Jena braces for rally on MLK Jr. Day

Jena residents, including Darius Bigby, far left, Bobbie M. Cornett, bottom center, and Carwin Jones, far right, gather Sunday inside the Good Pine Middle School gymnasium for a prayer meeting sponsored by the LaSalle Parish Ministerial Alliance. The Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist group, is scheduled to march through town today.

Jena residents, including Jonica Brown, far left, and Alysa Jenkins, second from left, prepare their car Sunday for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade through Jena.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, of New York, a civil rights activist, speaks Sunday in the pulpit of the Antioch Baptist Church in Jena about today’s planned march by the Nationalist Movement.

Richard Barrett, of Pearl, Miss., attorney and spokesman for the Nationalist Movement, holds a news conference Sunday in front of the LaSalle Parish Courthouse in Jena.