Marches support teens arrested in Louisiana
Protesters took to the streets in Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protesters in several Ohio cities marched in support of six Jena, La., black teenagers arrested in what protesters have said shows a double standard of justice for blacks and whites.
“I kind of grew up in this, in South Carolina,” Emma Morris, 65, said during Thursday’s protest march in Cleveland. “What’s going on with this Jena Six was like my era. It seems that it’s really unfair.”
She walked with more than 400 people to show her support for the teens — known as the Jena Six — accused in the beating of a white schoolmate last year.
The Ohio protests were held in conjunction with one that drew thousands to the tiny central Louisiana town of Jena in one of the biggest civil rights demonstrations in years.
At the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, about 250 people, nearly all wearing black, rallied Thursday evening. Graduate students advised black undergraduates to look out for one another socially and academically.
“We didn’t have to go through what Martin Luther King and Malcolm X went through,” said Justin Bellamy, 21, a senior communications major. “Racism is still here, but it’s not as blatant as it used to be.”
In the Dayton area, about 100 students marched in support of the Jena Six at Central State University. “I think it’s important for us to meet the different challenges of our community,” said Dominique Squires, a senior who helped organize the effort.
Student groups at Central State plan to send money to defense funds for the six.
Five of the black teens were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder — charges that have since been reduced for four. The sixth was booked as a juvenile on charges that have been sealed from the public.