"Fighting for My Friends" 2007

"Fighting for My Friends" Jena, Louisiana — 2007

This photograph from the Jena Six protest displays a poster identifying District Attorney and accusing him of employing "racist tactics" in prosecuting the case. The poster documents the district attorney's role in pursuing charges against the teenagers and frames his prosecutorial decisions as manifestations of systemic racial bias.

The targeting of D.A. reflects a strategic dimension of the movement: holding individual officials accountable for perpetuating institutional racism. By naming and publicizing the district attorney's actions, protesters challenged the notion that discriminatory outcomes resulted from neutral legal processes. This approach recognized that systemic racism operates through the decisions and discretion of specific actors within institutions. The protest mobilized public pressure against prosecutorial overreach, arguing that the severity of charges and prosecution strategy reflected racial animus rather than impartial justice. This strategy of identifying and publicizing individual officials' roles within broader structural injustices proved instrumental in generating national attention and challenging the legitimacy of legal proceedings that disproportionately targeted Black youth. The poster exemplifies how local activism articulated critiques of institutional complicity in racial oppression.