Support in Hampton Roads is growing for a group of Louisiana teens known as the “Jena 6,” and they plan to ride out to Louisiana to show their support.

Jena Police say the black teens beat up a white classmate. The teens were charged with attempted murder, but the charges have been reduced to aggravated battery.

Authorities say racial tension was high at the school and the incident escalated when several white students hanged nooses from a tree in the schoolyard after black students sat under it.

As the organizers put it, their effort to travel to Louisiana is simply about speaking out against injustice.

The group has charted two buses to join others in a massive protest next week in the central Louisiana community.

“If I could not have gotten the bus going, I was going to fly, but I was going,” said Geri Collins.

She is determined to galvanize people in Hampton Roads to speak out against the injustice unfolding in Jena, Louisiana.

Next week, one of the teens is scheduled to be sentenced and could spend half of his life behind bars.

Collins has chartered a bus, and is heading down to central Louisiana for a huge protest.

Radio station 95.7 is partnering with this grassroots effort to fill the buses, and radio personality Karen Parker Chessen is planning to get on the bus.

“Segregation has been gone for a long time, and Jim Crow in the south has been over for decades, but apparently someone didn't tell the folks in Jena,” said Chessen.

There is still room on the bus for more, and 13News has learned that a bus is also leaving from Hampton.