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The Fire Next Time

How we got to Jena

Sun, 09/23/2007 - 1:36pm — Xenophon

From: AMY GOODMAN

Last September, a black high school student requested the school's permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: "They [other black students] said, 'Y'all want to go stand under the tree?' We said, 'Yeah.' They said, 'If you go, I'll go. If you go, I'll go.' One person went, the next person went, everybody else just went."
Then the police and the district attorney showed up. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers recounts: "District Attorney Reed Walters proceeded to tell those kids that 'I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.' "   Read more…

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