The six teens were charged shortly after the local prosecutor declined to charge three white teens who hung nooses in a tree on their high school grounds. Five of the black teens were initially charged with attempted murder, but that charge was reduced to battery for all but one, who has yet to be arraigned; the sixth was charged as a juvenile.
“This is the most blatant example of disparity in the justice system that we’ve seen,” Sharpton told CBS’s “The Early Show” before arriving in Jena. “You can’t have two standards of justice.”
“We didn’t bring race into it,” he said. “Those that hung the nooses brought the race into it.”