In September 2006, as the school year kicked off, a black Jena High School student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could situnder an oak tree where the white students typically congregated.
After sifting through his mail while eating a late lunch, Hull would situnder a shade tree on the front lawn of the Smith County Courthouse and talk with the checkers players.
The old watchman sat under this tree, and Nawab and the other younger men would sit with him at dusk, teasing him, trying to make his violent temper flare up, and joking around with one another.