Blacks, Whites Pin Hopes on ‘New’ Arkansas City
HELENA, Ark.
Beaten down by poverty and tired of racial tension taking them nowhere, a hopeful band of Black and White residents in Arkansas’ historic river town of Helena and sister city of West Helena have summoned up the will to sweep away the past and start anew in 2006.
It’s been decades since Helena’s river port, small labor-intensive farms, and West Helena businesses have pumped life into the region. Interstates, mechanization and the promise of better lives elsewhere changed all that.
It’s been years since the governing bodies have functioned effectively. Not solely because of race but usually with that element as a factor, public services have suffered.
Four aldermen in West Helena boycotted meetings for 22 months before a judge ordered them back so the city could pass a budget and a property tax ordinance. Five members of the Phillips County Quorum Court, the county’s legislative body based in Helena, refused to set a tax election and went to jail for contempt of court before the election date was set and voters approved the tax.
At a meeting, a justice of the peace on the quorum court asked where all the surplus money from 1997 had gone. “Lawsuits,” the county treasurer piped up.
