Seven Ari Williams.

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Seven Ari moved to Northwest Arkansas with her family in 2019. An aspiring model, a lover of creative dress, and one of few Afrolatina students at her school, Ari’s appearance drew immediate attention from her peers—attention that was not always welcome. Early in her first semester at the school, Ari began to feel there were not enough conversations being held around Black identity at her school, so she started a Black Student Union (BSU). The organization welcomed members of all races—Ari says the majority of its members were white—but nonetheless drew the ire of white classmates who felt the existence of a space that centered Black experience was inherently racist. By October of that year, other students began to bully Ari, and the unwelcome attention escalated from comments about her appearance to death threats. Nevertheless, Ari continued her work with the BSU, which culminated in December with a successful event at a Black-owned barbershop, featuring a Black Santa Claus. 

It was at this event that a fellow activist gave Ari the shirt she contributed to the NWA Mask Project, welcoming her to the fold as an activist for racial justice in Northwest Arkansas. However, for Ari and her family, the shirt—a plain black t-shirt printed with the hashtag #MoveTheMonument—quickly came to represent the deep-rooted racism in the area. Soon after the event, she became the victim of a relentless campaign of bullying that included violent threats and disturbing images sent to her through Instagram. Within a month, she was forced to disenroll from her school out of fear for her physical and emotional safety, which her family says were not taken seriously by the school. “Now the monument has been moved,” says Ari’s mother, referring to a confederate monument removed from the Bentonville square in 2020, “but Seven is still feeling the trauma.”

For Ari, the shirt represents the cycle of racialized trauma in the region—an object that once stood for community support and encouragement became a painful reminder of the gaslighting, intimidation, and violence people of color experience when doing work that centers race in Northwest Arkansas. “It's unfair how a lot of institutions ask people to move here and say it's diverse when at the heart that is just shellac,” she says, describing the controversy over the statue’s removal, “out of all the places i've lived in my life, this is the worst place, I get anxiety about leaving the house here.”

The shirt sat at the bottom of a pile of clothes to give away for months before Ari decided to contribute it to this project in the hopes of increasing the visibility of racial injustice in Northwest Arkansas and advancing the conversation around what it means to truly be safe here.

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