Arkansas Town, Battling Legacy of Klan Activity, Awash in Controversy Over Racist Billboard
Racism isn’t just immoral. It’s also bad for business.
Just ask Jeff Crockett, the mayor of Harrison, Ark., a small, 95 percent white city haunted by the ghosts of century-old race riots and a current day Ku Klux Klan compound in the Ozarks just 15 miles outside of town.
“Our Internet presence is terrible,” the mayor told Hatewatch today. “When people Google Harrison, Ark., the first page of websites is Klan-related. People don’t come here because of it.”
There’s a Fed Ex regional office in Harrison that employs 1,500 people from across the region. “We’re finding people who transfer in here, even if they’re white they don’t want to raise their kids around that [Klan history],” he said. “Then they decide to move to Branson, Mo., and drive 30 miles back and forth. So we lose the tax base, we lose the real estate sales. We’ve been working hard to combat that and get a better reputation out.”
It has not been easy, especially in the last few months. The battle over Harrison’s reputation has been waged these days not house to house but billboard by billboard, with acts of vandalism, an arrest, leaks to the Klan and most recently a mayoral investigation.
More: Arkansas Town, Battling Legacy of Klan Activity, Awash in Controvesy Over Racist Billboard