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Someone in LA finally got it right. Mychal Bell’s conviction has been overturned by an appeals court. The original backwoods-style ruling in Jena Louisiana came within days of sentencing before outside courts attacked with a wave of common sense (apparently lacking in that town). The appellate court just had a couple of problems with 5 of the 6 the initial charges. Lets see, “attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree furder,” all just over some teenagers getting into a fistfight. That’s all, hmmm, other than that, everything else is fine. The brainchild of those charges is a District Attorney named Reed Walters, who really, really needs to admit himself into the Walter Reed Psychiatric wing. 

I suppose DA Walters would have had a field day with me back at South Park High School in ’72-'73. The way I smacked down some South Buffalo white boys, I’d be getting paroled right about... now. If I remember correctly, there were no more than 10 of us blacks in the freshman class and we were annexed to another school because the main school was overcrowded. The principle even came to me to help diffuse a riot he thought some of the white kids were going to start. Such flare-ups generally originate from cowardly beginnings. There was another time when my boy, Vergie Jackson, was beefin’ with some white classmates for several days and they were planning to jump him. I told him to go outside (they were actually waiting for him after school) and say what he had to say to them and see what they’d do. He did just that and at least four or five of them started to approach him because they thought he was by himself. When they got about 15 ft. from him, I came out the door and they just stood there in shock and started mumbling. Then they dispersed. I’ll never forget that because, hey, we were still outnumbered. 

They wanted Vergie simply because he was the smallest of us. Even though he could fight, he was only one; they never tried that on Carl Griffin, Ricky Martin, Ron McGiver (when he was with us - Ron and another brother were arrested for stabbing a white kid from cross-town Hutch Tech, if I remember correctly) or me. Yep, if Walters were a South Buffalo DA he would’ve had a field day with us. Those South Buffalo white kids put us through the mill, verbally, because they knew the same thing that those white kids living on what they call “Snob Hill” in Jena know today: if a large portion of adults in their side of town are known for not liking blacks, they, as children, can push racial buttons with impunity and even if a fight breaks out, they will get away with it. 

Whenever 3 black boys can’t share eating space under a tree with some white students without 3 nooses being hung the next day at the same spot, and the school superintendent doesn’t intend to expel whoever did it, then they got away with it. As it turns out, Walters is also a Minister. According to a report by B. Tuala Williams of the Dallas Examiner, he stormed out of his own church after hearing his Pastor preach  “all men are created equal” and later fired the Pastor. Walters, they named a hospital after you (sort of) so get a clue. All the white Americans who have been trained by talk radio to tell blacks to “get over it” are strangely silent about the Jena 6. Black people are not new in this country; it’s not as if we just landed last year and started buying fancy cars, renting living quarters in run-down tenements and began asking for eating space under some trees, yet we garner all this hate. Perhaps the biggest culprit in the Jena 6 saga is the major American media. They blasted the story after the violence sparked by the nooses, but while Bell and his friends continue going through hell, we now get a steady dose of Anna Nicole’s baby daughter celebrating her 1st birthday instead of in-depth information on the injustice in Jena, Louisiana. 

The Bell decision follows the dropped attempted murder charges on 6/26 and an overturned conspiracy conviction on 9/4. He was a star on his high school football team; interesting that he was the one they wanted the most and was the first charged. It seems that Bell, now 17 years old, managed to obtain some real lawyers, who may be working pro bono, as opposed to the Public Defender, whose ridiculous antics far exceed this writing space. Walters’ ad nauseam charges, aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery, denote that a weapon was used. According to him, Bell’s shoes constitute a weapon. Maybe he believes the black skin of the Jena 6 is also a weapon.  

Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion, Contact him at [email protected]