http://dmccreath.org/2007/06/jena-louisiana-and-the-jena-six.php Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:20:32 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://dmccreath.org/2007/06/jena-louisiana-and-the-jena-six.php#comment-22 eddie Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:51:51 +0000 http://www.ff.dmccreath.org/?p=128#comment-22 Yesterday's march was a great display of unity showing the country and the world that we (black and white) are tired of the racism that continue to exist in this country. Yesterday’s march was a great display of unity showing the country and the world that we (black and white) are tired of the racism that continue to exist in this country.

]]> http://dmccreath.org/2007/06/jena-louisiana-and-the-jena-six.php#comment-21 beverly jackson Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:35:26 +0000 http://www.ff.dmccreath.org/?p=128#comment-21 I am a single african american mother of a 19 years son,to think this day & time something like this could occur in america. Just the thought of them going to prison for something as petty as this is ricdiculous. When are we going to learn to respect and treat every one as equals. May god bless everyone..Enough is Enough.Thanks I am a single african american mother of a 19 years son,to think this day & time something like this could occur in america. Just the thought of them going to prison for something as petty as this is ricdiculous. When are we going to learn to respect and treat every one as equals. May god bless everyone..Enough is Enough.Thanks

]]> http://dmccreath.org/2007/06/jena-louisiana-and-the-jena-six.php#comment-20 joseph young Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:15:27 +0000 http://www.ff.dmccreath.org/?p=128#comment-20 An Open Letter To The Jena Six By Joseph Young Dear Mychal, I keep thinking about you. I also think about the other young men who have fallen prey to racial hatred. Its existence, more than a century after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, makes me fearful for your life, your safety. The freedom that it promised was tenuous. It was not entirely without strength. In the proclamation, issued three years into the Civil War, Lincoln declared, at the urging of Frederick Douglass, that the former slaves would be accepted into the Union Army and navy, making the liberated the liberator. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 black servicemen had fought for freedom and saved the Union. Your generation, like mine, is being denied this freedom our ancestors risked life and limb, so that we may live as free men and women. You can call them heroes, but they were not thinking of themselves when they displayed courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefields of America. Today, then, to guard against the impending doom of American civilization, is not only opposition to racism, but also the determination to secure the civil rights for which many Americans have paid a heavy toll. Of all the civil rights, the right to learn is the surest prevention from ignorance. If at any time, children are instructed with anti-black bias; and they are made to learn what is not true and what the dominate forces in their lives want them to think is true; there’re guilty of impeding the march toward American civilization. Astonishing as it is that those students would hang three nooses from the tree at Jena High School as a racial taunt, including calling the black students ‘niggers’; you would think that America would never again want to see a black person hang from a tree, or behind bars. The nooses show that we, Americans, have not come that far from the cruelties and barbarity of slavery as we think. (Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 5,000 people, mostly blacks, met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.) And this also is an unfortunate comment upon the belief that our schools are the great path to progress, the great equalizer. If our schools are the great path to progress, they must be the freest of our institutions, opposed bitterly to the attempt to indoctrinate our children with racial hatred. Well, Mychal, as you and the others wait behind bars because of a racially biased and an over zealous prosecutor, it is for us on the outside to continue the unfinished work of our fathers, to set you free. All of you were willing to fight racial hatred, and you know people of goodwill are beside you. If the Confederacy couldn’t stop us, the opposition we now face will fail. When history is written your detractors will get little note, but you will be remembered for standing up for what’s best of the American creed. You are part of a legacy in which our slave forebears fought to birth a new nation. You, Mychal, are a child of America’s destiny. It was Martin Luther King who said if a man doesn’t have something worth dying for he is not fit to live. Freedom is worth dying for. Justice is worth dying for. Equality is worth dying for. A child is worth dying for, because our job as parents is to protect children. Mychal, when you feel complete frustration and your narrow jail cell is closing in on your spirit and mind; remember the message of the old slave preacher to his flock whose resistance to oppression might have been completely in vain: “You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves, you are not ‘niggers’; you are God’s children.” Godspeed Mychal, Your brother in the struggle, Joseph An Open Letter To The Jena Six
By Joseph Young
Dear Mychal,
I keep thinking about you. I also think about the other young men who have fallen prey to racial hatred. Its existence, more than a century after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, makes me fearful for your life, your safety. The freedom that it promised was tenuous.
It was not entirely without strength. In the proclamation, issued three years into the Civil War, Lincoln declared, at the urging of Frederick Douglass, that the former slaves would be accepted into the Union Army and navy, making the liberated the liberator. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 black servicemen had fought for freedom and saved the Union.
Your generation, like mine, is being denied this freedom our ancestors risked life and limb, so that we may live as free men and women. You can call them heroes, but they were not thinking of themselves when they displayed courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefields of America.
Today, then, to guard against the impending doom of American civilization, is not only opposition to racism, but also the determination to secure the civil rights for which many Americans have paid a heavy toll. Of all the civil rights, the right to learn is the surest prevention from ignorance. If at any time, children are instructed with anti-black bias; and they are made to learn what is not true and what the dominate forces in their lives want them to think is true; there’re guilty of impeding the march toward American civilization.
Astonishing as it is that those students would hang three nooses from the tree at Jena High School as a racial taunt, including calling the black students ‘niggers’; you would think that America would never again want to see a black person hang from a tree, or behind bars. The nooses show that we, Americans, have not come that far from the cruelties and barbarity of slavery as we think. (Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 5,000 people, mostly blacks, met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.) And this also is an unfortunate comment upon the belief that our schools are the great path to progress, the great equalizer. If our schools are the great path to progress, they must be the freest of our institutions, opposed bitterly to the attempt to indoctrinate our children with racial hatred.
Well, Mychal, as you and the others wait behind bars because of a racially biased and an over zealous prosecutor, it is for us on the outside to continue the unfinished work of our fathers, to set you free. All of you were willing to fight racial hatred, and you know people of goodwill are beside you. If the Confederacy couldn’t stop us, the opposition we now face will fail. When history is written your detractors will get little note, but you will be remembered for standing up for what’s best of the American creed. You are part of a legacy in which our slave forebears fought to birth a new nation. You, Mychal, are a child of America’s destiny.
It was Martin Luther King who said if a man doesn’t have something worth dying for he is not fit to live. Freedom is worth dying for. Justice is worth dying for. Equality is worth dying for. A child is worth dying for, because our job as parents is to protect children.
Mychal, when you feel complete frustration and your narrow jail cell is closing in on your spirit and mind; remember the message of the old slave preacher to his flock whose resistance to oppression might have been completely in vain:
“You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves, you are not ‘niggers’; you are God’s children.”
Godspeed Mychal,
Your brother in the struggle, Joseph

]]> http://dmccreath.org/2007/06/jena-louisiana-and-the-jena-six.php#comment-19 sissy Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:03:42 +0000 http://www.ff.dmccreath.org/?p=128#comment-19 jena has problems with blacks and poor whites. they make their own law to suit their purpose. i used to live there and still have family there.i came from a racist family and i thank god i no longer look at a persons skin color.these six boys just defended themseleves and their race.they should be praised not sent to jail.families of these boys keep fighting for justice and know some whites are behind you all the way. jena has problems with blacks and poor whites. they make their own law to suit their purpose. i used to live there and still have family there.i came from a racist family and i thank god i no longer look at a persons skin color.these six boys just defended themseleves and their race.they should be praised not sent to jail.families of these boys keep fighting for justice and know some whites are behind you all the way.

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