Protesters unfair to Louisiana town, say residents

JENA, Louisiana (Reuters) - The small town of Jena, site of a mass protest by black Americans on Thursday, has been unfairly presented as a place of discrimination against blacks, according to several white residents of the town.

Tens of thousands of people converged on the town in central Louisiana to support six black teenagers, known as the "Jena 6," charged over an assault on a white schoolmate in December that came after nooses, a symbol of racial lynchings, were found hanging from a tree at the town's high school last August.

Protesters said local authorities in Jena charged the teenagers with offenses too severe for the alleged crime and treated them in a way that reeked of racism. They said it typified widespread discrimination by the criminal justice system against young black males.

But several white residents said people had received a one-sided view of the case and as a result, the town, which has a population of 3,000 and is majority white, has been misrepresented.

"Many (white) people in the town think that we have been harshly misjudged and labeled racist," said Bobbie Cornett, who tutors math and reading at Jena junior high school and said she knew some of the teenagers accused in the beating.

Cornett said the hanging of the nooses was "horrendous" and she hoped the march would revive momentum toward interracial cooperation that had dimmed since the end of the civil rights era.

During the march she stood outside her house and offered protesters glasses of water.

Lyndle Bullard, pastor of the Nolley Memorial Church in Jena, said the media had painted a distorted picture of the facts of the case, listening only to the views of the teenagers and their families.

"The media has made the whole town look bad because they have judged this un-factual information as fact," said Bullard in a view he said was echoed by others.

"This town is a town that has grown, just like every other town in America, to be more inclusive," said Bullard, who has been the pastor of the Methodist church for a year.

He cited the town's high school football games as an example of its integration and noted that the team, the crowds and cheerleaders were integrated and united.

Some pastors of African American churches in Jena described it as a virtually segregated town in which there were almost no black-owned businesses and blacks and whites lived in separate neighborhoods and attended separate churches.

Several white residents said the picture was more complex.

Cornett said at the school were she works, black and white students often sat separately at recess but described this as "self-segregation."

Bullard said his own church, which has around 400 members, was white but he wanted that to change.

"I would love to have a church that is multiracial. I think that if black people came to our church they would be welcomed with open arms," he said.