Racist Billboard Welcomes Visitors To America’s Most Hateful Town

Harrison, Arkansas has been dubbed the most hateful town in America. With seven different hate groups calling the small town of 13,000 residents home, the dubious title isn’t necessarily unwarranted. One of those hate groups is the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (now renamed the more innocuous sounding Knights Party of Zinc), which has its headquarters just outside of Harrison.

white-pride-billboard
Image source: James L. White, Harrison Daily Times

The Knights have put up a new billboard on Highway 65 that promotes WhitePrideRadio.com, a Ku Klux Klan sponsored broadcast. The billboard shows a white girl holding a puppy. It proclaims “its not racist to love your people”, and then provides the link to the hate radio page.

City officials have worked diligently in the past decade to try to shed Harrison’s racist image. Sadly, outgoing mayor Jeff Crockett, who supported racial equality, finished 3rd in the November 2014 elections. Racists dubbed Crockett “anti-white” and a carpetbagger. He will be replaced by Dan Sherrell, a more conservative candidate.

Sherrell will face challenges in trying to keep Harrison from remaining a hamlet of hate. The Klan’s billboard “welcomes” visitors and travelers to the city on U.S. Highway 65. Motorists entering the town from the south will see that message as they arrive in Harrison.

Harrison residents are uncomfortable with their town being portrayed as a racist community. Many good citizens of Harrison probably are not hardcore racists, even as racist and homophobic groups build their little empires of hate in the community. Some residents are simply in denial arguing defensively that “there is not really a racial problem in Harrison”. A more accurate statement would be, not everyone in Harrison is an active part of the race problem. But make no mistake, the city does have a race problem, or more specifically a racist problem.

The town is 96 percent white. It has three separate Ku Klux Klan groups but less than three dozen black residents. Harrison became a sundown town in the early 20th century when white mobs rioted, beating black residents and burning down their homes. The white girl with the cute puppy may look harmless enough to a white person who is clueless about the town’s ugly racist past. But everyone else knows all too well what white pride means in the context of Harrison, Arkansas and the Ku Klux Klan. If Harrison wants to dispel the label “the most hateful town in America”, they still have work to do.

Keith Brekhus


Let us know your thoughts at the Liberal America Facebook page. Sign up for our free daily newsletter to receive more great stories like this one.

keith bio pic

Keith Brekhus is a longtime political activist who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He has a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He was a Green Party candidate for Congress in 2002. His most recent political job was working as a Field Organizer in Arizona’s White Mountains, in support of Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful 2014 re-election campaign.

 

Keith Brekhus is a progressive sociologist who resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. Keith is a former Green Party candidate for US Congress (2002 in Missouri's 9th District). He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus.