JENA, La. — Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled the streets of this little Louisiana town yesterday in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.

The crowd broke into chants of “Free the Jena Six” as the Reverend Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens.

Rev. Sharpton told the Associated Press that he and Reps. Maxine Waters of California, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and William Jefferson of Louisiana, all Democrats, will press the House Judiciary Committee next week to summon the district attorney to explain his actions before Congress.

This could be the beginning of a 21st century’s civil rights movement challenge disparities in the justice system, he said, and he said he planned a November march in Washington.

“What we need is federal intervention to protect people from Southern injustice,” Rev. Sharpton told the AP. “Our fathers in the 1960s had to penetrate the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, we have to do the same thing.”

The six black teenagers were charged a few months after three white teenagers were accused of hanging nooses in a tree on their high school grounds. The white teenagers were suspended from school but weren’t prosecuted. Five of the black teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder. That charge was reduced to battery for all but one, who has yet to be arraigned; the sixth was charged as a juvenile.

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

President Bush, asked about the Jena case during a news conference, said he understood the emotions and that the FBI was monitoring the situation.

“The events in Louisiana have saddened me,” the president said. “All of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice.”

Thousands of demonstrators clad in black converged on the local courthouse and a nearby park yesterday morning to protest the disparity in the charged teenagers’ treatment. Thousands more marched along city streets in what at times took on the atmosphere of a giant festival — with people setting up tables of food and some dancing to the beat of a drum.

District Attorney Reed Walters stressed on Wednesday that race had nothing to do with the charges in Jena.

Mr. Walters said he didn’t charge the white students accused of hanging the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law under which they could be charged. 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, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

“It is not and never has been about race,” Mr. Walters said. “It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.”

Bell, 16 at the time of the December attack, is the only one of the “Jena Six” to be tried so far. He was convicted on an aggravated second-degree battery count that could have sent him to prison for 15 years, but the conviction was overturned last week when a state appeals court said he should not have been tried as an adult.