County: Craighead

Booker T. Washington High School (Jonesboro)

Booker T. Washington High School (BTW) in Jonesboro (Craighead County), also known as Jonesboro Industrial High School (IHS), was the first high school for African Americans in northeastern Arkansas. After some setbacks, BTW ultimately became a source of pride in the black community, with students coming from across the region to attend the school. BTW closed in 1966 when Jonesboro’s public schools were completely desegregated. In the twenty-first century, the E. Boone Watson Community Center and African American Cultural Center stands on the former BTW site. After a severe snowstorm in December 1917 destroyed the city auditorium in Jonesboro, the Colored School Improvement Association (CSIA) of Jonesboro lobbied the Jonesboro School Board for the bricks from the dilapidated building to …

Bookout, Jerry

Jerry Bookout was a long-time member of the Arkansas General Assembly, where he represented northeastern Arkansas as both a three-term state representative beginning in 1967 and a state senator beginning in 1973. In a legislative career that spanned three decades, his emphasis was on far-reaching issues involving education, healthcare, and the military. Jerry Bookout was born on November 2, 1933, in Rector (Clay County) to Mary Mobley Bookout and Paul Otis Bookout. After attending Rector public schools, he enrolled at what is now Arkansas State University in Jonesboro (Craighead County), graduating in 1955 with a BA in history and political science. He was that year’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) Distinguished Military Graduate, and, after being commissioned as an armor …

Bridge Street Bridge

The Bridge Street Bridge is a multi-span reinforced-concrete deck girder bridge that spans the former St. Louis Southwestern Railway (Cotton Belt) and St. Louis–San Francisco Railroad (Frisco) rail lines in Jonesboro (Craighead County). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 2020. Although the Bridge Street Bridge was not the first bridge at this location, it was a large improvement over the iron and wooden bridge that formerly spanned the rail line. During the late 1920s and 1930s, the Arkansas Highway Commission embarked on a large-scale campaign to upgrade the state’s roads. As a result, many miles of roads were paved or rebuilt, and many bridges were built. It was a well-traveled route, as it …

Brookland (Craighead County)

The city of Brookland has been closely linked over the years to Greensboro, the earliest settlement in what is now Craighead County. Construction of railroads led to the establishment of Brookland at its current location, and the city was incorporated in 1911. When Arkansas became a state, much of its northeastern corner consisted of sloughs and swamps in the St. Francis and Cache river bottoms. The exception was Crowley’s Ridge, a narrow highland that begins in southeastern Missouri and runs south to Helena-West Helena (Phillips County). Joseph Willey moved from North Carolina to land on Crowley’s Ridge in 1835, erecting a grist mill on Lost Creek, about eleven miles north of the current city of Jonesboro (Craighead County). Other settlers joined Willey, and …

Caldwell, Charles (Execution of)

Charles Caldwell was an African American man hanged at Jonesboro (Craighead County) on April 29, 1893, in the first legal public execution in Craighead County. His corpse was afterward used in a bizarre experiment with electric batteries. Charles Caldwell and Tab Freeman, whom he would later be charged with murdering, both lived at Big Bay, a sawmill station for the Kansas City and Memphis Railroad about ten miles east of Jonesboro, now the community of Bay (Craighead County). Freeman lived with a woman of whom Caldwell was also enamored, leading to bad blood between the two—Freeman at one point tried to kill Caldwell with an axe. The two men were part of a group playing cards at the woman’s house …

Caraway (Craighead County)

Caraway is a small farming community located in Craighead County in the northeast section of the state. The community is representative of other towns in this area—forged from the timber industry, sustained for many years by farming, fiercely holding onto its past through reunions and festivals, and trying to survive and retain its identity. Caraway is one of several communities within a region referred to collectively as Buffalo Island. The small city of Caraway was one of the last to incorporate in northeast Arkansas. Initially known as White Switch, it began as a lumber camp about 1912. The abundance of timber attracted the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company to buy vast tracts of land. The huge northern company drew large …

Caraway, Hattie

Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, the first to chair a Senate committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing. She served from 1931 to 1945 and was a strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic recovery legislation during the Great Depression. Hattie Wyatt was born to William Carroll Wyatt and Lucy Burch Wyatt on February 1, 1878, near Bakersville, Tennessee. It is unknown how many siblings she had, though the 1900 Census shows four children living at her parents’ residence. When she was four, she moved with her family to Hustburg, Tennessee, where she helped on the family farm and in …

Caraway, Thaddeus Horatius

Thaddeus Horatius Caraway was an Arkansas prosecuting attorney who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives four times and to the U.S. Senate twice. A progressive champion of the poor, Caraway vigorously challenged corruption while aiding Arkansas during the beginning of the Great Depression. His wife, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, filled his Senate seat upon his death on November 6, 1931. Thaddeus H. Caraway was born on October 17, 1871, in Spring Hill, Missouri, to Tolbert Caraway and Mary Ellen Caraway. After his father’s death when Caraway was a young child, his mother struggled to maintain the family. She moved the family to Clay County, Arkansas, when he was twelve. Caraway left Arkansas to attend Dickson Normal College in Dickson, …

Carpenter, Cornelius Tyree

Cornelius Tyree (C. T.) Carpenter was an educator, minister, and attorney in northeastern Arkansas. In addition to serving as president of Woodland Baptist College in Jonesboro (Craighead County) and being minister of the First Baptist Church of Marked Tree (Poinsett County), he gained national attention as the attorney for the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) from 1935 to 1936. C. T. Carpenter was born on September 5, 1874, in Rockbridge County, Virginia, to John T. Carpenter and Sarah Carpenter. He had three brothers and one sister. His father was a Baptist minister who studied under General Robert E. Lee at Washington College after the Civil War. The family was well established in Virginia and, according to Oren Stephens of Harper’s …

Cash (Craighead County)

Cash is a small, incorporated community in western Craighead County located at the junction of Highway 226 and Highway 18 west of Jonesboro (Craighead County). Once an important center for the lumber industry, it is now primarily a farming community. The first permanent settlers in the area were W. R. and Lynn Cureton, brothers who came from Alabama with their families and slaves. However, the area remained sparsely settled until the late 1800s, when railroads and the lumber industry penetrated into eastern Craighead County. The first school was established on August 12, 1881. In 1894, a tram road, the Bonnerville and Southern Railroad, was built connecting the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway (Frisco) line at Bono (Craighead County) to the Cache River …

Cate, William Henderson

William Henderson (W. H.) Cate was a lawyer, a judge, and a Democratic politician who served in the state legislature from 1871 to 1874 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1889 to 1890 and from 1891 to 1893. Charges of election fraud in the 1888 election resulted in federal hearings that saw him ousted from his congressional seat in 1890. W. H. Cate, born on November 11, 1839, near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was one of two surviving children born to Noah Cate, who was a Baptist minister, and his wife Margaret M. (Henderson) Cate. Raised in Tennessee’s Hawkins and Sullivan counties, he attended the common schools and academies in Abingdon, Virginia, and Rogersville, Tennessee. In 1857, he graduated from the University of Tennessee …

Cherry, Francis Adams

Francis Adams Cherry was a chancery judge, Arkansas’s thirty-fifth governor, and chairman of the federal Subversive Activities Control Board. Cherry is most remembered for his political ineptness, which resulted in the election of Orval Faubus as governor in 1954. Francis Cherry was born on September 5, 1908, in Fort Worth, Texas, to Haskille Scott and Clara Belle (Taylor) Cherry. The youngest of five children, he only briefly lived in Fort Worth before his father, a Rock Island Railroad conductor, was transferred. Cherry grew up in El Reno and Enid, Oklahoma, graduating from high school at the latter town. He majored in prelaw at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University) from 1926 to 1930. The Great Depression delayed …

Christensen, Les

aka: Leslie Ann Christensen
Leslie Ann (Les) Christensen is director of the Bradbury Art Museum at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County), but she is best known as a sculptor who works in mixed media using everyday objects to offer a vision of universal experience and common responsibility. Her artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the United States and in Europe. Les Christensen was born on July 3, 1960, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the second of four children (and the only daughter) of Dean and Carol Christensen. She attended the University of Iowa, where she received a BFA in sculpture in 1982. She spent a year of graduate school at the Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht in the Netherlands and …

Citizens Bank Building (Jonesboro)

The Citizens Bank Building in Jonesboro (Craighead County) is a seven-story structure located on the northwestern corner of the intersection of Washington Street and Main Street, due north of the Craighead County Courthouse. The composite steel-frame building with a flat roof was originally home to commercial banking on the ground level and offices on the upper floors. The building is an excellent and unique example of the International Style of architecture because of its flat roof without a ledge, metal windows set flush with the outer walls, smooth wall surfaces with minimal decorative detailing, and asymmetrical elevations. The building, which was vacated in 2000, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 15, 2020. What is now …

Claunch (Craighead County)

Claunch was a small town in Craighead County located on a bend of the St. Francis River, about six miles north of Lake City (Craighead County) in Lester Township. The small town was primarily an agricultural center and a place on the river where flatboats docked. The town was originally called Lester, after Phill Lester, an early pioneer, who owned a large plantation prior to the Civil War. In October 1891, a post office was established, and the town was named for James Riley Claunch, a well-known farmer and physician of northeastern Arkansas. James Riley Claunch (1833–1918) was the oldest child of James Harvey Claunch (1810–1899) and Charlotte Bearden (1815–1882). He was born in Bedford County, Tennessee, and grew up …

Cotton, Carolina

aka: Helen Hagstrom
Helen Hagstrom is best known for her country and western swing music and yodeling, as well as her appearances in numerous television specials, radio programs, and films under the name of Carolina Cotton. Nicknamed “The Yodeling Blonde Bombshell,” Hagstrom was an entertainer and teacher throughout her life. Helen Hagstrom was born on October 20, 1925, in Cash (Craighead County), where her parents, Fred and Helen Hagstrom, and maternal grandparents had a farm, growing many crops, including cotton and peanuts. During the Great Depression, Hagstrom’s father moved his wife and two daughters to San Francisco, California. Hagstrom began performing in traveling stage shows with the O’Neille Sisters Kiddie Revue. Then, after regularly visiting KYA Radio to watch Dude Martin’s Roundup Gang …

Craighead County

Craighead County is located in northeast Arkansas and was created as Arkansas’s fifty-eighth county in 1859. It is unusual not only in the circumstances of its creation and naming but also in that it has two county seats, Jonesboro and Lake City. The unique formation called Crowley’s Ridge runs through its center. Along with Jonesboro and Lake City, Craighead County also includes the towns of Bay, Black Oak, Bono, Brookland, Caraway, Cash, Claunch, Egypt, and Monette. It is the home of Arkansas State University (ASU), one of the state’s largest universities. Pre-European Exploration Of significance for early habitation of Craighead County is Crowley’s Ridge, a crescent-shaped outcropping running roughly from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to Helena-West Helena (Phillips County). It rises …

Craighead County Courthouse, Western District

The Craighead County Courthouse is a Depression-era, Art Deco–style building situated on the courthouse square in Jonesboro (Craighead County). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 11, 1998. During the first year after the establishment of Craighead County and the city of Jonesboro in 1859, there was no courthouse for carrying out the official business of the western part of the county. (Along with Jonesboro, Lake City also acts as a county seat, serving the eastern part of the county.) The Arkansas General Assembly designated the home of William Puryear in Jonesboro as a temporary county seat. The first permanent courthouse was a two-story frame building erected on the town square in Jonesboro in 1862. The building …

Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library

The Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library (CCJPL) serves the people of northeastern Arkansas, with a main facility in downtown Jonesboro (Craighead County). It also has branches in the Craighead County towns of Brookland, Caraway, Lake City, and Monette along with a cooperative agreement with the neighboring Poinsett County library system. Established in 1917, the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library was incorporated in 1941. Over the years, it moved to several different locations in downtown Jonesboro, with its current building opening in 1964. Since that time, several additions have expanded the library structure, including a 1978 addition to accommodate facilities for patrons with visual impairments and physical disabilities. In 1978, the library’s popular Arkansas Genealogy Room was created. It holds an …

Crawford, Eric Alan “Rick”

Rick Crawford is a Republican U.S. congressman from Arkansas who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 as part of the wave of new conservatives who made up the Tea Party Movement, a group whose emergence helped the Republicans regain the majority in the House. After arriving in Washington DC, Crawford began compiling a record characterized by strong opposition to President Barack Obama and equally strong support of President Donald Trump. He has also proven himself to be adept at getting votes, being easily reelected five times. Eric Alan “Rick” Crawford was born on January 22, 1966, on Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. He was one of three sons born to Ruth Anne Crawford and …

Crow, Charles Patrick (Pat)

Charles Patrick (Pat) Crow was an Arkansas-born writer and editor who had an exceptional career at esteemed publications such as the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and the New Yorker. He was a meticulous editor who earned some acclaim for his rigorous attention to style, usage, and linguistics, particularly in a long career at the New Yorker. Before his career in New York, starting in late 1962, Crow had a brief sojourn as a writer and editor at the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette, forerunners of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Pat Crow was born on July 14, 1938, in Jonesboro (Craighead County) to Judson L. Crow and Lorene Gibson Crow. His father was a machinery salesman and …