By Natalie Murphy

Driving the winding roads of Boone County and its surrounding small towns, deep forestry greens and a plethora of quaint Baptist churches parallel the two yellow lines split down the road. Here and there you can spot deer and, at the right time of day, elk taking interest in the whoosh of cars passing. Houses with large acres, sometimes a mile apart from the other, stand shabbily, as if a strong wind could blow them in. A commonality with some houses is the confederate flag nailed to deteriorating wood or flown from the tips of flag posts. To any minority, this is a sign to proceed with caution.

Harrison, Arkansas, is among the many small towns that make up the county. Despite the lush nature surrounding the town, it is overshadowed by a darkened cloud. Harrison is not known for its quaint town square, proximity to Buffalo National Park or its close-knit community. It is rather known for its racist reputation and unwelcomeness to minorities. 

The lack of diversity in Harrison comes from its notable racist past. On two separate occasions, in 1905 and 1909, white mobs drove out the Black population of 115 people. This left the town as a place Black people would usually avoid, known as a sundown town, which is an overly-white town deemed unsafe to minorities past sunset.

Furthering its reputation, new and dangerous company moved in, causing a stir in the media. Interest in Harrison had been ever-growing since the late ‘80s after the Ku Klux Klan moved to Zinc, Arkansas, a small town 15 miles from Harrison, establishing the organization’s mailbox in Harrison because Zinc didn’t have a post office. 

This quickly created a correlation between Harrison and the Klan, especially after leader and grand wizard Thomas Robb claimed it was the headquarters of the KKK. Numerous media outlets, including international outlets, gained interest, furthering negative press around the so-called “Klan Town.” 

But some citizens of Harrison disagree with the town’s reputation. Kevin Cheri, who was the first Black park ranger and superintendent of Buffalo National Park, lived in the town for many years, even grounding his family roots in the soil. 

When Cheri first accepted a park ranger job at the national park in July 1978, he was warned by the superintendent at the time that his safety might be at stake. When word spread around Harrison of his potential hiring, he said numerous townspeople had threatened his life. 

But the danger of the job did not dissuade him, and taking a risk, he accepted the offer, excited to be working in the park. With his new title and life in Harrison, he became the only Black park ranger and one of the very few Black people in a 50-mile radius, he said. 

“My superintendent and her management team met on a regular basis to just discuss my safety before I got there because this decision to bring a Black person to this area was somehow taking a risk,” Cheri said. “But the agency was truly interested and committed to improving its diversity. Back then, there weren’t many Black people who were knowledgeable of the National Park Service and the opportunities that exist there. So, there wasn’t much representation among us in the organization.”

But even with its reputation, he took a chance on Harrison, one Cheri said paid off.

“I had a good overall experience,” Cheri said. “I had a good Park Service — what I call family. My co-workers took interest in me and helped me develop my skills and be successful. I did have one negative experience and that was my tires did get slashed once — two of my tires — and that was unfortunate. We never did discover who was responsible, although we had ideas or suspicions.”

Apart from his tires, Cheri, a New Orleans native, said he would sometimes receive unkind greetings from his community. When he first arrived in town, his co-workers took him around to meet some of the big farmers, who returned his presence with a shrug rather than a handshake. Cheri said it was clear they were not crazy about him being there. He also acknowledged the prominent confederate flags but did not let the hostility get the best of him and his life.

Two years after accepting the position, though, Cheri’s life in Harrison was uprooted when he got a new job, climbing the totem pole in the National Park Service and moving to Georgia, working at the Chattahoochee River. But his ties with Harrison did not end there. 

In 2007, when Buffalo National Park was hiring a new superintendent, Cheri got the job and moved back to Harrison, this time with his family. But while Cheri was ready to return, he said the question remained: Was the town ready for a Black superintendent?  

With Harrison’s racist reputation in the limelight, Bob Reynolds, who was mayor at the time, called for the creation of a race relations task force. In 2003, a group of townspeople, including pastors from local churches, set out to fix the jarring reputation. While the force’s majority consisted of white members, they worked to have productive conversations within their families and communities. Layne Wheeler, the public information officer of the force, said her community did not understand why they were discussing race, and she often was questioned why she joined the force by friends and family.

“We were kind of in a cone of silence,” Wheeler said, describing the lack of conversation surrounding racism in the town. “Just nobody talked about it much.”

A few years after Cheri returned to Harrison as the new Buffalo National Park superintendent, he wanted to take part in rewriting the narrative. He had experienced life in other towns across the United States and felt as though Harrison was unfairly painted in a negative light by the media. To him, it was like every other majority-white small town, and it was the one he and his family now considered home. 

“In my job, I lived in many, many different locations throughout the United States,” Cheri said. “And I can speak on authority that Harrison is far from the most racist town in America — that there are a lot of places where racism exists that is much, much worse.” 

From his travels with the Park Service, Cheri, like many other Southerners, feels the heavy reputation placed on the South. Despite the rich culture, highly impacted by the Black populations of the region, the South is unfairly categorized as a racist and troubled monolith.

In matters of politics and minority acceptance, the region assumes the role of the boogeyman of the United States. Cheri said the other parts of the country often use the South to dismiss the ignorance and racism happening in their communities.

Nevertheless, Harrison is not an exception to racism. On the City of Harrison’s website, it even admits to their faults saying, “In our nation, it’s hard to find any community without bigots and racists. We sure don’t claim to be so fortunate or so virtuous. Our problem is that our town struggles with a widespread and long-lasting perception that we are dominated by bigotry and racism.”

But what sets Harrison apart from many Southern towns is its dedication to bettering its community, and in doing so clearing the town’s reputation. That is why, in 2013, Cheri joined the task force. 

“This group who I admired was actively trying to address racism in their community,” Cheri said. “What made this so special, they were a group mostly of white people who came together to talk about their reputation there and to do something about it.” 

Leading up to 2020, with the impact of nearly 18 years of the task force, the group was able to take down white supremacist billboards in the town, hold fundraisers for their minority scholarship, host diversity, equity and inclusion initiative training sessions within the community and peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.  

But in July 2020, amid the pandemic and uproar following the murder of George Floyd, Wheeler said their hard work felt like it came crashing down when a YouTube video by influencer Rob Bliss reinstated the town’s racist reputation. In his video “Holding a Black Lives Matter Sign in America’s Most Racist Town,” Bliss stood on the side of the road and outside the Harrison Walmart, innocently advocating for BLM. In return, the video showed townspeople in Harrison arguing with him, yelling slurs at him and threatening him to leave.  

The video amassed millions of views, currently standing at 12.5 million, and immediately gained worldwide attention. 

But what the video did not showcase, according to Cheri and Harrison Mayor Jerry Jackson, was the number of people who came up to Bliss and thanked him for his BLM demonstration. Cheri and his daughter were among those who thanked him, others offering him water due to the heat of the Arkansas summer. 

“When he produced it on his YouTube channel, he left out all the positive comments he got,” Cheri said. “It really was a hatchet job to the city.”

Wheeler said in the few weeks following the published video, the mayor’s office received thousands of phone calls from frustrated viewers, some even making the operators cry.

“As that went viral and went all over the country, the hatred that was directed at our mayor and our city workers was awful,” Wheeler said. “You can not believe the ugliness. I mean, to the point that the people answering the phones at City Hall were in tears.”

Both Wheeler and Cheri said the town reached out to Bliss on separate occasions, specifically when he set up a GoFundMe for legal support, following his claims that citizens of Harrison were threatening and trying to sue him.

Wheeler said the town offered financial support to Bliss but never heard back. After further looking into his media accounts, Cheri said Bliss commonly started funds, using viewers’ sympathies, to further make a profit.

“I believe this was nothing less than a professional ‘hit job,’” Mayor Jackson said in a statement made days after the video was posted. “Our opinion became clear: Rob Bliss, and a partner, both from Los Angeles, are professional agitators who saw an opportunity to exploit Harrison. Bliss presents himself as an ‘agent of change’ when, in fact, he is only interested in making money, and doesn’t actually care about the issue.”

In the four years since Bliss’ video, the Harrison task force has been working to get the town’s reputation back on track and continue to reestablish the town as a welcoming place for all. Other influencers, such as JiDion, a Black content creator, have visited Harrison, further providing a positive light on the town and community.

But despite efforts, the perception of Harrison has remained unchanged for many Americans, and its effect has a presence at the University of Arkansas. 

UA students Brylan Cole and Frances, who wished to use an alias for their safety, both grew up around Harrison and went to high school there. They said they usually do not feel pride when asked where they are from, Frances admitting they often say, “I’m sadly from Harrison,” which is met with classmates’ hesitance and sympathy. 

While saying this continues to encourage the reputation of the town, it is also a direct reflection of Frances’ unique experiences growing up around Harrison.

Frances recalled first learning about racism and the KKK around 6 years old in a sit-down conversation with their mom after bricks with KKK propaganda notes attached to them were left at the doors of each house on their street when they lived in Bergman, Arkansas, a town nine miles from Harrison and seven from Zinc.

Frances also had to reconcile with her grandmother’s ignorant racist comments that grew much louder as her dementia worsened, often going on rants in support of segregation.

Within the school system, Cole’s high school best friend, who is Black, ended up leaving Harrison due to uncomfortable remarks from classmates and teachers. Frances said they also had a mixed-race cousin leave the state after receiving harmful comments from peers at school. 

What sets Cole and Frances apart from the supposed stereotypical Harrison citizen and makes it easier for them to see bigotry in their community, is their attachment to the LGBTQ+ community.  

“I feel like when you are a part of another marginalized group that’s disliked, it was easier for me to see the intersectionality of Black and brown people in my town,” Cole said. “And I feel like I was able to see it because I was experiencing my own type of hate from the community.”

Frances identifies as transgender but said they only realized their identity when they came to the university and were able to express themself truly. Despite their parent’s lack of acceptance toward their identity, Harrison is still a place they call home, usually visit weekly and see themself living post-graduation. 

Cole, on the other hand, is not so keen to move back to the region after his time at the U of A. 

“Even when I lived there, I never felt at home,” Cole said. “I feel like I always had the mindset of what tools do I need to use and what do I need to do in high school that will give me that mobility to leave.”

Although Cole said he isn’t necessarily proud to live in Harrison, he does find pride in the South as a whole and resonates with the title “Southerner.” 

“There are some great qualities that come with being from the South that I appreciate,” he said. “I feel like we are very community-oriented, kind people, and I’m super proud of that. And I just wish a lot of these towns that people label as, you know, your ‘scapegoat southern towns that are horrible’ would reflect those qualities a little bit more, which I feel like are at the heart of what it means to be Southern.”

What Frances and Cole have seen in their small towns are the younger generations taking the lead on changing the reputation of Harrison as they become more progressive. As the older generation’s perspectives wither out, a youthful sense of hope seems to be on the horizon in Harrison.  

Cheri, who now lives in Springfield, Missouri, still works with the Harrison task force and said he wants to see youth involvement within the group.

It is also people like Frances and Cole who attend the university and get to challenge their peer’s preconceived notions of Harrison. 

“I like to think I make a good impression on people and maybe help the opinion of Harrison,” Frances said. 

While Harrison has slowly become more diverse since the ‘70s when Cheri first arrived, there is still much to be done to reestablish the town as a welcoming place for all minority groups. With efforts to continue the good work, it is up to each individual to determine whether or not they feel comfortable visiting Harrison. 

“I think it is totally fine to protect your peace and your feeling of safety,” Frances said. “If you don’t feel safe in the town, then you don’t have to go. You totally don’t owe us the benefit of the doubt, when we didn’t give other people the benefit of the doubt or welcoming arms in the past.”