KEY POINTS:
In the cool and beflagged small courtroom in Jena, three black schoolboys - Robert Bailey, Theodore Shaw and Mychal Bell - are about to go on trial for a playground fight that could see them jailed for between 30 and 50 years.
Jena, about 350km north of New Orleans, is a small town of 3000 people, 85 per cent of whom are white.
Today it will be the focus for a race trial that shows how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in the Deep South.
It began in Jena's high school last August when Kenneth Purvis asked the headteacher if black students could break with a long-held tradition and join the whites who sit under the tree in the school courtyard during breaks. The boy was told that he and his friends could sit where they liked.
The following morning white students had hung three nooses there. "Bad taste, silly, but just a prank", was the response of most of Jena's whites.
"To us those nooses meant the KKK [Ku Klux Klan], they meant, 'Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die'," said Caseptla Bailey, a black community leader and mother of one of the accused.
The three white perpetrators of what was seen as a race hate crime were given "in-school" suspensions - sent to another school for a few days before returning.
Jena's major industry is growing and marketing junk pine. Walk down the usually deserted main street and you will not find many black employees.
On November 30, someone tried to burn Jena High to the ground. The crime remains unsolved. That same weekend race fights between teenagers broke out downtown, and on December 4 racial tension boiled over once more at the school. A white student, Justin Barker, was attacked, allegedly by black students.
The expected charges of assault and battery were not laid, and the blacks were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. They now face a lifetime in jail. Barker spent the evening of the assault at the local Baptist church, where he was seen by friends to be "his usual smiling self".
Nine days later, with the case technically sub judice, the District Attorney made the following public statement to the local paper: "I will not tolerate this type of behaviour. To those who act in this manner I tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are convicted I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you never again menace the students at any school in this parish."
Bail for the impoverished students was set absurdly high, and most have been held in custody. The town's mind seems to be made up. But with the world media watching, when the accused shuffle into court today, Jena will also be on trial.
-OBSERVER
