Content area
Full Text
POLK COUNTY IN WESTERN ARKANSAS has long had a reputation for being hostile to the presence of African Americans. Historian Shirley Manning recalls incidents of racial harassment in Mena, the county seat, in the 1960s, in which local boys verbally threatened black travelers passing through town, warning that they "better not let the sun set on your black ass in Mena, Arkansas."1 In fact, according to one local writer in 1980, the county's lack of racial and ethnic diversity had motivated some white people to settle in the area: "It is not an uncommon experience in Polk County to hear a newcomer remark that he chose to move here because of 'low taxes and no niggers.' And there is a staunch body of citizens who take pride in the fact that this is an 'all-white' county."2
This reported antipathy toward black people dates to the year of Mena's establishment. In 1896, white locals teamed with immigrant laborers to drive off African Americans hired to work on the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railway (later reorganized as the Kansas City Southern [KCS]). The following year, notices were posted across town warning African Americans to leave the area. In 1898, a dozen people were arrested for similarly posting notices and conducting a campaign of harassment against the town's black population. However, the 1901 lynching of Peter Berryman has generally been cited as the reason that African Americans left Mena and Polk County, though there was no mob violence directed against the larger black community preceding or following this murder, which was condemned by local authorities and the press.3 In contrast to Harrison, Arkansas, in 1905 and 1909, and Cotter, Arkansas, in 1906, Mena apparently never hosted a coordinated, conscious attempt at the extirpation of African Americans.4 But, by 1920, the local newspaper boldly advertised the town as "100% white," and, by 1937, the same newspaper reported that the last remaining black resident of the county had died. While it is thus tempting to see the bleaching of Mena as a deliberate project-especially given such public approbation of the city's all-white status, and while a closer examination will indeed uncover acts of violence directed at black residents- the eventual exodus of African Americans from the city and county...