Asign outside Jena describes it as "a nice place to call home". But this town in Louisiana is small, poor and, for many, a new symbol of old-style American racism. On September 20th some 20,000 people rallied in the heat to protest against racial discrimination in the justice system. They came from as far afield as Chicago and New York, at least 20 hours away by bus. No one organised them; they just arrived, spurred by internet chatter and talk radio. They swamped the local population of 3,000. Dressed in black, they marched peacefully. Some exuberantly likened their protest to the civil-rights marches of the 1960s. But the campaign to free a group of black students who beat up a white classmate somehow lacks the moral clarity of the old crusades against legal segregation and whites-only elections.
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