“Many cities with this same situation would not face its demons as squarely as Harrison is today, and that’s worth applauding. The sad reality is that in the community of color, Harrison still has a bad reputation.”
-Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center.
DON’T HOLD his politically correct vocabulary (“community of color”) against Mr. Potok. Sadly, a lot of folks seem to think they have to talk around the truth in order to tell it. Community of color, indeed. As if we weren’t all some color, just as He made us. And all part of the same community, much as some would like to segregate us.
Our best guess is that what Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center meant was that black folks still raise a wary eyebrow when somebody suggests going to Harrison, Ark. Because bad history has a way of badly lingering.
Which is a pity. Most folks in this state know that Harrison might be the perfect place for anybody who wants the medium-town life in the hills. It’s a little slower paced, but not stalled. In other words, just right. It leaves a man time and room to think, even to choose his words with some taste and discrimination. Mr. Potok might try going there. It might clarify some of his vocabulary and therefore his thought.
For some of us, every August brings with it a temptation to drop everything, sell the house, quit the job, and find a shady spot between Harrison and Mountain Home-preferably at a creek, with a folding chair right in the water so the stream keeps everything below the knees cool. Come August in Arkansas, wading is irresistible.
Unfortunately, even Harrison has its ugly parts. Including some of its past and even a bit of its present. At the turn of another century, gangs of white folks drove out the hundred or so black ones living there. Today’s history books refer to that sad period as the Harrison Race Riots of 1905 and 1909. And the city still hasn’t gotten completely over them. Splotches of unreconstructed and unrepentant kluxers keep showing up here and there around town like patches of blight, embarrassing all. All the community. Not just “the community of color,” Mr. Potok, a phrase that strikes our ear like one of those reversible signs (white/colored) that city buses in every Southern city used to have-the kind that Rosa Parks had finally had enough of in Montgomery, Ala.
So the city fathers, and mothers, of Harrison, Ark., have put together a “task force” on race relations. We think that means a committee. (The 21st Century Vocabulary strikes again.) But better than any Task Force or committee, the whole community has started a Love Your Neighbor campaign, slapping the slogan on anything that’ll stand still long enough. And this state’s Martin Luther King Commission (it does have a purpose!) has decided to hold a vigil and a youth conference in Harrison come April.
Perfect timing, too. Spring will be back, complete with flowers, birds, baseball and good will. Now come all these Love Your Neighbor reminders popping up everywhere, like daffodils. They’re signs, literally, that most folks in Harrison both recognize the past and are determined not to repeat it.
Ain’t nothin’ like a good old-fashioned Bible verse to clear away all the mod, politically correct phrases that clutter up today’s politicspeak, and get to the heart of the matter. And we mean heart as in a heart that loves, not hates.
The kluxers say they’ll stay away from any events like these youth conferences in April. Displays of good will seem to make them allergic. Or, as one of their leaders told the paper: “They can do their little, whatever they’re going to do. We’re not going to go there. I am not suggesting anybody go there.”
We’ll miss you, Brother. Because, among other reasons, like hating the sin but loving the sinner, the good people of Harrison need the haters to stay in the light, exposed, so the real community, all of it, will know what the haters are up to as they scurry about in the dark.
Good luck to the sloganeers, the T-shirt makers, the marchers and the young people attending the vigil/youth conference. And to all people of good will. You couldn’t have picked a better town in which to meet. In more than one way.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 03/21/2014