have a situation where three Black boys can’t share eating space under a tree with some white students without three nooses being hung at the same spot they stood under the next day, and the school superintendent doesn’t intend to expel whoever did it, then there’s a big problem.

[Point Blank]

 

Someone in Louisiana finally got it right.

Mychal Bell’s conviction has been overturned by an appeals court. The original backwoods-style ruling in Jena Louisiana came within days of sentencing before outside courts attacked with a wave of common sense which is apparently lacking in Jena.

The appellate court just had a couple of problems with the initial charges of five of the six. Let’s see: “Attempted Second-Degree Murder and Conspiracy to Commit Second-Degree Murder.” This just over some teenagers getting into a fistfight.

The brainchild of those charges is a District Attorney named Reed Walters, who really needs to admit himself into the Walter Reed Psychiatric wing.

I suppose DA Walters would have had a field day with me back at South Park High School back in between 1972-73. The way I smacked down some South Buffalo white boys in a fight when they jumped me; I’d be getting just paroled right about now.

If I remember correctly, there were no more than 10 of us Blacks in the freshman class and we were annexed to another school because the main school was overcrowded. The principle even came to me to help diffuse a riot he thought some of the white kids were going to start.
 
These flare-ups generally originate from cowardly beginnings; there was another time my boy Vergie Jackson was beefin’ with some white classmates for several days and they were planning to jump him and I told him to go outside—they were actually waiting for him after school—and say what he had to say to them and see what they’ll do. He did just that and at least four or five of them started to approach him because they thought he was by himself and when they got about 15 feet from him I came out the door and then they just stood there in shock and started mumbling and then they dispersed. I’d never forget that because, hey we were still outnumbered.

They wanted Vergie simply because he was the smallest of us, even though he could fight, he was only one.

Yep, if DA Walters were a South Buffalo DA he would’ve had a field day with us. Those South Buffalo white kids put us through the mill verbally because they knew the same thing that those white kids living on what they call “Snob Hill” in Jena know today; if a large portion of adults in their side of town are known for not liking Blacks, they as children can push racial buttons with impunity and even if a fight breaks out, they will get away with it.

Whenever you have a situation where three Black boys can’t share eating space under a tree with some white students without three nooses being hung at the same spot they stood under the next day, and the school superintendent doesn’t intend to expel whoever did it, then there’s a big problem. It turns out Walters is also a Minister. According to a report by B. Tuala Williams of the Dallas Examiner he stormed out of his own church after hearing his Pastor preach  “all men are created equal”  and later fired the Pastor.

All the white Americans who have been trained by talk radio to tell Blacks to “get over it” are strangely silent over the Jena 6. Black people are not new in this country; it’s not as if we just landed and got off a space ship last year and started buying fancy cars, renting living quarters in run-down tenements and began asking for eating space under some trees and yet we garner all this hate.

Perhaps the biggest culprit in the Jena 6 saga is the major American media. Yes the story became international after violence sparked by the noose. But while Bell and his friends were going through hell, we get a steady dose of Ann Nicole’s baby daughter celebrating her 1st birthday as well as the business of other head-cases like Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton.

Bell was a star on his high school football team, but he was the one they wanted the most and was the first charged. It seems that Bell, now 17, managed to obtain some real lawyers who may be working pro bono as opposed to the Public Defender whose ridiculous antics far exceed the writing space I’m given. Walters’ ad nauseam charges; aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery denote that a weapon was used—according to him Bell’s shoes constituted a weapon. Maybe Black skin itself is a weapon.

Black Star News
contributor Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion.  Contact him at
[email protected]

 

To comment or to subscribe to or advertise in New York’s leading Pan African weekly investigative newspaper, or to send us a news tip, please call (212) 481-7745 or send a note to [email protected]

Also visit out sister publications Harlem Business News www.harlembusinessnews.com and The Groove music magazine at www.thegroovemag.com

 

“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *