Entries - County: Craighead - Starting with W

Edomae Boone Watson was a prominent African-American civic and education leader in Jonesboro (Craighead County). In addition to being an educator in Jonesboro’s segregated and then integrated school system, she also played a pivotal role in developing the Head Start program in Jonesboro. She served in state and national organizations to secure funding to provide early-childhood education opportunities for low-income children in Jonesboro. Edomae Boone was born on April 2, 1907, near Augusta (Woodruff County). She obtained a high school diploma from Shorter College, then in Little Rock (Pulaski County), one of the few places in Arkansas that provided diplomas to black students. She received a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal School in Pine …

Tom Watson was a longtime member of the Arkansas Senate. In just under two decades of service, he earned a reputation as a hardworking legislator who was particularly interested in advancing the cause of education. Thomas Watson was born on August 30, 1920, in Monette (Craighead County) to John Tilden Watson and Claud Brooks Watson. Little is known about his family or his early years. On December 24, 1943, he married Gladys Gilbert. The couple had one son. Watson developed a large, successful farming operation in a partnership with his brother and his son. Watson spent ten years as president of the Monette School Board and was also deeply involved in Craighead County governance. He served for six years as …

In the early afternoon of March 24, 1998, two students from Westside Middle School, located approximately two miles west of Jonesboro (Craighead County), conducted an armed ambush on teachers and students, which resulted in five dead and ten others injured. The shooters, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson, were arrested and prosecuted for the crime. The incident was one of two school shootings in Arkansas and one of several school shootings across the nation that adjusted school administrators’ and law enforcement officers’ concepts on school security and response plans to violent incidents at schools. The students and teachers had returned from spring break the day before the shooting. Fifth period was just starting at 12:35 p.m. when a fire alarm caused …

Elana Leigh Wills, a native of Jonesboro (Craighead County), practiced law at the highest levels of state government for more than thirty years, including a stint of two years as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court and many years as a deputy attorney general and a member of the state’s Public Service Commission. Governor Mike Beebe appointed her to the Supreme Court upon the retirement of Justice Thomas A. Glaze in 2008. She avoided politics but served in state legal jobs under seven attorneys general; her final state job was at the utility commission by appointment from Governor Beebe. Wills’s mother was a distant cousin of Edgar L. McHaney, who served twenty-one years on the Arkansas Supreme Court, and …