The Oklahoma City chapter of the NAACP will host a rally Thursday at the Oklahoma State Capitol to protest the treatment of Jena, La. high-school students.
Along with other National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapters across the nation, the 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oklahoma City event seeks to rally behind six black students who are facing up to 22 years in prison, one of whom faces sentencing Thursday. Three white students involved in the same incident were originally suspended from school and then later had the suspensions rescinded.
“It appears that African-American teenagers in Jena are receiving the kind of distorted racial injustice that was more common in 1950,” said Oklahoma City NAACP president Roosevelt Milton in a statement.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.