Bound for 'Jena Six' rally

Hundreds from North Carolina will join a protest in Louisiana today

DURHAM -- Lugging bags filled with clothes, bottles of water and enough food to last a 14-hour bus trip, more than 200 people boarded buses Wednesday afternoon in Durham.

They were headed for Jena, La., to protest the treatment of the "Jena Six," a group of black teenagers charged with attempted second-degree murder in the beating of a white student in December.

The Durham riders will join what organizers hope will be more than 10,000 protesters today in Jena, a town of about 3,000.

"I fought for this country," said rider Daryl Wright of Fayetteville, who served in the Army in Kuwait after the Persian Gulf War. "This kind of injustice is not what I fought for."

One of the Jena Six, Mychal Bell, was convicted in June of second-degree battery. Protesters had timed the rally to coincide with Bell's sentencing today. But an appeals court overturned his conviction, ruling that Bell, 16 at the time of the beating, should be tried as a juvenile. He remains in jail.

The rally, already coalescing around an Internet petition that gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures, will go on as planned.

In Raleigh, college students will hold a rally today at Shaw University. Students from St. Augustine's College and N.C. Central, N.C. State and Elizabeth City State universities are expected to join Shaw students at Thomas J. Boyd Chapel at 1 p.m.

The charges against the Jena Six came after weeks of racial unrest triggered by an incident at a local high school. A tree on school grounds that is popular with white students was draped with nooses the day after a black student sat there.

School officials decided the nooses were a youthful prank. They suspended the three white students responsible for several days, angering the black community. Fights broke out. An arsonist burned part of the school, and six black students were charged with beating a white classmate.

Five of the six have been charged with attempted second-degree murder.

Critics accuse the authorities in the predominantly white town of being disproportionately harsh toward blacks. District Attorney Reed Walters broke a long public silence Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. He denied that racism was involved and said the suffering of the beating victim, Justin Barker, has been largely ignored.

The case has drawn national attention from civil rights leaders including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III. All are scheduled to attend today's rally.

(Staff writer Mandy Locke and The Associated Press contributed to this report.)