The idea of racial exclusivity is a simple one. Create racial homogeneity through coordinated and planned action. Just such a program was carried out in Arkansas in the first decade of the 1900s in the town of Cotter. While the events in Cotter lack the outright violence described in my previous posts about Springfield, Illinois, and Polk County, Arkansas, it gives us another example of how racism played out in this era.
The aim of the citizens of Cotter in 1906 was simple. Make the town 100% white. And they succeeded. When other towns in Baxter County, Arkansas, like Harrison, either killed or expelled African Americans at the same time, it created a seemingly unbelievable outcome. As late as the 1960 census, Baxter County had zero African American residents. Yes, zero. And it was not alone. Four other Ozark Mountain counties in Arkansas could state the same thing. This was not an accident or a natural development.
Cotter was one town in Baxter County responsible for this. A railroad town, it didn’t incorporate until 1903. But by 1906 its white residents had decided on a policy of racial exclusivity.
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Why Cotter Chose Racial Exclusivity
I’ll use the text of an promotional pamphlet printed in Cotter to explain. The pamphlet promoted Cotter’s location on a railroad, its wealth of local natural resources, the size of nearby markets, and the local availability of electricity and water for industrial use. Finally, it finished with this: “Cotter’s population is 100 per cent white, and the community offers ideal living conditions which make for efficiency and contentment of workmen.”
How did it get that way? The combination of racism and intentional racial exclusivity without fear of consequences explains quite a bit. Consider a few of these passages printed in the Cotter Courier, the local newspaper. From 1905: “There is a strong feeling against the negro in Cotter and the county, and the feeling is growing. It is quite likely there will not be a colored person in Baxter County within a year. They are not wanted.” In 1904 it printed “It has been maintained by the press and the forum of the south that the negro is an inferior being, whose instincts are mostly bestial, and that his crimes which are yearly growing more numerous, are due rather to his nature than his environments.”
Finally, consider this 1906 editorial:
“Cotter bids to be over run with the colored race if the present rate of increase continues. It is far from a pleasant thought and is causing not a little uneasiness. . . . Of late the darkeys are coming in by gangs and are most unwelcome. Cotter is a white town and proposes to remain white and the feeling is daily growing that the negros should move on. . . . It would be unfortunate indeed should any colored person at this time commit any offense in Cotter, for it would be taken as an excuse to put the race on the run.”
Cotter Becomes a Sundown Town in Pursuit of Racial Exclusivity
On August 24 of 1906, two black men engaged in a fight. They and their families were given the option to pay large court fines or leave town. But that wasn’t the end, according to the Courier. “While the officers were at it, the people decided to make a clean sweep and notified the rest of the darkeys that it would be best if they left also.”
That is what happened. Although no dramatic massacre of people took place, the white citizens simply did as they wished and manufactured racial exclusivity. Then, the population decided to forget its actions. Collectively, Cotter portrayed its racial homogeneity as a natural and desirable outcome of history and happenstance. And other Ozark towns did the same.
This is a poignant example of how appearances can be deceiving. Many things that appear natural on the surface are far from it when one peels back the covering and looks beneath the surface. Statements such as “that’s the way it is here” and the like may, in fact, be covering a substantially different historical reality. The great value of studying the past is understanding how the past shapes the present. But we can only do that when we bother to understand the past in all its aspects.
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