Tell Me Who You Are
Navigating Arkansas in a Black Body
When I was 16, our predominantly Black softball team played the state championship in Harrison, home of the KKK
By Juanenna, as told to Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi
Little Rock is a good ol’ boy city, and Arkansas is a good ol’ boy state. That means: White-male dominated, run, and operated. Old money controls everything, and all old money is probably rooted in something wrong. Matter of fact, from what I hear, this one family in Little Rock has the same family still working for them since slavery. If you don’t know anybody that rich, you don’t even know some White elite communities still exist. In those places, you can’t even drive over without security running you.
In Northwest Arkansas, there’s a lot of sundown towns — White communities that people of color shouldn’t be in when the sun goes down. In a community called Sherrill, a Black family moved in years ago. They bought a trailer, set up cinder blocks, and went to work on Monday. When they came back, their house was gone. The people in the community had picked his house up and set it back up right outside of their town. And he was lucky, actually, to just have his house moved. My dad got a ticket there one time, and every time he even tried to…
