What was built
- Established or development period
- 1870s–1905
- Peak period
- 1900–1905
- Who built the community
- Black railroad workers, domestic workers, laborers and a small number of property owners.
- Black population
- Roughly 115 Black residents in 1900; almost none by 1910.
- Businesses
- Small trades, laundries and service work.
- Financial institutions
- Not yet documented
- Churches
- Not yet documented
- Schools
- Not yet documented
- Hospitals
- Not yet documented
- Newspapers
- Not yet documented
- Entertainment & cultural institutions
- Not yet documented
- Other community institutions
- Not yet documented
- Black land & property ownership
- A small number of Black-owned homes and lots.
- Economic significance
- A small Black working population in an Ozark railroad town.
What happened
- What happened?
- In October 1905 a white mob attacked Black residents, burned homes and drove most of the Black population out. A second expulsion in 1909, following the arrest of a Black man, removed nearly all who remained. Harrison became and long remained a sundown town.
- Trigger or precipitating event
- 1905: an alleged theft and an assault accusation. 1909: the arrest of a Black man accused of assault.
- Underlying historical context
- Ozark sundown-town formation, in which dozens of towns violently expelled Black residents in the early twentieth century.
- Method of destruction / displacement
- Expulsion · Mob Violence · Arson · Threats and Intimidation
- Date or period of destruction
- October 1905 and January 1909
- Confirmed / documented deaths
- No deaths confirmed in either expulsion.
- Estimated deaths
- Not yet documented
- People displaced
- Effectively the entire Black population of the town.
- Homes destroyed
- Black homes burned and others abandoned.
- Businesses destroyed
- Not yet documented
- Acres or property lost
- Property was abandoned or sold under duress. Totals not yet documented.
Afterward
- What happened to the land?
- Absorbed into white ownership.
- Was compensation paid?
- None.
- Was the community rebuilt?
- No: Harrison's Black population remained near zero for a century and the town later became associated with organized white-supremacist activity.
- What was rebuilt?
- Not yet documented
- Destroyed or displaced again?
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement date
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement cause
- Not yet documented
- What exists there today?
- A majority-white Ozark town with a local race-relations task force working to confront the history.
- Descendant, reparation & restoration efforts
- The Harrison Community Task Force on Race Relations and public-history documentation.
- Historical significance
- One of the best-documented sundown towns in the United States, and evidence that racial expulsion did not require mass killing.
Sources
- Book or scholarly workFind
James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New Press, 2005)
- Book or scholarly workFind
Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Central Arkansas Library System
- Source lookupFind
Jacqueline Froelich and David Zimmermann, 'Total Eclipse: The Destruction of the African American Community of Harrison, Arkansas,' Arkansas Historical Quarterly (1999)
"Find" opens a focused search for legacy references that do not have a stable link; "Open" goes directly to the source.
Last verified: 2026-09-20. This is a living historical collection. Additional communities and documentation will be added as research and verification continue.