DURANT – President Barack Obama announced a sweeping plan to provide low-cost, high-speed Internet access to more than a quarter-million homes during a rare presidential visit to this corner of southeastern Oklahoma on Wednesday.

Obama said he planned to bridge a “digital divide” facing the nation’s poorest residents through a new initiative called ConnectHome. He spoke to a crowd of more than 900 invited guests, which included members of the Choctaw Nation, at Durant High School.

The ConnectHome program will launch in 28 communities across the country, including the tribe’s 10 1/2-county region, White House officials said. It’s expected to reach nearly 275,000 low-income households, including more than 400 in Oklahoma.

In addition, Obama wants to connect 99 percent of students in kindergarten through 12th grade to high-speed Internet in classrooms and libraries over the next five years. ConnectHome is designed to ensure that those students have continued access at home.

Obama said low-cost, high speed Internet access is critical to all communities in today’s economy, where everything from applying for a job to paying bills to finding a date are done on the web.

“This is a smart investment,” he said. “These are the types of investments we need to make.”

Alfred Mason, 20, of Ada, called Obama’s message “really, really good.”

But Mason, a Muskogee Creek and junior at East Central University, said his biggest thrill was shaking the president’s hand after the 30-minute speech.

Mason pushed his way from his third-row seat to the front of the crowd, he said, and heard Obama call him “Big Guy.”

Seeing a president in person was also the biggest thrill for Sue Coonfield, 72, of Crowder, who was invited to attend the speech.

A member of the Chickasaw tribe, Coonfield said Obama’s message resonated, and she agreed that universal Internet access is critically important.

“He’s really given us a lot of encouragement,” she said.

Gov. Mary Fallin said she planned to greet the president during his Oklahoma visit, though she did not attend the speech.

Fallin was in the area Wednesday morning, at a rock quarry about 20 miles north of Durant.

She said she planned to meet the president when he landed hours later at Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City.

Many parts of Durant, in fact, seemed to pay little heed to the president’s visit.

Though the local Chamber of Commerce encouraged businesses to put up signs welcoming Obama’s arrival, few had as of Wednesday afternoon.

Even City Hall hadn’t put out a sign acknowledging his arrival – nor had federal offices around town.

Theresa McGehee’s law firm, located on the city’s main drag, stood out because it was one of few businesses with a sign welcoming the president.

Vanessa Brown, the firm’s billing administrator who said she’s nearly a lifelong resident of Durant, described her disappointment at the city’s overall lack of enthusiasm, even considering that many of its 16,000 residents are conservative.

“We were raised this (a presidential visit) was a big deal,” she said. It was the city’s first presidential visit since Theodore Roosevelt stopped as part of whistle-stop tour in 1905, according to the local Chamber of Commerce.

Brown was one of few Bryan County voters who cast ballots for Obama during the last two presidential elections. In 2008, more than two-thirds of the vote went for Republican John McCain. Four years later, 72 percent of voters in the county cast ballots for Mitt Romney.

In fact, Brown said she wasn’t sure how her neighbors, much less the president, would receive her sign.

“I, myself, thought we’d get egged,” she said, adding that she was joking – sort of.

Brown said she was dismayed by what she called a group of “yahoos” driving their pickup trucks around town, waving American and Confederate flags.

Security chased about 20 trucks bearing Confederate flags from the venue at the high school, but they could be spotted on the streets of Durant all afternoon.

A short time after the speech, some of the vehicles were gathered at the local Walmart.

Wade Whisenhunt, 19, of Durant, was one of those flying a flag from his truck. He said he was concerned that people thought the gesture was racist, although he admitted how it could be interpreted as such.

“(We’re) not racist against Obama,” he said.

Whisenhunt said he started flying his flag three days before Obama’s visit and plans to continue to do so that veterans know their service has not “gone in vain.”

Still, the group received everything from gestures of support to gestures of obscenity.

When the driver of one pickup left a Confederate flag unattended while inside a business, reporters watched as a woman pulled up, ripped down the flag, threw it into the street and drove away.

Others in the city weren’t flying flags but craning their necks – in hopes of spotting a president.

Teresa Wimbish just wanted for a glimpse of Obama.

Wimbish took the day off from her job at Tyson Foods in Sherman, she said, in hopes of seeing him. As luck would have it, her son rented an apartment in a complex directly across the street from Durant High School.

So, she stood in the shade, trying to keep cool in the afternoon heat, while the complex management barricaded the driveway to chase away bystanders and even a protester who tried to set up shop there with an “Obama Go Home” sign.

“I love President Obama,” said Wimbish, a Colbert resident. “I just hope he rolls down the window and waves.”

She has two pictures of him in her living room, she said, as well as a copy of one of his inaugural addresses.

“I just couldn’t fit into my Obama shirt from 2008, or else I would have worn it,” she said.

Wimbish said she wondered why Obama chose Durant, of all places, to visit.

But the area has been on the White House radar since last year, when the administration identified the Choctaw Nation as a “Promise Zone,” making it eligible for easier access to federal grants and other programs. Since then $58 million has flowed into 11,700-square-mile region in southeastern Oklahoma.

Now it will be a proving ground for the ConnectHome initiative, which also will work with housing officials and non-profit agencies in communities including Atlanta, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Boston, Camden, N.J., and Denver.

Since Obama was elected, officials have invested more than $260 billion into broadband infrastructure, according to the White House. Three-in-four Americans now have Internet access at home.

Janelle Stecklein covers the Oklahoma Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jstecklein@cnhi.com