In the video, Bliss shows an interaction with a manager at Walmart who asks him to leave. The following two days were outside a Walmart Supercenter. On July 9, his first day, he posted up at a busy intersection. On average, he spent about eight hours a day outside holding his sign, he said.
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"I am now a professional lip reader when it comes to 'all lives matter' and I have seen so many middle fingers I could draw them," he said. Today, Harrison still boasts white pride billboards, which some in town have tried to combat with competing signs saying, "Love Your Neighbor."įrom Bliss's experience, racism is alive in Harrison. The riots eventually drove out all but one African American resident, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
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But in 1905, when a group of Black men were put in jail for an alleged crime, a mob of White men broke in, beat them, sparking a series of lynchings and home razings. Following the abolition of slavery, Harrison had a burgeoning Black community. Harrison, a northern Arkansas town of just over 13,000 people, is known for its connections to white supremacy and its history is steeped in racism. As they made their way toward the town square, they were heckled while armed White men patrolled the sidewalks and stood on rooftops. In June, 10 days after George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody, a group of young people, almost all White, held a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Harrison. In fact, his video isn't the first Black Lives Matter moment in Harrison. and Woburn, Mass.įor Bliss, the decision to go to Harrison was simple: he felt like many of the protests were "preaching to the choir." "These conversations should probably be happening in places where you wouldn't expect them if you really want to take that leap and get people to better understand you're fighting for," he said. And young people have led protests in smaller towns across the country, including in Aledo, Texas Canton, Mo. An analysis from The Post found that from the end of May through June, Pennsylvania had over 400 protests. Three young women in southern Virginia, inspired by the activism of older generations at the protests around the country, started a Black Lives Matter chapter there. It also circulated widely on Facebook with the bold title, "Holding a Black Lives Matter Sign in America's Most Racist Town," and with a lead image of him holding the sign in front of a white supremacist billboard.īliss is among many young activists who have brought the Black Lives Matter movement to unlikely towns. You better be f- gone.”īliss's video swiftly went viral after he uploaded it Monday, various uploads of the video on YouTube and Twitter have gotten roughly 3 million views as of early Thursday. The most frightening interaction, Bliss said, was when a man in a cream-colored Camry drove by flipping him off and moments later returned to warn, “About 10 minutes, I’m gonna be back. "This right here is the biggest hoax there ever was." An older man added, "It's the next thing to ISIS." "I'm tired of seeing this," said a middle-aged man, pointing at Bliss's sign. There was the man in a white Chevy who pointed at Bliss and yelled: "Get your ass out of town!" Or the two men who approached Bliss separately outside of a Walmart Supercenter. Over the three days Rob Bliss held the sign in the sweltering July heat in Harrison, a town known as a haven for white supremacists and home to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, similar interactions happened again and again.
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“You’re a white man!” the driver exclaimed, adding an anti-Semitic slur as they sped away. “What about white lives?” the woman in the passenger’s seat yelled out.
As a gray Buick SUV approached the man holding a Black Lives Matter sign on a street in Harrison, Ark., the driver slowed down.
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