America:Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the tiny Louisiana town of Jena on Thursday to demand justice for six black teenagers accused of beating up a white schoolmate in a case that has come to symbolise the unfairness of a justice system that locks up young black men at six times the rate of their white counterparts, writes Denis Staunton.
Civil rights veterans Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III led the march, but most of those who came to Jena - up to 50,000 in a town with a population of just 3,500 - were young African-Americans for whom the "Jena Six" case has become a rallying cry for political action.
"In the 20th century, we had to fight for where we sit on the bus. Now we have to fight on how we sit in the courtroom," Sharpton said.
As black college students held parallel rallies throughout the United States on Thursday, Jesse Jackson declared: "There is a Jena in every town, a Jena in every state."
A poor town where 85 per cent of the people are white, Jena saw its racial tensions rise to the boil last year after two black students asked an administrator at Jena High School if they could sit under the "white tree" in the schoolyard, where only white students congregated.
The following day, three nooses appeared on the tree, shocking black students with its apparent reference to lynching and prompting the school principal to recommend the expulsion of the three white culprits. The school board overruled the principal, describing the hanging of the nooses as a youthful prank and agreeing only to suspend the white boys temporarily.
When the school's black students protested by gathering under the tree, the school called in district attorney Reed Walters, who warned the students that "with a single stroke of my pen I can end your lives". Black students claim he was looking at them when he made the remark, something Walters denies.
Over the next few months black and white teenagers clashed a number of times and in each case of white-on-black violence the white aggressors were let off with a reprimand or less.
When a white student threatened some black teenagers with a gun, he was not charged at all, but the black teenager who wrestled the gun away from him was charged with theft.
In December, six black teenagers allegedly beat up Justin Barker, a white student they claim was bragging about an earlier racial attack. He was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital and treated for injuries to his ears, face and eye; later that night, he attended a ring ceremony at school.
The black students were arrested and kicked out of school, and five of them were charged with attempted second-degree murder. The charges were later reduced. One of the defendants, Mychal Bell, was tried for, and found guilty of, aggravated battery. Prosecutors said that the tennis shoes he was wearing during the assault represented a dangerous weapon.
His conviction was thrown out this month, though, because he was tried as an adult rather than as a juvenile. He remains in custody, unable to pay a $90,000 bond, while prosecutors decide whether to file new charges against him.
The other defendants are awaiting trial dates and face up to 22 years in prison. On Wednesday, DA Walters said that it was inaccurate to portray the beating of the white student as a schoolyard fight. He was speaking during a news conference outside the parish courthouse with Barker standing alongside. "There was no schoolyard fight. To call it that creates sort of a boys-will-be-boys image that is not correct."
As demonstrators poured into the town in buses, cars and on foot, there was also a sense of nostalgia for the huge civil rights marches of a generation ago and a hope that the response to the Jena controversy might rekindle the movement.
"It has been a long time since we had a march like this and people knew it was making history," said the Rev Kevin Domingue (42), from Rockville, Maryland, who was reared about 150 miles from Jena.
"A penalty of 15-20 years is excessive for a schoolyard fight," said Shannon Collins (33), an oil engineer from Houston who grew up near Jena. "If it's not racism, why else would the district attorney do this?"
The buses began arriving before dawn, the travellers stepping out of the vehicles stiff, yawning and bleary-eyed. Most wore T-shirts bearing the messages "Stop the Criminalisation of Our Children" and "What is the Colour of Justice?"
Demonstrators formed a vast procession, about eight across, stretching more than a half-mile - and that was just part of one crowd. With the handful of downtown restaurants shuttered, many relied on offerings of water and snacks from the Red Cross.
Jena's white residents say that although there has been trouble in the town the protesters are overlooking the fact that there are troublemakers on both sides of the racial divide.
"I approve of their standing up and making a statement about what they think is righteous," said Ricky Coleman (46), owner of Rick's Pizza in the town. "But they don't know us. We really ain't that way."
- (Additional reporting Washington Post)