Protesters to Converge on Louisiana Town

In December, Bell and five other black teenagers -- Robert Bailey, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theodore Shaw and Jesse Beard -- beat up a white student at Jena High School, knocking him out and blackening one of his eyes.

The victim, Justin Barker, was treated at a hospital and released after two hours. He attended a class-ring ceremony later that night. His attackers were charged by prosecutor Reed Walters, who is white, with conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and aggravated battery. The charges were reduced to conspiracy and battery after civil rights activists protested.

The fight at the school followed highly charged racial incidents that started last September when white students placed three hangman's nooses in what was known as "the white tree" at Jena High School. Black parents wanted the white students expelled, but Superintendent Roy Breithaupt, who also is white, suspended them for three days, calling the nooses a prank.

Racial disturbances followed, starting in late November. White partygoers attacked a black student in one clash but were not charged, according to police statements. The next day, the same black student and some friends spotted one of his attackers and, they said, chased him. The students told police that the white student pulled an unloaded shotgun but they wrested it away. The student who pulled the weapon was not charged. But police arrested the students who took it on theft charges.

"I saw it in an e-mail," said Baisden, who said he did not hear about Jena until August, about a month after Bell's trial. "I didn't believe it. I thought one of my listeners was being overzealous." But day after day e-mails filled his inbox. Soon, Baisden was talking about the Jena 6 daily for the length of his show.

Baisden created a Web site to coordinate a campaign. It filled up with ideas and suggestions until someone suggested reserving buses for a campaign against Jena and other prosecutors who levy what they consider to be overly harsh punishments on black youngsters.

Word spread fast.

In Memphis, Lashandra Brooks was sitting in the New Direction Christian Church when one of the members stood and talked about Jena. She said there was a YouTube video, and the pastor invited her to show it.

"It got a phenomenal response," Brooks said. "People are talking about it in barbershops and hair salons, asking, 'Why didn't I know about this earlier?' "

Kevin Williams of Durham, N.C., said he heard about the Jena case in August, when he overheard the Rev. Al Sharpton talking about it on the telephone. Williams, who was in Atlanta, rushed back to Durham and started organizing.

"As of today," Williams said Friday, "we have seven buses. We may have nine by Monday." Williams said buses are also filling up in Greensboro at North Carolina A&T University and in Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina. North Carolina Central University's law school filled one bus and its undergraduates filled another, all sponsored by the chancellor.

On one of the buses from Prince George's, Sharon Waugh of Severn spent the afternoon reading with her sons Etienne, 13, and Ethan, 10, about civil rights martyrs including Emmett Till, the 14-year-old killed for whistling at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary who was shot to death in his driveway in Jackson, Miss., in 1963.

"I wanted them to come because I knew it would be an invaluable educational experience," Waugh said. "I wanted them to see how things are sometimes in the real world, where parents can't always protect their children."

The passengers included a Southern Christian Leadership Conference minister who had initially planned to drive by himself and George Mitchell, a candidate for Congress, who made a large banner for the marchers to carry emblazoned with "Concerned Citizens from Prince George's County" in huge letters.

Staff writer Susan Kinzie contributed to this report.