WHITE JENA TEEN PLEADS GUILTY TO HATE CRIME: Jeremiah Munsen, 18, drove past marchers with nooses hanging from his pickup.

A white teen in Jena, Louisiana pleaded guilty Friday to a federal hate crime of threatening and intimidating civil rights marchers last year by displaying hangman’s nooses from the back of a pickup truck.

Federal authorities announced Friday that Jeremiah Munsen, 18, of Grant Parish admitted that he placed two large nooses on his truck Sept. 20 and drove back and forth past a group of marchers gathered at a bus depot in Alexandria — about 35 miles south of Jena, where the marches took place — as they awaited buses to return them to Tennessee.

"The defendant used a noose to threaten peaceful civil rights marchers who were in Louisiana to rally against racial intolerance," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker. Munsen, who faces up to a year in prison, will be sentenced at an August 15 hearing.


Marchers were in Jena to protest local authorities who were accused of racial prejudice in the handling of several cases, including the hanging of nooses in a tree after a group of black high school students sat in an area where traditionally only white students sat.


Months later, a white student was allegedly beaten by six black classmates in 2006. The protests that followed were in criticism of local authorities who initially charged the six students dubbed the "Jena 6," with second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy. The charges were later reduced against those involved in the incident.