White nationalists plan King holiday march on Jena

[flashl]

The Nationalist Movement -- a white-supremacist group based in Learned, Miss. that bills itself as "pro-majority" -- plans to march on Jena, La. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to protest the holiday and the Jena 6.

A spokesperson for the town's King Holiday Committee said the rally would not affect plans for events honoring King, which will include a sermon preached by civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton at Jena's Antioch Baptist Church. Sharpton led a rally in Jena in September during which about 20,000 people protested the local criminal justice system's disproportionately harsh treatment of black six youths charged with assaulting a white classmate. The incident took place amid escalating racial tensions sparked by the hanging of nooses in a tree outside the local high school.

The LaSalle Parish sheriff, sheriff-elect and district attorney and Jena's mayor and police chief have asked the Nationalists and their supporters to stay away. Members of the National Action Network and other civil rights advocates plan to protest the Nationalists' visit, but a spokesperson for Sharpton has said he would not take part in the counteraction.

The Nationalist Movement sued the town of Jena over an ordinance that required the group to post a $10,000 bond in advance of the march. The town scrapped the ordinance -- with which the September marchers complied -- after a federal judge questioned its constitutionality.

Facing South