Local officials decided not to prosecute because the white students who had hung the nooses were juveniles.
Democratic lawmakers said Tuesday the Jena Six case shows the government needs to do more to combat racism far beyond a small Louisiana town where charges filed after a school fight garnered national attention.
“Racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is not unique to any one place, but is found in cities and towns north and south throughout our nation,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said as he opened a hearing into the Jena case.
In Jena, six black teenagers were charged with the beating of a white student. The incident happened after nooses were hung from a tree on a high school campus there — a symbol of the violence of the segregation era.
Since the Jena case made headlines, there have been a number of other nooses found in high-profile incidents around the country — in a black Coast Guard cadet’s bag, on a Maryland college campus, and, last week, on the office door of a black professor at Columbia University in New York.