The Jena Six march in September was a beginning to new efforts to fight criminal injustice.

Thousands of people converged on Jena, La., to protest the arrest of six black high school students on charges of attempted murder on a white student. The six students initially were facing sentences of up to 80 years, and they continue to work their way through the legal process but on lesser charges.

Those who organized the Jena march — black radio personalities and the Rev. Al Sharpton among others — have continued their efforts.

Thousands marched Friday in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Department of Justice. Sharpton, of the National Action Network, said he called for the march in response to an increasing number of hate crimes in America, including recent incidents in which nooses or swastikas were placed on display, and the lack of an appropriate response from the Justice Department. Martin Luther King III and actor-comedian Steve Harvey were among those scheduled to attend the march.

"The Tom Joyner Morning Show" started the effort with a live broadcast from the event, which also included a series of speeches and the march around the Justice Department. The Washington Post reported that marchers filled the streets around the building and between the Justice Department headquarters at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW and Freedom Plaza, three blocks away.

In another effort, talk show personality Michael Baisden has set up the non-profit Un-equal Justice Legal Defense and Education Fund to provide assistance to disadvantaged people who otherwise would not have access to adequate representation and legal education.

Cases selected will be based on the income of the person and the severity of the grievance, according to Baisden's Web site, www.michaelbaisden.com. In addition, other programs will be offered, including quarterly workshops to educate people of their legal rights, assistance in preparing for interviews as part of transition from being incarcerated and mentoring.

Baisden is holding a Web-A-Thon to raise a million dollars for the fund by Dec. 6. On Friday, his Web site reported that 1,652 contributors had given $24,669.58.

These efforts, and I'm sure others I haven't heard about, are in keeping with a study released last week that found pessimism among blacks about racial progress is the worst it's been in more than two decades.

In a story reported by the Associated Press and published in The Daily Reflector, the study by the Pew Research Center paints a mixed picture of race relations following Hurricane Katrina and the Jena Six case.

The Washington-based research organization found that just one in five blacks, or 20 percent, said things were better off for blacks compared with five years ago — the smallest percentage since 1983 when 20 percent also made that claim. In-between, the percentage of blacks who said things had gotten better had grown, only to drop back to 20 percent. Another 29 percent of blacks said things had gotten worse as opposed to staying the same, the largest number since 32 percent made that claim in 1990.

In addition, fewer than half of all blacks, or 44 percent, said they expected their prospects to brighten in the future. That's down from 57 percent in 1986, during the height of the Reagan administration when the Justice Department actively sought to curtail affirmative action in favor of race-neutral policies.

With this kind of sentiment, others are likely to join Sharpton and Baisden on efforts to make things better.