Tomorrow, “tens of thousands of demonstrators, rallied by bloggers, newspapers and black radio hosts” including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III will descend on Jena, Louisiana to protest the town’s Jim Crow-like justice system ”

The trouble began last fall, when Justin Purvis, an African American high school student “asked if he could sit under the schoolyard tree, a privilege unofficially reserved for white students.” The next morning, nooses were found hanging on the tree.

African-American students protested and racial tensions mounted “in this 85 percent white town of 4,000.” The white students were assigned three days of suspension, the six black students were expelled and charged with second-degree attempted murder.

The Jena 6, as the six black teens are now known, sat in jail for months, while their parents collected bail money. One of the students, Mychal Bell, has had his conviction overturned, yet he remains in jail. “Charges for three others have been reduced to aggravated battery.”

The egregiously harsh and unwarranted charges against the Jena Six have lit a fire within students and social justice activists across the nation. Click here to “take action in your own community to support the Jena 6″ and sign this petition asking the District Attorney to enforce the law fairly and equally.

UPDATE I: The Washington Post is reporting that “Mychal Bell’s request to be freed while an appeal is being reviewed was rejected at a juvenile court hearing, effectively denying him any chance at immediate bail.”

UPDATE II: “FBI agents are looking into a neo-Nazi Web site, which has listed the home addresses and phone numbers of the six black teenagers charged in the beating of a white schoolmate in Jena, La., a bureau spokeswoman said last night. The Thursday posting on the site that lists the information also encourages readers to “get in touch, and let them know justice is coming.”

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