Harrison a wise choice

Early April brings showers, flowers and two special events in my Ozarks hometown of Harrison.

On April 1 the city will host an annual statewide vigil and ceremony honoring the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., followed on April 2 by a statewide student summit on nonviolence themed “Life After Hate.”

What a wise choice to hold these specific gatherings there, considering that a small group of admitted racists centered in a hamlet outside Harrison have for decades successfully managed to hijack the community’s image.

For the past six years, Dr. King’s candlelight vigil has been held on the steps of our state Capitol in Little Rock. Harrison is a most appropriate location, especially for the overwhelming majority there who call themselves Christians. After all, I seem to recall a passage of scripture that says a city on a hill can’t be hidden and neither do men light a lamp only to hide it, but rather place it on a stand where it can shine on every person in the house.

The image of this peaceful, caring community in the Ozark hills certainly was darkened with Harrison’s racial purge 109 years ago that drove nearly all of the more than 100 black residents from the city limits.

Then several decades back, Thom Robb, national director of the Ku Klux Klan (and ironic to me, a professed Christian minister) moved to Zinc in the hills about 15 miles outside Harrison. Using the Internet and occasional appearances, he’s since conducted his white supremacy campaigns that naturally perpetuated the false image of Harrison as supposedly representing nearly 13,000 folks of his ilk.

That’s never been even remotely the case. Although Harrison, like most Ozarks towns, remains predominately white by a large margin, the people of that Boone County seat I know well (having been born and spending a good portion of my youth there) are by far not only tolerant of others, but respectful and caring.

That became somewhat evident to Arkansas and the nation in 2012 when the statewide student summit was held in Harrison. Based on the undeserved reputation fueled by the dozen or so admitted racists, many parents of the 600 students who attended that year were fearful for their children’s safety. They even asked that Pulaski County deputies accompany the buses that transported their kids to the summit.

Once there, the youths and their sponsors found what I know: a warm and welcoming town of good folks. Four hundred of those students marched through the town square to City Hall for their vigil without a hint of conflict or problems.

The truth is the townsfolk of Harrison have been working diligently in recent years to expose the truth about itself rather than one group’s self-serving manufactured image rooted in false fear.

A decade ago, the people of Harrison formed the Community Task Force on Race Relations. More recently, its mayor contributed space on two billboards proclaiming the message“Love your neighbor.”

You know any other predominately white (or other race) Arkansas towns that have done anything remotely similar for those of a different skin color? Me neither.

When the Boone County Library held its Black History Month celebration back in February, about 75 white townspeople came. Several from Robb’s racist group also showed up to, in the words of one librarian, “hijack” the program’s question-and-answer session. While there was no conflict as such, it was yet another example of the disproportionate voice that these relatively few people have utilized to their advantage.

Hopefully though, that unfortunate circumstance is finally drawing toward a close as those from elsewhere learn the truth over illusion.

And the decision of folks like De-Shun Scarbrough, who heads the state Martin Luther King Commission, to come to Harrison along with hundreds of glowing lanterns that can’t help but overwhelm darkness lingering at the edges, is not only important but truly significant.

On behalf of his organization, Scarbrough correctly told reporter Bill Bowden that racial hatred is a learned behavior and the time for healing such misguided conditioning is long past: “The message of this summit is, after something that took place in Harrison a long time ago, there’s still an opportunity to love in Dr. King’s name,” he said. “You hear rumors about not going to Harrison.If we keep doing this with the same kind of thinking, how many hundreds of years will this go on?”

What better way to begin, as Scarbrough and I conclude, than to begin with sharing the idealism and hope of coming generations. Dr. King would be smiling.

Iappreciated the insightful comments of Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center who said Harrison has been struggling to shed its terrible image, and the vigil and conference are positive steps in that direction.

“Many cities with this same situation would not face its demons as squarely as Harrison is today, and that’s worth applauding,” Potok told Bowden. “The sad reality is that in the community of color, Harrison still has a bad reputation.”

I hope everyone in Harrison turns out for these events, thus reaffirming to the state and nation that they arein fact the good and honorable people I’ve always known them to be regardless of what a handful continually do their best to misportray.

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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.