EDITORIALS

The honorable Honorable

When good people stand up and are counted

— HARRISON, Ark., is such a beauty. In a state full of picturesque little spots, and some big ones, too, Harrison can still be called a work of His art. As though the Maker wanted to show us what real art could be.

There’s a spot we remember in rural Boone County: just one apple tree, atop a hill, surrounded by green pastureland and a few bovines. We passed it years ago on a bright sunshiny day. But that postcard of a scene still comes to mind anytime somebody says “Boone County.” Such is memory, such is longing, such is the mixing of the two in retrospect. To us Boone County is a state of mind.

To a lot of folks, though, when somebody says “Boone County,” the picture is darker. Much darker.

A century ago, race riots gave Boone County an all too well-deserved reputation for being a primitive backwater. Bigotry didn’t need to hide there. It was celebrated. In the open. In mixed company. And the place has been trying to evolve ever since.

It didn’t help when some Great Poobah or Grand Lizard or whatever the Kluxers called their fuehrers made a lot of fuss-and news-back in the 1980s. Is that character still around? His name escapes us. Mercifully. Which shows the staying power of that kind of “thinking.”

To their credit, lots of folks in Boone County have been trying to do everything in their power to erase that dark record. Comes now the mayor of Harrison, a man named Jeff Crockett. (A man named Crockett leading the largest city in a county named Boone. You can’t make this stuff up.)

Mayor Crockett spoke to an audience at Philander Smith College in Little Rock last week, on a day dedicated to celebrating the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. The mayor’s point: Things are changing-have changed-and the people of Harrison are dedicated to making that change happen.

When the mayor took over city hall in 2010, he discovered that businesses, and people in general, were staying away from Harrison in droves. Harrison had joined the 21st Century, or maybe just 19th, but its reputation hadn’t changed. So citizens formed a task force to change it.

Last year the state’s MLK Commission hosted its annual youth meeting in Harrison. Now the mayor is giving talks at traditionally black colleges like Philander Smith, hoping to spread the good word. And he’s not alone. Here is the president of Harrison’s task force on, well, call it getting along with each other: “Never again will we be silent [about] racism . . .”

Good thought. May more people think it. Dante had a special place just outside Hell for those who saw wrong in this world, but allowed it to continue without ever pointing it out. Those who went along to get along with evil in this world didn’t even merit a place in Hell.Instead they ran around just outside the gates of the Inferno, chased by stinging bugs. And nary an apple tree atop a hill to take refuge behind.

It may be that Harrison’s reputation will change only slowly. But change it will, given time. And effort. Effort like that being made by the good folks running things in Harrison these days.

Memo to Mayor Crockett & Co: Keep up the good work. The important work. The essential work, if we humans are going to get along and live together in peace and dignity. You all have many, many admirers around the state.

And in Boone County.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 01/24/2013

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