Harrison police are investigating after a member of the city’s Community Task Force on Race Relations said someone threw offensive fliers and a pamphlet with Ku Klux Klan imagery on her front yard.
Task Force member Layne Ragsdale said she went home about 11 a.m. March 31 and saw someone in a green Jeep Cherokee toss four bundles on her yard.
“I got home and pulled in my driveway, and they were there, actually throwing them out,” Ragsdale said. “The thing that struck me is they had a dog riding in the front seat and a person riding in the back seat.”
Yellow fliers were wrapped around the outsides of the four bundles, two of which contained parts of the Harrison Daily Times, Ragsdale said.
One of the bundles had a pamphlet with “little Klan guides, pointy hats, the whole bit,” she said.
The message on the fliers targeted her, Mayor Jeff Crockett and two other members of the task force, she said.
The fliers claim Crockett and the task force are trying to recruit 1,200 black people from “such cities as Pine Bluff and Little Rock” to move to Harrison, which has about 34 black residents.
The fliers state that Crockett and the task force were to meet with “black officials to develop this program of moving blacks into Harrison and change our city.”
Crockett said neither he nor the task force are trying to recruit a particular number of minority group members to the city.
“We’re trying to recruit anybody we can to move to town,” Crockett said Monday. “We’d love to have 1,200 new people. We don’t care what color they are.”
Ragsdale filed a complaint with the Harrison Police Department saying she was being harassed by the person who threw the materials in her driveway. She gave police a description of the vehicle and a license plate number.
Police Chief Paul Woodruff said an investigation began Monday, but no arrests had been made.
Crockett and the task force, which was formed in 2003, have been working to improve the city’s reputation. Race riots in 1905 and 1909 forced all but one black resident from the city. Now, about 34 of the city’s residents are black. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Harrison had a population of 12,943.
On April 1, the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission held its annual vigil in front of Harrison City Hall instead of on the steps of the state Capitol, where it has been held for the past six years. Part of the event included 300 people marching through downtown Harrison and conducting a mock funeral for racism and hatred, complete with the burial of a casket next to Fire Station No. 1
The next day, the commission hosted a Nonviolence Youth Summit in Harrison. It drew more than 500 junior and senior high school students from across the state. The conference was co-sponsored by the Arkansas Department of Human Services.
DuShun Scarbrough, executive director of the commission, said he decided to have the two events in Harrison because it would be healing for the city as well as students across Arkansas who might be reluctant to visit Harrison. Crockett and Scarbrough said the events last week were a success.
Working against the mayor and task force is Thom Robb, national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Robb lives in Zinc, about 15 miles east of Harrison. Robb, a pastor, has delivered a sermon criticizing the task force for what he calls promoting “white genocide.”
Robb said he doesn’t know who distributed the fliers, which include a quote from him saying he wonders why Crockett and the task force want to change Harrison.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Robb is quoted as saying. “You know, I kind of like Harrison the way it is.”
The fliers were distributed to some Harrison neighborhoods twice last week - on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Some of them were wrapped around part of the Harrison Daily Times. Others were wrapped around a monthly supplement to the newspaper that is also distributed for free in racks around town.
Ronnie Bell, publisher of the Times, said he’ll file a civil lawsuit against the perpetrator.
“My concern was over the fact that they had inserted these fliers into our publication and one of our niche products without our permission,” Bell said. “It concerns me over the fact that people who pick that up in their yard would think we condone that message or that message came from us since there was no identification on the flier as to who it came from.”
Bell has offered a $500 reward for information leading to the conviction of the person who printed and distributed the fliers. Crockett has personally added an additional $1,000 to the reward.
Robb said he doesn’t believe the Times has ownership rights after the newspaper is sold.
“My humble opinion is that after product that is sold, the person who manufacturesa product no longer retains ownership of it,” Robb said. “People can take it and do with it what they wish, which is what happened here.”
Bell said, “Don’t think that applies.”
Robb’s faction of the Klan was ordered to pay $25,000 in punitive damages in 2009 over a similar issue regarding the Rhino Times, a North Carolina newspaper, according to an article from the Anti-Defamation League.
According to the article, 20 days after a settlement was reached in the case, Robb reportedly posted the following to the group’s website:
“Wrapping literature around discarded sheets of newsprint as an economical means of sharing information with the general public, whether that newsprint is the New York Times, the circular from a department store, or the Rhino Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, was and continues to be fully legal. You can use your week old issue of The Wall Street News, or Rhino Times to line a drawer, polish a window, pack a gift, or to wrap a KKK leaflet around.”
The Rhino Times sued the Knights Party for breach of contract, alleging that Robb’s postings were in violation of the settlement.
A North Carolina Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the group, ordering it to cease using the Rhino Times, in any fashion, to distribute their material, according to the article.
In March 2008, another North Carolina Superior Court judge turned the temporary injunction into a permanent one and decided that the newspaper was deserving of punitive damages.
The Knights won’t be blamed for last week’s distribution of materials, Robb said.
“I don’t think they’ll attach it to our group unless it’s make believe,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/08/2014