Locals Dispute Growing Story of Jena 6

A sign welcomes visitors near an entrance to Jena , La., Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007. The town has been in a national spotlight over the story of a half-dozen black teenagers who were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy for attacking a white classmate at Jena High School last December.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Alex Brandon - AP)

In a place where per capita income is $13,761, there aren't any swank, French restaurants, but rather, family eateries such as the Burger Barn, Ginny's and Maw & Paw's. Most of Jena's 14-odd churches stage Easter egg hunts. On summer afternoons, sweet tea and lemonade on a neighbor's front porch are obligatory.

And there are endearing figures, like the designated town sweeper who mountain bikes around town with a wagon full of rakes, brooms, dustpans and cleaning fluids, stopping only to sweep shopowners' parking lots or to distribute complimentary bubble gum to grade schoolers.

Not all vestiges of the past are beloved, or quaint, of course.

There are no black lawyers, no black doctors and one black employee in the town's half-dozen banks. (The employee is male, an accountant who works out of public view.)

Economics play a role in this; with the closure of the sawmills in the '50s, the town now relies heavily on the exploitation of oil and natural gas, offshore. There are relatively few good-paying jobs in what is gradually becoming a retirement community, and some point out that African Americans with higher educations tend to leave the parish.

"To a certain extent, that's true," says Anthony Jackson, one of Jena High's two black teachers. "But I know some people who tried to stay here and couldn't get good jobs. There was, for instance, a gentleman who graduated as a certified biology teacher, but he left because he didn't want to deal with what's going on here."

Cleveland Riser, 75, who began working in Jena as a teacher and then rose to become an assistant superintendent of schools in LaSalle Parish, says blacks have long had trouble getting ahead in Jena.

"In my experience, the opportunity for advancing in my profession was denied, in my opinion, because I was black _ not because I was unprepared professionally, or because of my performance."

Here and across the "crossroads" of Louisiana, there are Klan supporters, to be sure; David Duke, the former KKK Grand Wizard, carried LaSalle Parish in his 1991 run for state governor. And Jacqueline Hatcher, a 59-year-old African American, remembers when, as a ninth grader in 1962, she saw a large cross burning out front of the all-black Good Pine High School.

"We heard the Klan was meeting in the woods because there was going to be desegregation in the schools and they didn't want that," says Hatcher. Still, no one recalls seeing any public lynchings or whites in robes and masks for a half century.

"If I could take you back to 60 years ago, and then fast forward to today, you'd have to say we've come a long way," says Billy Wayne Fowler, a white school-board member who is one of the few leaders with the school administration or local law enforcement who still talks to reporters.

Most townsfolk, he says, interpreted the events of last year pretty much the same way _ that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white, got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren't always on the mark.