EDITORIALS

Symbols do matter

This is no April Fools joke

“I think it’s an awesome idea to come up with. It says what we’ve been trying to say all along. This is over. It is past. We’re moving on.”

-Jeff Crockett, mayor of Harrison THERE have been football coaches who have staged “funerals” to help motivate their teams. Today we bury last year’s success, last year’s MVP award, last year’s championship banner, last year’s bowl win, so that we can better focus on the season to come. Sometimes said coaches actually dig holes and bury items like award plaques. Okay, it’s a little over-the-top, but that’s what football coaches are. They look for any way to motivate the players. (Have you ever known a lowkey football coach?)

Now comes news out of Harrison, Arkansas-once again. The county seat of beautiful Boone County has been in the news a lot of late. And not always for the best of reasons. The place has a history, an awful history, where race relations are concerned. That sad history started with the race riots there more than a century ago. But the good people of Harrison, and not just Harrison, have been trying to put that ugly past where it belongs-behind them, in the history books. So coming generations can learn from it, not repeat it.

This month folks have planned a couple of marches and vigils in Harrison to recognize, and even try to atone for, the past. Not to mention a grassroots campaign to plaster a biblical message-Love Your Neighbor-on T-shirts and bumper stickers all over town. When you’re looking for a way to improve your town, or anything else, it helps to start with The Book.

The latest news is that the state’s Martin Luther King Jr. Commission plans to hold a symbolic funeral in Harrison this evening. And it’s no April Fools joke. The guests of honor and not-so-dearly beloved are identified as Racism and Hatred. A coffin bearing their names is to be interred downtown, near Fire Station No. 1. (The burial is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m.) Local businesses donated the coffin and headstone. And then, after the coffin is lowered, let the good times roll. A jazz procession is supposed to take to the street. Oh, boy. It sounds like an old-fashioned New Orleans-style funeral parade, which is always worth seeing. And hearing. Here’s hoping the whole town forms the second line of mourners-turned-celebrants. It should be somethin’.

Oh, if only it were really this easy to bury those two evil twins, Messrs. Racism and Hatred, followed closely by festive obsequies for their cousins Deceit and Fear, Bitterness and Violence, and, well, the whole outlaw band of bad actors who belong six feet under, if not deeper. Imagine if they were all gone: To borrow a phrase from the Great Satchmo, what a wonderful world!

But as long as mankind is imperfect-the technical name for that condition, we believe, is Original Sin-then it won’t be easy to rid our hearts of such things. But let’s try. That’s why city councils name streets and boulevards for Martin Luther King Jr. and schools bear names like Booker T. Washington. It’s why the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution are enshrined in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. If only their spirit could be engraved on our hearts! Not having achieved that happy state yet, we honor the tangible symbols of our ideals.

And symbols do matter. This symbolic burial in Harrison tonight is as worthy as any other. Maybe, just maybe, the heartless types who’ve been known to pull Harrison into the muck even today will be moved. Miracles do happen. For the hope of redemption is eternal. And we’re not about to give up on even the most hardened haters. Surely someday, they, too, will hear the sound of those trumpets and join in the grand parade When the Saints Go Marchin’ In.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 04/01/2014

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