Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Jena 6: Where Are They Now - September 2009

Quick Where are they now list of the Jena Six, per Friends of Justice:

Jena Six “” Where are they now?

¢ Robert Bailey Jr. is enrolled at Grambling State University and will attempt to walk on to the football team.

¢ Mychal Bell is enrolled at Southern University and will attempt to walk on to the football team.

¢ Jesse Ray Beard is finishing high school in Connecticut.

¢ Carwin Jones is planning to go to college in Texas starting in August.

¢ Bryant Purvis is enrolled at a community college in Texas and plays on the basketball team.

¢ Theo Shaw is enrolled at Louisiana Delta Community College in Monroe and was elected vice president of the school’s student government association for the 2009-2010 school year.

Former Jena 6 student Robert Bailey Jr. is taking classes at GSU [Grambling State] and will try to make the football team in the fall.

I will add

Justin Barker, the student for who's beating they were charged; was expelled for bring a gun to school in 2007. Last I could confirm he had dropped out of school, and simply went to work. If that's changed since I cannot find info to that effect.

Jena Six's Robert Bailey, Jr. Attends Grambling State University

Per Alan Bean at Friends of Justice, the local newspaper; which I believe is the News Star, did a piece on Bailey. Monroe is about 30 miles East of Grambling from my recollection of driving it this past January, and is also the city in which fellow Jena 6 member Mychall Bell resides with his grandmother.

The piece is not available online, but here is some of the text Alan provided:


Former Jena Six student hopes to overcome past, look to future
By Stephen Largen

slargen@monroe.gannett.com

GRAMBLING — What might have sucked most people into a downward spiral only seems to have made Robert Bailey Jr. more determined to turn his life around.

Bailey, 19, is one of the Jena Six — six black Jena High School students initially charged with attempted murder in connection with a Dec. 4, 2006, assault on white student Justin Barker at the LaSalle Parish school.

The controversial case drew attention across the nation after many called the arrests and subsequent charges racially discriminatory and excessive. A massive civil rights demonstration ensued on Sept. 20, 2007, when at least 20,000 people marched through Jena to protest.

Bailey wrapped up his legal issues late last month when, along with Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw, he pleaded no contest in a Jena courtroom to misdemeanor simple battery. Bailey and the others were sentenced to seven days of unsupervised probation and a $500 fine, but were given no jail time.

They also reached a confidential settlement out of court with Barker.

The only member of the group to serve time was Mychal Bell, who pleaded guilty in December 2007 to second-degree battery and was sentenced to 18 months.

Now, after graduating in May from Shaw High School in Columbus, Ga., Bailey is taking summer classes at Grambling State University, where he plans to major in marketing. Bailey also will attempt to walk onto the football team as a wide receiver...

[According to Bean Bailey attained a 4.0 in his summer courses]

Can’t go back

Robert Bailey said he has only been back to Jena for a total of three or four days since the controversy exploded.

He said he’s made the choice to keep a low profile.

“When people ask me where I’m from, I don’t like to say Jena,” Bailey said.

“People say ‘You know that’s going to stick with you for the rest of your life, right?’ I’m like, ‘For real?’ And I think about it, like, ,you’re gonna be 40 years old and people are going to look at you like you’re that Jena Six boy. I think it is going to stay with me, but it depends how you look at it. I just choose not to suck myself back into that environment where I know I’m going to get the finger pointed at me. I just choose to stay away.”

Bailey also chose to stay out of the spotlight at Shaw, where he enrolled in January 2008 and stayed with family after being kicked out of Jena High.

For his first six months at the school, Bailey didn’t even use his own name.

Instead, he went by the pseudonym “Xavier Lee,” until a local media outlet identified him as a member of the Jena Six.

“The media found out I was in Columbus,” Bailey said.

“I had people coming to me like, ‘Dang, that’s one of them boys. You seen one of those Jena Six boys?’ I was like, ‘Nah, I ain’t seen him,’” Bailey said with a laugh. “I keep to myself, I try to stay to my own business.”

Redemption Story For The Jena 6's Jesse Ray Beard

This is what we fought for...and this is why I don't listen to activist who only want to fight for model citizens in model test cases.

Had we followed that ideology and listened to the naysayers, this kid would still be roting in Juvenile Jail probably becoming disaffect, and learning to be a real criminal.

Attorney gives Jena 6 teen counsel, chance at new life

By Eliott C. McLaughlin
CNN

(CNN) -- Jesse Ray Beard said he was constantly in trouble, even when he behaved. It took being accused of the racially charged attempted murder of a white classmate in the Deep South to turn his life around.

Beard, 18, now interns at a New York law firm as he prepares for his senior year next month at Canterbury School, a Connecticut prep academy where Beard is highly regarded among peers and teachers.

"I didn't change the way I act. I didn't do nothing different. It was just that I was at Canterbury instead of Jena," he said. "It was like Jena was out to get me -- and not just me, but other people, too."

If not for the controversy surrounding the Jena Six and the palpable racial tension in the Louisiana town, Beard never would have met the attorney who changed the course of Beard's life by removing him from everything he knew. Watch Beard describe his reaction.

Jesse Ray Beard of the Jena 6
[David Utter, Alan Howard and Jesse Ray Beard in Jena - picture curtesy of Alan Bean]

Alan Howard met Beard, the youngest of the African-American teens who made up the Jena Six, in January 2008 when he began representing him in a lawsuit filed by beating victim Justin Barker.

The fight followed months of disquiet among Jena High School students, including off-campus skirmishes, a school arson and nooses hung from a campus tree.

In September 2007, thousands of protesters, alleging the teens were treated harshly because they were black, converged on middle Louisiana.

Protesters were particularly angered at the jailing of Mychal Bell, one of the six, who was charged as an adult. Later in September, he was reclassified as a juvenile and released.

The Jena Six were lionized and vilified; donations for their defense poured in, as did threats on their lives.

Howard said his first impression of Beard -- that he had "tremendous character, tremendous resilience and tremendous potential" -- was so strong he invited the teen to live with his family in New England.

It's been a tidal shift, Beard said, moving from a Louisiana town of 3,000 to Bedford, New York, a well-to-do city of 18,000 situated an hour north of the Big Apple...