Jena, La.
In some ways, this town is still the same rural community it was a half-century ago, before integration pushed blacks and whites together in schools, workplaces and neighborhoods.African-Americans, who are a little more than a tenth of the town's nearly 3,000 people, still live mostly in the two areas that have always been the black sections of town. They worship separately from white churchgoers. When they die, they are buried in the black cemetery.
Jena's residents, black and white, say such separation is typical of small towns — and some big cities — in the South. They say it doesn't justify a portrait of a town awash in racial hate, the portrait they think black activists and the news media have sent worldwide after a tense year that ended with six black teens charged with attempted murder for beating a white classmate in December.
Now Jena (pronounced JEEN-uh), which never experienced the marches of the 1960s civil rights movement, is about to see a replay of that movement. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, rallied by bloggers, newspapers and black radio hosts, are on buses heading for Jena from across the country. With leaders including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III, and hip-hop artist Mos Def, they'll rally at the courthouse steps Thursday on behalf of the teens who have come to be known as the "Jena Six."
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