Thousands of demonstrators gathered Thursday in a small Louisiana town to condemn what they contend is a racially motivated prosecution of six African-American teenagers initially charged with attempted murder following a schoolyard fight.

Rev. Al Sharpton, left, addresses the crowd in Jena, La., on Thursday.
(CBC)

The 2006 incident in the mostly white town of Jena has garnered international attention and again placed the contentious issue of race at the forefront of America's political landscape.

The protest — initially set to coincide with the sentencing of one of the defendants, Mychal Bell — has drawn busloads of supporters from across the United States, from college students to veterans of the civil rights movement. Organizers said they hoped to draw more than 40,000 people to support the teens, who have become known as the "Jena Six."

Surrounded by two of the six teens and their relatives outside the courthouse, U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd the protest was the beginning of the 21st century's civil rights movement, one that would challenge disparities in the justice system.

"In the 20th century, we had to fight for where we sit on the bus; now we've got to fight on how we sit in the courtroom," Sharpton said to rapturous shouts of approval from the vocal crowd.

Rev. Jesse Jackson told the rally that the Jena case echoes throughout the country as African-Americans are denied equal treatment in the judicial system every day.

"There's a Jena everywhere," Jackson said, calling the incident gripping the town "just a biopsy on the larger cancer."

Radio personality Michael Baisden, second from left, walks with Rev. Al Sharpton, third from left, and Melissa Bell, mother of defendent Mychal Bell, right, behind two Louisiana State Troopers during a march in support of the "Jena Six" in Jena, La., Thursday.
(Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

The six were arrested after Justin Barker, 17, a white student, was beaten unconscious on Dec. 4, 2006, in an alleged altercation at Jena High School.

Barker was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function later that night.

Five were initially charged with attempted murder but that charge was reduced to battery for all but one. The sixth was charged as a juvenile.

The teens were charged a few months after the local prosecutor declined to charge three white high school students who hung nooses from a tree on the school grounds where one of the black students had sat the day before.

The student had asked the school's principal and been given permission to sit at the tree, which was a popular gathering spot for white students. 

Bell was found guilty on second-degree battery charges June 28 by a six-member, all-white jury. Before the case was overturned by the state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, his sentencing had been set for Thursday.

The court said Bell, who was 16 at the time of the alleged beating, shouldn't have been tried as an adult.

Bell, unable to afford the $90,000 bond, remains jailed while prosecutors prepare an appeal.

Case 'never has been about race': D.A.

District Attorney Reed Walters, breaking a long public silence, denied Wednesday that racism was involved.

He said he didn't prosecute the students accused of hanging the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law under which they could be charged.

"I cannot overemphasize what a villainous act that was. The people that did it should be ashamed of what they unleashed on this town," Walters said.

In the beating case, he said, four of the defendants were of adult age under Louisiana law and the only juvenile charged as an adult, Bell, had a prior criminal record.

"This case has been portrayed by the news media as being about race," he said. "And the fact that it takes place in a small southern town lends itself to that portrayal. But it is not and never has been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions."

On Wednesday, British rock musician David Bowie donated $10,000 to the teens' legal defence fund, the NAACP said.

Meanwhile, Jackson appeared to backtrack Wednesday on being quoted earlier in the week as saying Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was "acting like he's white" for not speaking out more forcefully about the case.

Jackson, who has run several times for the Democratic presidential nomination and endorsed Obama in the current race, said in a statement that he was "taken out of context."

With files from the Associated Press