Students from HBCUs Head to Jena

By Sha'Day Jackson
Black College Wire

Shelbia Brown, a senior at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., is just one of many students from historically black colleges and universities heading to Jena, La., for Sept. 20 demonstrations. They hope to support the six African American teenagers known as the “Jena Six.”

Natalie Wilson/Howard University Nearly 2,000 Howard University students rallied on Sept. 5 to support six black students from Jena, La.

“We need to let people know that we have a voice and that our voice needs to be heard,” Brown said. "This is an opportunity for young people to show that they are about change and progression.”

Brown, the editor-in-chief of the Campus Echo, North Carolina Central's student newspaper, was planning to travel with 57 other students, advisers and counselors to Jena on Sept. 19.

The Jena Six case involves six African Americans accused of beating a white fellow student, Justin Barker, in a schoolyard fight after a series of events that included nooses found hanging under a campus tree. Protesters have said the charges, which included attempted murder, are disproportionate.

Although Mychal Bell’s aggravated battery conviction was overturned on Sept. 14 by the Third Circuit Court of Appeal in Lake Charles, La., LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters can still appeal the court’s decision. The court ruled that Bell should not have been tried as an adult, that he “was not tried on an offense which could have subjected him to the jurisdiction of the criminal court. . . .” The ruling said that Bell’s case remains “exclusively in juvenile court.”

Along with Robert Bailey Jr., 17, Theo Shaw, 17, Carwin Jones, 18, Bryant Purvis, 17, and a minor identified in news reports as Jesse Beard, 15, Bell, then 16, was originally charged with attempted second-degree murder in the attack on Barker last December.

Brown said she was grateful to hear about the ruling, but realized there were five other young men awaiting a trial date who are still charged with aggravated battery and attempted second degree murder.

At North Carolina Central, “We still want to be there to support all six,” said the Durham, N.C., native. “But there’s still more people that we hope things will turn around for. It’s not just for Mychal Bell, but all of them.”

North Carolina Central is not the only HBCU that will be represented during the protests and march. Students from Howard, Grambling State, Southern and Winston-Salem State universities, to name a few, plan to be present. An NAACP contingent, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and Martin Luther King Jr. III are expected to be among the thousands at the march and protest.

Brown said she hopes that the protests will be as peaceful as possible, but realizes that might not be the case.

“Our advisers were telling us that there may be people there who are opposed to what we are doing,” she said.

Jena is a rural Central Louisiana town with a population of around 2,900 and about 350 black residents. “I’m aware that this is a racially divided town. It could possibly turn things the wrong way,” Brown said.

At Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala., Blair Jackson, a senior sales and marketing major, has created her own way to support the Jena Six on Sept. 20.

Starting Sept. 19 and 20, Jackson and six other students plan to sell black ribbons for a dollar at various locations on campus. Jackson said she will use this opportunity to educate. “I’m just trying to help students to be more aware and maybe they can have a ‘take action’ mindset for another situation that may come up,” she said. Jackson invested $40 of her own money in the effort.

She will not be able to attend the Sept. 20 protests, but creating a symbol of support would be just as right, she said.

“Forty dollars versus thousands of dollars in bail money is nothing,” Jackson said. She is using the ribbons to collect money for the families of the Jena Six. “When you are thinking about someone’s life being taken away, it doesn’t seem that much.”

Jackson and the other students hope to raise $2,000 for the families to use for gas money, food, bail money and “whatever they need,” she said. She also plans to take the money to Caseptla Bailey, the mother of Robert Bailey Jr., in Jena on Sept. 21 or Sept.28.

After looking up Bailey’s phone number in the online white pages, Jackson took a chance and gave left her a message.

“I just told her that Tuskegee students wanted to send donations directly to the families,” she said. Jackson said Bailey returned the call and was happy and very excited that another HBCU was doing something to support them.

Traveling 15 hours on a charter bus in the southern heat and missing classes and work seem to be sacrifices for Brown, but she said being in Jena Sept. 20 just feels like the right thing to do.

“We are king of getting a taste of what it was like during the civil rights era,” Brown said.

Sha'Day Jackson, a student at Tuskegee University, is editor-in-chief of the Campus Digest. To comment, e-mail .

Posted Sept. 19, 2007