Prometheus 6

Watch how CNN does this.

Advocates of the Jena 6 say the story began well before the December 4 beating. They say it began in September when three white students decided to hang nooses from a tree on campus.

In September 2006, a black student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where white students typically congregated.

Told by the vice principal they could sit wherever they pleased, the student and his pals sat under the sprawling branches of the shade tree in the campus courtyard.

The next day, students arrived at school to find three nooses hanging from those branches.

According to The Town Talk in nearby Alexandria, the school's principal recommended expulsion for those behind the nooses. Instead, the newspaper reported, a school district committee suspended three white students for three days for hanging the nooses, a gesture written off as a "prank."

Racial tensions flared.

Notice, the hanging of the nooses was not due to "racial tensions."

Racial tensions flared. The district attorney was summoned to address the student body. Off-campus fights were reported. On November 30, someone torched the school's main academic building. The arson remains unsolved, but many suspect it was linked to the discord.

Four days after the arson, several students jumped Barker, knocking him unconscious before stomping and kicking him.

"Racial tensions" allows them to simply not specify the fights the white kids started. Nothing about the D.A.'s declared ability to end their lives with a stroke of his pen.