[News] Jena Six and Black Leadership

[Anti-Imperialist News]

From: Grace Boggs <glbg at sbcglobal.net>

LIVING FOR CHANGE
THE JENA 6 AND BLACK LEADERSHIP
By  Stephen Ward
Michigan Citizen, Oct.7-13, 2007

Many people view the September 20 march in Jena 
as a re-kindling of the spirit of the civil 
rights movement.   With thousands of peaceful 
marchers, nationally recognized figures (Al 
Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King 
III), and the bright lights of the national news 
media, the march did appear to be in the mode of the 50s and 60s.

But this should not lead us to view the Jena 6 
case as simply a continuation of 1950s racism or 
to suggest that “nothing has changed..” To do so 
not only disrespects the efforts of those who 
made monumental contributions to our struggle and 
to our society during that period, but  also 
ignores the unique circumstances and great challenges of our time.

The aim of today’s  struggles should not and 
cannot be to reproduce the protests of the civil 
rights  era.  Those struggles were designed to 
draw the nation’s attention to the brutal 
injustice of Jim Crow segregation, mobilize 
African American communities, and force the 
federal government to secure the rights of black 
citizens—with the underlying goal of full access 
for black people into the institutions of American life.

What are the goals of today’s protests?  White 
supremacist ideas and practices still confront 
us, but the world in which we live and the forces 
against which we struggle today are in many ways 
different. Despite obvious similarities, the 
blatant injustice in the Jena 6 case is not a 
reflection of 1950s Jim Crow injustice.  Rather, 
it is a manifestation of a 21st century criminal 
justice system that overpolices and criminalizes 
black youth.  It is not, then, a matter of access 
to the system, but a need to transform the system.

Nostalgia for the 1960s can also be disempowering 
for young people who are searching for models of 
activism and organizing.  It tends to re-inscribe 
the primacy of  charismatic leaders  like 
Sharpton and Jackson  who take their place at the 
front of the march, draw the cameras and provide 
the sound bites. This type of leadership is 
designed for public spectacle, not serious 
movement building.  Their talents and commitments 
notwithstanding, Sharpton and Jackson remain 
stuck in a mode of protest politics that is 
increasingly out of line with current realities and challenges.

Which brings us to the wide and impressive 
participation of young African Americans in the 
Jena 6 mobilization.  To uncover and nurture the 
emerging black leadership that I believe is 
inherent in this mobilization, we need to 
ask  young people why so many of them were moved 
to protest the injustice in Jena.  There are 
obvious answers —outrage at the unfair treatment 
of their peers; a basic sense of fairness, etc. 
But to engage them in a substantive  discussion 
of this question is to seek a deeper 
understanding of how black youth see the world 
and their relationship to it and  invite them to 
share their visions for changing the world.

We should also ask young people what 
participation in the march meant to them.  They 
have already begun to tell us.  For example, 
Citizen readers will recall that Amber Jeffries, 
a seventh grade student at Nsoroma, wrote that 
her participation in the protest “was life 
changing” (September 30, 2007).  University of 
Michigan students who participated in the 
protest  organized a program titled “From Jim 
Crow to Jena 6” on Sept. 26 to share their 
experiences and discuss the meanings of the 
case.  They also described their participation as 
a powerful, life changing experience.

These and other statements from young people 
saying that they were changed forever through 
this protest highlight the central importance of 
transformation in black leadership.  Let us 
develop leaders who seek both to transform 
themselves (that is, to continually grow, develop 
their capacity for political action, and realize 
their fullest potential) while also working to transform the society.

The Jena 6 case can help to do this if we use it 
to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue and a 
substantive, sustained discourse (and 
mobilization) within black communities around the 
criminally unjust system—as well as the crisis of 
our schools (the Jena 6 case, after all, began 
within the context of a school).  In this way we 
can begin to imagine and engage in  struggles to 
transform these systems so that they work for our youth.

Stephen Ward teaches at the University of 
Michigan and is a member of the Boggs Center board,



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