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Prayer Vigil to Protest Treatment of Six Students
CHICAGO, IL (September 13, 2007) – A prayer vigil will be conducted next Wednesday evening (September 19) in downtown Chicago in support of what is known in the media as the “Jena Six” – six African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, who face lengthy prison sentences stemming from a high school altercation.
The vigil will begin at 7 p.m. at Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington Street.
 Jena, located in LaSalle Parish, is a community with a population of approximately 3,000, including 350 African-Americans. LaSalle Parish has a population of about 14,000 people, of which about 12 percent are African-Americans.
The trouble began when an African-American student asked permission from school administrators to sit under what some call the “white tree,” says Debbie Blue, executive minister of the Department of Compassion, Mercy and Justice of the Evangelical Covenant Church.
Permission was granted, Blue says, and the next day three nooses were hung from the tree, a tree symbolically labeled “for white students only.”
The principal recommended expulsion for the three white students responsible, but the superintendent of schools overruled the expulsion and gave the students a three-day suspension for “an adolescent prank,” news sources reported.
Over the next several weeks, African-American students organized a sit-in under the tree and were reportedly threatened by the district attorney. The school was put on a lockdown and a still unresolved fired burned down the main academic building.
Racial tensions mounted. Reports stated a black student was beat up at a party by whites, and a white student was beaten by black students. Six African-American Jena students were charged with attempted second-degree murder and expelled from school, with bail ranging from $70,000 - $138,000.
On September 20, a judge will determine if one of the six youths will be sentenced to serve 22 years in prison - that student was convicted of aggravated battery. The other five, ranging in age from 15 to 17, also face prison sentences if convicted.
“This is a situation that has been extremely troubling as one considers the facts and the injustices inflicted on the accused,” Blue says. “Very little has been in news stories - surely not enough given the gravity of the situation.
“This tragic story is another piece of clear evidence that racism continues in this country, and that the sense of fairness for all is not, in fact, across-the-board in its application,” Blue says of the Jena situation. “I am incensed. We as Christians need to step up and speak out. I encourage concerned Christians to support this prayer vigil, and I hope to see many of our Covenant family join in this effort Wednesday evening.”
To read a recent Associated press story on this case, please see Jena Six.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
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