The Silence of the Steeples

Dinner Conversation

From the time I was old enough to understand, our large family dinners were laced with certain words spit out from gritted teeth – outsiders, welfare queens, the blacks, the “N” word. I was taught from a very young age that to be “unequally yoked” also meant interracial marriage. “How could one be truly happy in an interracial marriage?” “What would come to the children of such a marriage?”

God’s Country, White Country

My town was plastered with Confederate flags – on trucks, hats, belt buckles. Never mind the fact that Harrison had no real Civil War history; the flag became its own religion. There were just as many steeples as Confederate flags – some of which were “Klan” churches. Even a community water company name - Krooked Kreek Water Association with four K’s – was a wink everyone pretended not to notice.

This was what holiness looked like in Harrison, Arkansas - God’s country, white country.

Pictured is a white nationalist flag. Photo Credit for both above: Unalome Photography

Image found here: https://www.facebook.com/kkwa32/

A Sundown Awakening

Growing up and realizing I was raised in a Sundown Town was quite the awakening for me. Harrison has an ugly past of race riots and of running people of color out of the town. Right outside the town, was another community called Zinc which is where Christian Identity pastor and Imperial Wizard (now so deemed the National Director) of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan still resides. [If you are interested in what the SPLC has to say of Robb, click here: https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/knights-ku-klux-klan/ .] When I started community college at North Arkansas College, there was a huge controversy because the school was giving scholarships to basketball players of color. They wanted to entice them to come to Harrison and to help shift the image. The Klan wrote letters to these students warning them to leave and letting them know they were not welcome in Harrison. They also threw out leaflets onto the lawns of people to warn them of “the blacks” coming to our town. The Klan was also behind propaganda after Hurricane Katrina and other mass casualty events where “mass groups of blacks would be bussed into our town” to take over.

Billboards and Burials

A few years back, the Klan started a billboard war. Local groups fought back – raising money for anti-hate billboards, holding a mock “funeral for racism.” Many mocked the effort; others never heard of it. In truth, racism couldn’t be buried. It had to be exorcised, especially from the pulpits.

Image found here: https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2014/apr/02/harrison-marchers-bury-racial-hatred-20140402/

Images found here:https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2017/sep/19/contentious-harrison-signs-are-jettison/ and https://www.npr.org/2014/05/12/311107696/tale-of-two-billboards-an-ozark-towns-struggle-to-unseat-hate

The Churches that Stayed Silent

Within church circles, the Klan was spoken of like an embarrassing cousin, not like the open wound it truly was. Churches stayed, and remain, silent, claiming politics didn’t belong in the pulpit – while racism lived in the pews. As I grew older, people began pointing out Klan members and Klan sympathizers that were in the small Assembly of God church I was raised in. After I met my husband, we became more and more involved in opposing the KKK to the point that we had reason to fear for our safety as well. Well-meaning family members told us to stay quiet for the sake of our families. “Why would you want to invite fear into your lives?”  they would say. At one point, the school system threated to sue me when I was teaching there for speaking out against racism in the schools. The line that was oft said was used again: “We don’t stir up hornet’s nests here.”  That is a great story for another day.

Complicity has Many Faces

The truth is, remaining silent is not an option I am willing to take. To know that my own children may live in safety due to the privilege of their skin color, while black and brown babies must suffer simply for theirs, is too much a cross to bear. Some say, “silence is violence” and I fully believe that to be true.

When we laugh at crude jokes instead of correcting them, we remain complicit with racism and hate.

When we remain silent as our elders slew slurs, we remain complicit. 

When we teach our children that some remain “lesser” than us, by telling them that to date interracially would be a sin, we are not only complicit but are full-blown racist.

When we sit on our church pews instead of taking it to the streets and letting our voices be known, we remain complicit.

When God and country is in every sermon, but the sins of slavery and racism go unrepented for, we remain complicit.

When we try to silence our friends and family who are brave enough to pick up that cross and bear it, we remain complicit.

When we refuse to teach our children about diversity and racism, we remain complicit.

Heretic or Human

There are more churches than there are black people in Harrison, and yet, only two churches spoke up against racism when the Klan was peppering our streets with ugly racist billboards. Many sitting on those pews are either Klan sympathizers themselves, with their Confederate flag waiving proudly in their yards, or they are simply too scared, too privileged, too lulled to sleep to rise and say a damn word against the dark stain of sin that is racism.

In the end, speaking out made me a heretic in the eyes of the churches back home, but it actually made me more human.

The Last Amen

Harrison still preaches love on Sunday and shrugs at hate on Monday. The Klan robes may be hidden, but the theology that excused them still sits on the front row.

Faith that cannot confront its own racism is not faith. It is rather fear and hate wearing a cross and smile.

 Pictured right is a scene from Crawdad Days. Pictured left are representatives of Boone County Indivisible. Photo Credit: Unalome Photography.

Pictured above is a clip from the Harrison Daily Times honoring the Imperial Wizard, Tom Robb.

Pictured here is the publication put out by Tom Robb's group endorsing Donald Trump for President in the 2016 election. These papers were distributed on the lawns of Harrison residents.