The Rev. John H. Thomas has asked Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to intervene on behalf of six young men who are being prosecuted for serious felonies involving a case with extreme racial overtones.

"I plead with you to intervene to bring justice to bear in Jena," wrote the UCC's general minister and president. Read Thomas' full letter.

Mychal Bell and five other African-American teens were arrested after a schoolyard fight in Jena, La., for beating a white student, who suffered a concussion.

The fight followed nearly a year of racial tension in Jena, triggered when three nooses were hung from a tree in a high school yard.  The nooses appeared in the tree after a black student had earlier sat under the tree, a gathering place customarily used by white students only.

This week, a Louisiana judge refused to overturn Bell's conviction. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 20 and could receive 22 years in prison.

"The white students who hung the nooses received a short suspension from school, but six black students alleged to have taken part in the fight were charged with attempted murder," says the Rev. Sala S.J. Nolan, the UCC's minister for human rights and criminal justice.

The Rev. Linda Jaramillo, executive minister of Justice and Witness Ministries, wrote about the case in her July 30 "Witness for Justice" newspaper column.

"There is no question that the [black] students should be disciplined for their actions that caused this injury [to the white student]," Jaramillo wrote. "But, if hanging nooses on a shade tree is dismissed as a youthful prank, how can the court assign a murder conspiracy to a fight among teenagers?"

The Rev. Steve Gray, the UCC's Indiana-Kentucky Conference, wrote to Blanco in early August, saying that, not since the 1970s, had he witnessed "such a blatant example of racism and racial bigotry."

“I hope you will take strong leadership to commute the sentence of Mr. Bell and the five other black high school students [Robert Bailey, Theo Shaw, Bryant Purvis and Carwin Jones] who have been treated so unjustly,” Gray wrote.