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Bryant Purvis was just 17 when he became a part of the "Jena Six."

He and five other Black teens were accused and later convicted of attacking a white student at a high school in Jena, Louisiana, a town with a large majority of white residents, after a series of racially charged incidents there.

The case against the teens became for many a symbol of racial discrimination in the justice system -- attempted murder charges for what supporters called a schoolyard fight. The charges were later dramatically reduced.

Bryant Purvis, 17, walks outside the LaSalle Parish Courthouse during a rally attended by Reverend Al Sharpton and others in Jena, La., Sept. 20, 2007. Thousands of people gathered to support the Jenna Six, the black teenagers who had been charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.

Purvis, now 32, maintains he was not involved in the fight. He has since dedicated his time talking to students about racial injustice as a motivational speaker. He also authored the book, "My Story as a Jena 6," in 2015, but is now focused on his future beyond the "Jena Six" label.

"At the time, it was just so much emotion," Purvis, who now lives in Dallas and has a 9-year-old son, told ABC News.

"It was more extreme because I knew I didn't commit the crime. So, once I found out the charges, knowing where I was in Jena, I just didn't see it coming out good."

15 years later

Dec. 4 marks the 15th anniversary of the arrest of the Jena Six: Purvis, Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Theo Shaw and Mychal Bell.

At the beginning of the 2006 school year, several Black students were sitting under a tree at Jena High School where white students usually congregated, according to the ACLU, which advocated on behalf of the Jena Six. A day later, three nooses were left hanging from a branch on the tree, and three white students were temporarily suspended, the ACLU reported, despite the principal's recommendation to expel them.

Theo Shaw stands outside of the Louisiana State Supreme Court, where he works as a clerk for Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson, in New Orleans, Nov. 2, 2018. Shaw was one of six black students arrested in Jena, La., in the beating of a white high school student. Unable to post bond, he spent months behind bars but always maintained his innocence.

Later that year, a white adult at a gas station pulled a shotgun on three Black teens, including Bailey, but the teens were the ones charged in the case -- for taking the gun and bringing it to police, according to a 2009 Good Morning America report.

On Dec. 4, 2006, six Black teenagers, now known as the Jena Six were accused of beating up a fellow white student Justin Barker, who was hospitalized and suffered a swollen eye and a concussion, according to Barker's family.

He said in interviews years later with The Associated Press that he didn't know why he was attacked.

The Black teens were arrested and charged with second-degree battery, which was later upgraded to second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy to commit attempted murder, despite Barker returning to a school function hours later, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented one of the teens and helped arrange the defense for another.

Supporters argued the charges were far too serious for the severity of Barker's injury, sparking a massive protest and litigation efforts to have the charges reduced, SPLC said.

Bell, then 16, was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree battery. However, his conviction was later overturned after a judge ruled he should have been tried as a juvenile. Bell still received an 18-month detention sentence.

Jena Six supporters demonstrate in Washington, D.C, Oct. 2, 2007, saying their civil rights have been grossly violated and demanding that all charges against them be dropped. Mychal Bell, 17, had been jailed since December when he and five other black students who became known as the "Jena Six" beat up a white student at school following months of racial tension in the town of Jena.

The other five pleaded no contest in an agreement that reduced their charges to a misdemeanor simple battery and did not admit guilt or involvement. Each one of them was fined $500 and served a week of unsupervised probation.

"We recognize that the events of the past two and a half years have also caused Justin and his parents tremendous pain and suffering, much of which has gone unrecognized," the teens said in a prepared statement read in court, according to SPLC. "We hope our actions today help to resolve this matter for Justin, Mr. and Mrs. Barker, and all others affected, including the Town of Jena."

DA said race not a factor

The district attorney at the time, Reed Walters, claimed race wasn't a factor in the charges.

"It is not and never has been about race," Walters said, according to an AP report at the time. "It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions."

Local activists disagreed.

"From racial profiling to unequal punishment in school to potential misconduct by authorities, the Jena Six case causes great concern," Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in a 2007 statement.

"It is time to fully examine the facts surrounding this case to determine if any racially motivated misdeeds have taken place. Considering the concerns that the Jena Six bring up, we must redouble our commitment to equal protection -- not just in Jena, but across Louisiana and the rest of the country."

Thousands came out to protest during their trials in 2007. Demonstrators were furious with disparities in the criminal justice system, which they said often resulted in harsher, more unjust charges and sentences for Black people compared with white people.

Trying to move on

Following the incident and their convictions, the other men too wanted to move on -- some going to college, others entering the labor force. Shaw also maintained his innocence, claiming he was not involved in the fight.

Purvis said racial division and segregation had long been an issue in Jena, for as long as he could remember, but the experiences of the Jena Six shined a national spotlight on the tensions that were building up.

"I would say we kind of put pressure on the officials and everybody that run the town to make a change," Purvis added. "We brought a lot of attention to the community ... A lot of other things that happened leading up to that fight that really weren't publicized."

Years later, Purvis has a message for Black men about ongoing injustice in America: "Carry yourself in the right manner, and don't let one situation define who you are."

"Things are gonna happen to you," he added, "but it's not about what happened -- it's how you respond."

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Member of 'Jena Six' speaks out on race and the justice system 15 years later - ABC News

Associated Press| Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) Kim Potter, a former police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, is charged with manslaughter in theApril 11 shooting deathof 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black motorist. Here are some key moments in the case:

April 11 Police in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb, stop a car driven bydriven by Wrightat around 2 p.m. Police say when they tried to arrest Wright on an outstanding warrant, he reentered his car and tried to drive away, and an officer shot him. News of the shooting sparks angry protests, including outside the city's police station. Not far away in downtown Minneapolis, former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin is standing trial in George Floyd's killing.

April 12 The officer who shot Wrightis identified as 26-year veteran Kim Potter. Chief Tim Gannonsays he believes Potter meant to use her Taser,and plays her body-camera footage at a news conference that shows her shouting I'll tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!" Hundreds of protesters defy curfew to gather outside the city police station for a second night. Police use gas and flash-bang grenades to try to drive them away.Mayor Mike Elliottcalls for Potter to be fired.

More: Attorney: Former Brooklyn Center police officer to testify at trial in Daunte Wright death

April 13 Potter resigns. Gannon resigns. Elliott and the City Council fire the city manager, who has oversight of police. Hundreds of protesters face off with police again at nightfall outside police headquarters, where National Guard soldiers join officers in riot gear.

April 14 Potter is chargedwith second-degree manslaughter. Several hundred demonstrators again clash with police outside headquarters.

April 15 Wrights family and some community memberscall for more serious chargesagainst Potter. Hundreds of protesters again confront police at headquarters, with some tying air fresheners to fencing as a critique of one of the reasons officers were said to have stopped Wrights car. A criminal complaint said officers stopped Wrights car for having an air freshener obscuring the windshield and for expired tags.

April 16 A federal judge issues a restraining order prohibiting police from arresting journalists or using force against them after some say they were harassed and assaulted by officers. Demonstrators protest again outside police headquarters.

April 17 Protests continue.

April 18 Two National Guard members report being fired upon as they patrolled a neighborhood in Minneapolis.

April 22 A funeral service is held for Wright in Minneapolis, with the Rev. Al Sharpton decrying the stench of racism" and police brutality in Minnesota. Meanwhile,activists demonstrate outside the home of the county prosecutorhandling Potter's case to demand murder charges.

May 15 The Brooklyn Center City Council passes a resolution to create new divisions of unarmed civilian employees to handle non-moving traffic violations and respond to mental health crises.

May 21 Attorney General Keith Ellisonannounces that his office will prosecute Potter,after Washington County Attorney Pete Orput returned the case to Hennepin County.

Sept. 2 Ellisonadds a first-degree manslaughter chargeagainst Potter.

Sept. 28 Brooklyn Center says police have been instructed to release people cited for low-level crimes and to only take them into custody if required by law.

Nov. 20 Jury selection beginsin Potter's trial.

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Timeline: Key moments in the police shooting of Daunte Wright - St. Cloud Times

In the aftermath of George Floyds death last year, employers offered black workers time off to deal with the news, and UCLA suspended a professor who refused to grade his supposedly traumatized black students more leniently than their nonblack peers.

Such gestures may have been well-meaning, but they were also nonsensical and reeked of condescension. Are black psyches really this fragile, and are blacks so starved for exemplars that miscreants must be treated like martyrs? Should Floyds death matter more to them than the huge number of black homicides that dont involve police? And why would people who arent black be any less disturbed by a video showing a police officer kneeling on the neck of a defenseless suspect for nine minutes?

The protests that followed Floyds death rested on two assumptions. The first is that Floyd, a career criminal and drug addict, was somehow representative of black America, which is not only false but deeply insulting. The second is that police acted out of racial animus, which has never been proven. This is what happens when racial identity becomes the centerpiece of politics and public life in a multiracial society.

The political left often pretends to pine for a postracial America, but thats the last thing it really wants. I recall a guy who ran for president a little while back after talking about how theres no black America or white America or Asian America, just a United States of America. And then he became president and stopped talking like that. Instead, he started talking about racist policing and black voter suppression, and he embraced divisive racial provocateurs like Al Sharpton. All the colorblind talk went out the window.

People who are interested in a postracial America dont name their organization Black Lives Matter or welcome racial propaganda like the 1619 Project into elementary schools. They dont advocate racial preferences in college admissions or racial quotas in hiring. And they dont call for white people who were never slaveholders to pay reparations to black people who were never slaves.

The Biden administration has picked up where the Obama administration left off. The unwarranted racialization of the Kyle Rittenhouse saga, which concerned one white man shooting three other whites, was a clumsy attempt by President Biden and his allies to further a narrative about bias in the criminal justice system. To their credit, jurors stuck to the facts of the case and Rittenhouse was acquitted, but liberals and their friends in the media are playing a dangerous game when they selectively invoke race to advance a political agenda.

The same press outlets that portrayed Rittenhouse as a white supremacist have had remarkably little to say about the racial identity of Darrell Brooks, the black suspect in Wisconsin who is accused of plowing his car through an annual Christmas parade last month and killing six people, including an 8-year-old boy, all of whom were white. Given the suspects history of posting messages on social media that called for violence against white people and praised Hitler for killing Jews, youd think that his race and the race of his victims would be relevant to reporters. Race is all anyone would be talking about if a white man had slammed his vehicle into a parade full of black people. Yet suddenly the left has gone colorblind.

Liberals want us to believe that racial disparities in police shootings and incarceration rates stem from a biased system and have little to do with racial disparities in criminality. They want to talk about so-called hate crimes that involve white assailants and black victims, but not those involving black assailants and white or Asian victims. They want headlines to read White Cop Shoots Black Suspect, even when theres no evidence that the encounter was racially motivated. This is playing with fire.

Once we go down this road and get into the habit of racializing such events, we may not be able to contain that racialization, said Brown University economist Glenn Loury in a recent speech for the Manhattan Institute. Soon enough, we may find ourselves in a world of instances where black thugs killing white citizens come to be seen though a racial lens as well. This is a world no thoughtful person should welcome since there are a great many such instances.

The political lefts hyperconsciousness about race might help Democrats turn out their base, but at a steep cost. National cohesion in a country as large and ethnically diverse as this one has always depended on our ability to focus not on our superficial differences but instead on what unites us as Americans. The sooner we start choosing political leaders who understand this and punishing the ones who dont the better off well be.

From The Wall Street Journal

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It's reckless for the left to selectively cry racism - New York Post

On Wednesday, November 11, Reverend Al Sharpton and attorney Ben Crump spoke outside the courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, where Gregory and Travis McMichael and William Roddie Bryan are on trial for killing Ahmaud Arbery. Mr. Sharpton called Arberys death a lynching in the 21st century, and claimed that Arbery was shot for jogging. Mr. Sharpton told the crowd in front of the courthouse, You still cant jog through Brunswick, Georgia, without being shot down, like you are a suspect, only because of the color of your skin.

Roddie Bryans defense attorney, Kevin Gough, saw Al Sharpton sitting inside the courtroom, toward the back, and had something to say about it when addressing the judge the next day:

As I was cross-examining Investigator Lowry yesterday, the Reverend Al Sharpton managed to find his way into the back of the courtroom. Im guessing he was somehow there at the invitation of the victims family in this case, and, I have nothing personal against Mr. Sharpton. My concern is that its one thing for the family to be present, its another thing to ask for the lawyers to be present, but if were going to start a precedent, starting yesterday, where were going to bring high-profile members of the African-American community into the courtroom, to sit with the family during the trial, in front of the jury, I believe thats intimidating and its an attempt to pressure. It could be, consciously or unconsciously, an attempt to pressure and influence the jury.

The idea that were going to be serially bringing these people in with the victims family, one after the other, obviously, theres only so many pastors they can have. They have Al Sharpton right now, but then, thats it. We dont want any black pastors coming in here, Jesse Jackson or whoever was in here earlier this week, sitting with the family trying to influence the jury in this case. I think the court can understand my concern with bringing people in who dont have any ties to this case other than political interest. We want to keep politics out of this case. So Im asking the court to take appropriate steps to make sure that the gallery, which is already limited in this case, isnt being utilized for a purpose that could be viewed as improper.

Judge Walmsley said, What is it a motion to do?

Franklin Hogue, who represents Greg McMichael, said, Its not a motion, its a reminder of the courts previous instructions to keep outside influences outside the courtroom.

When the judge gave prosecutor Linda Dunikoski a turn to comment, she said, Its a public courtroom. . . . The State had no part in that whatsoever.

Mr. Gough cross-asked, If a bunch of people came in here dressed as Colonel Sanders with white masks sitting in the back . . . ?

The judge cut him off. He said that he knew that Mr. Sharpton would be speaking outside the courthouse, and he was asked if Mr. Sharpton could take a seat in the part of the gallery reserved for the Arbery family. My comment to that was simply as long as things are not disruptive and its not a distraction to the jury and theres nothing else going on in the courtroom, so be it, Judge Walmsley said, but if it violates the courts rules with regard to the conduct of the trial or violates my orders with how people are to conduct themselves in this courtroom, I will take it up with whomever I need to take it up with. . . . I am not going to blanketly exclude members of the public from this courtroom.

Judge Walmsley added that there is a barrier in the room and he wasnt sure that the jurors could even see Mr. Sharpton.

Mr. Gough thought jurors would be able to see that part of the gallery. We have 12 jurors who are trying to maintain their anonymity here, some of whom expressed concern about it, he said. When we allow people in this courtroom who are not part of the case, but they have an interest in it, and the jurors can eyeball them and its people they know from TV, then that is intimidating.

He said he wouldnt make a motion yet, but he might in the future, because he thought this could be a problem for the defense.

Rev. Sharpton was quiet inside the courtroom, but the jury is not sequestered, and he certainly sounded like he was in the mood for disruption. We show up because thats what we do, Rev. Sharpton said in front of the courthouse. We show up. We show up to help blow it up. . . . [A] lot of local county people will say, well let it blow over, well they know today, its not going to blow over!

I could not find any record that Jesse Jackson has been in the courtroom; Mr. Gough may have been mistaken. It was reported that Mr. Jackson intended to be there on November 4 or 5. Its also possible Mr. Gough was referring to Lee Merritt, the lawyer who is representing Ahmaud Arberys mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, in a civil lawsuit. Mr. Merritt sat with Mrs. Cooper-Jones during opening statements on November 5th.

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The McMichael/Arbery Trial: Al Sharpton in the Courtroom ...

The reverend spoke outside the Glynn County courthouse on Wednesday alongside Ahmaud Arbery's mother as the jury continued deliberations.

GLYNN COUNTY, Ga. Rev. Al Sharpton gave a stinging assessment of the trial in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery on Wednesday morning outside the Glynn County courthouse, saying it had featured "some of the most racist statements in a court of law that I've heard."

Sharpton spoke alongside Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, and his father, Marcus Arbery Sr., as the jury continued deliberations into a second day.

The reverend was referenced by name in one of the most incendiary moments of the trial, when one defense attorney, Kevin Gough, said he didn't want "any more Black pastors coming in here" because he felt they would intimidate the jury.

"I've never heard ministers that were praying called a lynch mob. I've never heard an attorney blatantly say 'I dont want more Black pastors' - not pastors, Black pastors in the courtroom," Sharpton said. "This has been the most racist-language court case that I've witnessed."

Gough's comments inspired an organized response from hundreds of Black pastors. He made repeated motions for mistrial, citing the political environment outside the courtroom, with prosecutors arguing it was his own comments that created that environment. The mistrial motions were all denied.

After the trial, he made more conciliatory statements and said he "feels" for the Arbery family.

Sharpton also rebuked the comments of defense attorney Laura Hogue, who attempted to criminalize Arbery in her closing argument.

"Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts, with no socks, to cover his long dirty toenails," Hogue said.

Sharpton said Wednesday he had "never sat in a courtroom where a victim was akin to an animal - talking about dirty toenails, like he was not even a human, but an animal."

"I cannot tell you how much I admire Wanda having to take this - the fact that they mentioned she cried. I don't see how she didn't break down more hearing the characterizations of a child she brought in this world. I dont see how Marcus contained his anger," Sharpton said. "They act like we're not human."

Adding that "we don't treat peoples' family like that, we don't call peoples' kids names like that, we don't call preachers names like that," Sharpton said he and the family "hope that God will bring us justice."

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Al Sharpton: Ahmaud Arbery case had 'most racist statements in a court of law that I've heard' - 11Alive.com WXIA