Entries - County: Crittenden

Anderson, Andrew Lee (Killing of)

On July 17, 1963, an African American teenager named Andrew Lee Anderson was killed while fleeing from a posse of white citizens and sheriff’s deputies. Anderson’s killing, and its classification as an “excusable homicide,” illustrates how white citizens of Crittenden County could commit acts of violence against Black citizens with impunity at this time and shows how the legal system failed African Americans. Earlier that day, sixteen-year-old Anderson had been mowing a lawn in Marion (Crittenden County) when a white woman accused him of sexually assaulting her eight-year-old daughter. The mother followed Anderson in her car and called for help, attracting some neighbors and local law enforcement who took over the pursuit. The armed posse was composed of six sheriff’s …

Anthonyville (Crittenden County)

Anthonyville is a town located on State Highway 147 in southern Crittenden County. The town has never had a post office, a school, or a railroad depot; it exists largely as a bedroom community for the greater Memphis, Tennessee, area. The population is largely African-American. The rich soil of Crittenden County, replenished by Mississippi River flooding, has long drawn people to the area. Ancient artifacts have been unearthed in the county as reminders of its long history of human habitation. Both Spain and France held ownership of the land for a time, and some Spanish settlers had already established plantations in the county before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 made the land part of the United States. Afterward, American settlers …

Arkansas State University Mid-South

aka: Mid-South Community College

Arkansas State University Mid-South (ASU Mid-South), formerly Mid-South Community College (MSCC), is a two-year public institution located in West Memphis (Crittenden County) and serving Crittenden County and the surrounding area. It is part of the Arkansas State University System. ASU Mid-South focuses upon developing the workforce necessary to attract new business and industry to the east Arkansas Delta area. ASU Mid-South offers a variety of programs including an associate of arts degree in general education, an associate of arts in teaching, an associate of applied science in business technology, an associate of applied science in information system technology, and an associate of applied sciences in aviation maintenance technology. In late 1978, at the request of state representative Lloyd McCuiston and state senator …

Banks, Isadore (Murder of)

Isadore Banks, a fifty-nine-year-old prominent African-American landowner, disappeared on June 4, 1954. Banks’s wife, Alice, last saw him as he left the house with the intention of paying his farmhands. On or about June 8, 1954, Banks’s truck was discovered in a wooded property just outside of Marion (Crittenden County) by Carl Croom, a neighboring landowner. Banks’s loaded shotgun and coat were still inside. Authorities found Banks’s body tied to a tree, mutilated, and burned beyond recognition. Banks had been drenched with fuel and burned from the knees up. A can of gasoline was found close to the body. The coroner, T. H. McGough, found no sign of robbery or struggle at the scene, indicating that the killing may have …

Bauxippi (Crittenden County)

Bauxippi was a short-lived shipping point on the Mississippi River in Crittenden County established by the American Bauxite Company in 1917. The name comes from a combination of the words “bauxite” and “Mississippi.” Very little is known about the community. The first mention of it in the Arkansas Gazette was in the March 7, 1917, issue, which noted that the American Bauxite Company was planning to “resume shipments by a combination rail and water route, sending ore via the Rock Island from here [Bauxite in Saline County] to a new shipping point on the Mississippi, called Bauxippi, and thence by river to East St. Louis.” During World War I, demand had increased for bauxite ore, which is used in the …

Bradley, Thomas H.

Thomas H. Bradley was a planter, state legislator, and brigadier general of the Arkansas State Militia. Given his initial opposition to secession, however, he was unsuccessful with his command during the Civil War. Thomas Bradley was born on July 25, 1808, in Williamson County, Tennessee; records show he had perhaps five siblings. The son of farmers Thomas Bradley and Margaret Bradley, he became a merchant in Franklin, Tennessee. In 1835, Bradley joined the First Tennessee Volunteers to serve in the Second Seminole War. While in the military, he served as both a major and the regimental adjutant. In 1836, he moved to Crittenden County and became a planter. His holdings were located roughly eighteen miles upriver from Memphis, Tennessee. He …

Brandywine [Steamboat]

The Brandywine was a steamboat that caught fire in early April 1832, resulting in a significant loss of life among its passengers. The wreckage became the core of an island that the changing course of the Mississippi River eventually left on the Arkansas side of the channel east of Turrell (Crittenden County). The 483-ton steamboat Brandywine left New Orleans, Louisiana, at 5:00 p.m. on April 3, 1832, with a full load of cargo and 145 passengers and crew members, bound for Louisville, Kentucky. When it was about thirty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, on the evening of April 9, pilot Benjamin T. Head discovered that several carriage wheels and parts that had been packed in straw for transport had caught …

Brownlee, Christine Jackson

Christine Brownlee was mayor of Gilmore (Crittenden County) in 1987–1990 and again in 1997–2002, as well as a state representative in the Seventy-Eighth and Seventy-Ninth Arkansas General Assemblies, serving in 1991–1994 and representing several cities and towns in Mississippi County and a small portion of Crittenden County. She was the first African–American woman to serve as a Republican in the Arkansas General Assembly.  Christine Jackson was born in Jonesboro (Craighead County) on October 16, 1955, to Fannie Murray Wall Jackson, who was a homemaker, and Tom Edward Jackson, a farmer. She was the youngest of ten children. She began her education at the segregated George Washington Carver public school in Marked Tree (Poinsett County). When she was in the third grade, the family moved to Gilmore, near where her father bought a 120-acre farm, and she attended the segregated William R. Golden School in Turrell (Crittenden County). She was salutatorian of her sixth–grade class, a …

Carpenter, Lewis Glen (Lew)

Lewis Glen (Lew) Carpenter had a long career in football, playing in high school, college, and in the National Football League (NFL). He played for the Arkansas Razorbacks from 1949 to 1952, followed by three NFL league championship teams. After ten years as a professional player, he had long career as an NFL coach. Lew Carpenter was born on January 12, 1932, to Verba Glen Carpenter and Edna Earl Pullam Carpenter in Hayti, Missouri. He and his younger brother, Preston Carpenter, grew up in West Memphis (Crittenden County), where he attended high school and played football. In 1951, he married Beverly Ann Holt from nearby Earle (Crittenden County). The couple had four daughters: Cheryl, Cathy, Lisa, and Rebecca. Accepting a …

Carpenter, Preston

Preston Carpenter played football in high school, in college, and in the National Football League (NFL). He played for the Arkansas Razorbacks in the 1952–1955 seasons and went on to play for several teams in a twelve-year professional career. His older brother, Lewis Carpenter, preceded him as a Razorback, and they once played for the same professional team. Verba Preston Carpenter was born in Hayti, Missouri, on January 24, 1934, to Verba Glen Carpenter and Edna Earl Pullam Carpenter. He spent most of his early years in West Memphis (Crittenden County) but graduated from high school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he was an all-state high school football player. A gifted athlete, Carpenter also played baseball in high school years, when …

Clarkedale (Crittenden County)

Although it remained unincorporated until the twenty-first century, Clarkedale is one of the oldest settlements in Crittenden County. Clarkedale is situated near Interstate 55 north of West Memphis (Crittenden County) and very close to Jericho (Crittenden County). Wapanocca Bayou once flowed into the Mississippi River in this vicinity, and several communities have existed in this area since the Archaic Period. During the time the land was claimed by Spain, land grants were issued to Benjamin Fooy, Mundford Perryman, John Grace, and Cathy Gallowhorn. The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–1812 changed the landscape and waterways of northeastern Arkansas. When Crittenden County was established in 1825, the county seat was first placed at Greenock, a settlement located within the current boundaries of …

Claybrook Tigers Baseball Team

An African American semi-professional baseball team located in eastern Arkansas during the 1930s, the Claybrook Tigers played and often beat some of the best Negro League teams around. The small Delta town known as Claybrook, in the southern part of Crittenden County, was an unlikely home for a competitive baseball team. It no longer exists, but at that time it was the farming and logging operation of John C. Claybrook, a hard-working and enterprising man who became one of the most successful Black businessmen in the region. Reportedly, Claybrook formed the team to entice his sports-loving son not to leave the farm for the city life he desired. By the early 1930s, Claybrook had built a stadium on the farm …

Claybrook, John C.

John C. Claybrook was a lumberman, farmer, baseball team owner, and one of the most successful African American businessmen of his time in the South. He built a town around his farming and logging operation in eastern Arkansas and eventually gained national attention for being among the first African Americans in the South since Reconstruction, if not the first, chosen to sit on a jury trying black men for the rape of a white woman. John Claybrook was born on June 11, 1872, in Florence, Alabama. His parents’ names and occupations are unknown. He ran away to Memphis when he was thirteen to find work, which he soon found as a laborer on riverboats. After renting and working some plantation …

Cloar, Carroll James

Carroll James Cloar was a painter who earned national acclaim as a realist and surrealist. The majority of his works had conceptual ideas based on his memories from his childhood in east Arkansas. His paintings are characterized by flattened figures in landscapes formed of decorative patterning. One of his paintings was chosen to be among six paintings by American artists commemorating President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. Carroll Cloar was born on January 18, 1913, on a farm approximately ten miles north of Earle (Crittenden County). The son of Charles Wesley Cloar and Julia Eva Cloar, he had three brothers and one sister. He spent his childhood on his parents’ cotton farm. At the age of seventeen, Cloar moved to …

Cooper, John Alfred, Jr.

John Cooper Jr. led Cooper Communities, the real estate development company founded by his father, John A. Cooper Sr., through a period of outstanding growth. The firm was a pioneer and a recognized leader in the field of recreational and retirement living. John Alfred Cooper Jr. was born on September 13, 1938, in Memphis, Tennessee, to John Alfred Cooper Sr. and Mildred Borum Cooper, spending much of his youth in West Memphis (Crittenden County). He had three sisters. He graduated from Christian Brothers High School in Memphis and spent a post-graduate year at the Marion Military Institute in Marion, Alabama. He attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). There, he majored in business and was a member …

Cooper, John Alfred, Sr.

John A. Cooper Sr. was the founder, chief executive officer, and board chair of Cooper Communities, Inc. He and the business he founded were pioneers in establishing the recreational and retirement community industry in America. His first master-planned retirement community was Cherokee Village (Fulton and Sharp counties), which he formed near the northeastern Arkansas town of Hardy (Sharp County). His company eventually developed various projects across the southeastern United States, including the Arkansas communities of Cherokee Village in 1954, Bella Vista (Benton County) in 1965, Hot Springs Village (Garland and Saline Counties) in 1970, and Sienna Lake (Pulaski County) in 2005, as well as Tellico Village, Tennessee in 1986; Savanah Lakes Village, South Carolina, in 1989; Stonebridge Village, Missouri, in …

Corvett, George (Lynching of)

A white laborer named George Corvett was lynched on February 12, 1890, two miles west of Crawfordsville (Crittenden County) for having allegedly raped and murdered a young woman named Ada Goss. According to the Arkansas Gazette, Ada Goss was the daughter of H. C. Goss, “a highly respected citizen,” and the Goss and Corvett families were related by marriage, with George Corvett working for H. C. Goss. The 1880 federal census records an Ada Goss, then about five years old, living with her parents, H. C. and Laura Goss, and two siblings. Her father worked as a farmer. The census does not record anyone named George Corvett (or similarly named) living in the vicinity. On the night of February 11, …

Crawfordsville (Crittenden County)

Crawfordsville is a second-class city located on U.S. Highway 64 in central Crittenden County, about halfway between Earle (Crittenden County) and Marion (Crittenden County). Crawfordsville benefits from a slightly higher elevation (ten to fifteen feet) in comparison to its immediate neighbors, and its history is largely unblemished by the devastation that floods have exacted on nearby communities. City establishment began as an outgrowth of the timber industry in eastern Arkansas during the post–Civil War era, and the opening of a railroad line through the community sustained city growth as its economy transitioned from timber to farming during the early twentieth century. Unlike other communities in Crittenden County that diminished or disappeared once the timber-rich acreage had been cleared, Crawfordsville continued …

Crittenden County

  Crittenden County is located in east-central Arkansas. Its eastern and southern boundaries are the Mississippi River. To its west are Lee, St. Francis, and Cross counties. Mississippi County and Poinsett County form its northern borders. According to historian Margaret Woolfolk, “Crittenden is entirely on the bottom land of the Mississippi River….Total thickness of the sediment exceeds 100 feet.” Because of its astonishing fertility, the area became an obvious location for agricultural development. In the modern era, it has also become a major transportation thoroughfare. European Exploration and Settlement Artifacts found in Crittenden County—including effigy pipes, stone ear plugs, and ornaments—testify to a long habitation of the area by Native Americans. Some archaeologists place the location of Pacaha, visited by …

Crittenden County Courthouse

The Crittenden County Courthouse is a two-story brick building erected on the courthouse square in Marion (Crittenden County). Construction of the building was completed in 1911 in the Classical Revival style of architecture. The courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 3, 1977. The first Crittenden County seat was established in the town of Greenock. The first court was held in the home of William Lloyd in June 1826. In 1836, the county seat moved from Greenock to Marion. The present-day courthouse is one of three structures that have been built in Marion to serve as the county’s seat of government. The original courthouse in Marion was a frame building, which was destroyed by a cyclone …

Crittenden County Executions of 1871

John Roseborough and Henry Harris, both African American men convicted of murder, were hanged at Marion (Crittenden County) on June 9, 1871; before the execution, they attempted to keep from going to the gallows by barricading themselves in a cell. No accounts appear to exist of their trials, but Roseborough was convicted of killing “old man” William Freeman, while Harris was sentenced to death for the murder of John B. Crockett. Both were to be executed on June 9, 1871. A Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper reported the day before the scheduled execution that the Crittenden County sheriff “has been selecting a guard of white men to surround the scaffold during the executions because he feared a rescue by the negroes, ten …

Crittenden County Expulsion of 1888

In July 1888, a group of influential white citizens in Crittenden County expelled a number of prominent African-American citizens and county officials. Apparently weary of the fusion governments that had prevailed there for years, as well as fearful of the outcome of the upcoming September and November elections, they hoped their actions would intimidate black voters and ensure a victory for white Democrats. Following the Civil War, land agents began to recruit black laborers from around the South to work in the cotton fields. By 1870, the black population in Crittenden County had reached sixty-seven percent, the majority for the first time. The emergence of a black middle class tied to the Republican Party threatened the hegemony of the white …

Crittenden County Lynching of 1840

In early December of 1840, two unidentified escaped slaves were hanged in Crittenden County for allegedly murdering their owner, Major Thomas E. Clark. At the time of the 1840 census, Clark was living in Jasper Township and owned three slaves. When Clark discovered that the two men were gone, he and Colonel James Martin pursued them. Clark and Martin were separated during the chase, and Clark was alone when he encountered the fugitives. Martin, who was nearby, heard Clark crying out, but by the time he arrived at the scene, Clark was dead. When area citizens learned of the crime, they caught the two escapees and hanged them from a nearby tree “as examples for other refractory slaves.” The Arkansas …

Devil’s Knot

Mara Leveritt’s 2002 book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three focuses on the facts of the 1993 murder of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis (Crittenden County) and the controversial court case that followed. One of the teenagers of the so-called West Memphis Three convicted in the case was sentenced to death, while two others were condemned to life in jail without parole; the three were freed in 2011. The murders remained unsolved. The book depicts a bleak picture of small-town Arkansas in the 1990s, providing background for how, in the author’s view, this case assumed a level of hysteria that in many ways equaled the Salem Witch Trials. The book provoked a larger discussion about …

Earle (Crittenden County)

Earle is an incorporated city in western Crittenden County located on U.S. Highway 64 near the border with neighboring Cross County. The history of Earle is really that of two towns—Earle and Norvell—which grew alongside each other for decades and were separated only by a boundary line running down present-day Ruth Street in Earle. Both towns arose as a result of the timber industry boom following the Civil War and shared most of the same civic and business leaders. In 1888, a railroad line through the southern part of Earle was established, which benefited Earle more than its smaller neighbor, as the route of the railroad bypassed Norvell entirely. Talks of merging the two towns lingered for more than sixty …

Earle Race Riot of 1970

The Earle Race Riot of 1970 broke out in the late evening of September 10 and continued into the early hours of September 11, 1970. The violence erupted when a group of whites armed with guns and clubs attacked a group of unarmed African Americans who were marching to the Earle (Crittenden County) city hall to protest segregated conditions in the town’s school system. Five African Americans were wounded, including two women who were shot (one wounded seriously), but they all survived. Among the wounded were the Reverend Ezra Greer, who was a civil rights activist, and his wife, Jackie Greer. Both of the Greers were running for elected office in Earle. Earle’s black residents had been advocating for racial …

Earle, Josiah Francis

Josiah Francis Earle was a landowner in eastern Arkansas who served in the Civil War as a Confederate officer. The town of Earle (Crittenden County) is named for him. Born on September 15, 1828, in Camden County, North Carolina, Earle was the second child of Josiah Earle and Nancy Lamb Earle. His father owned a number of trade ships operating in the Atlantic between the United States and the West Indies. At least one source lists Earle as serving during the Mexican War, although it is not clear if he actually participated in the conflict. He moved to Arkansas as a young man, settling in Crittenden County. He appeared on an 1850 listing of residents in Proctor Township, Crittenden County, …

Edmondson (Crittenden County)

Edmondson is a town on State Highway 131 about three miles south of Interstate 40. As of the 2010 census, two-thirds of the population of Edmondson is African American. Much of Crittenden County was forested swampland when the county was established in 1825. Fifty years later, the Edmondson area was described as a “terrible canebrake full of bear, panther, wolves, possum, and squirrel.” Land was being cleared before the Civil War for cotton plantations, and a settlement was named for Andrew Edmondson, who arrived from Virginia in the 1840s and died in 1852. His family remained, and a post office bearing their name was established in 1859. A Methodist church for white citizens was built in Edmondson before the war. …

Edmondson Home and Improvement Company v. Harold E. Weaver

Edmondson Home and Improvement Company v. Harold E. Weaver was a civil suit in the Crittenden County Chancery Court between 1941 and 1948. The Edmondson Home and Improvement Company initiated the suit to contest Harold Weaver’s acquisition of 588 town lots and hundreds of acres of farmland in and around the town of Edmondson (Crittenden County). The land belonging to the Edmondson Home and Improvement Company and other African-American citizens of Edmondson was conveyed to Weaver, a white man, by the State of Arkansas after the sheriff and tax collector of Crittenden County declared that the owners of the lands were delinquent for failure to pay property taxes. The leadership of the Edmondson Home and Improvement Company claimed that they …

Eskridge, Thomas P.

Thomas P. Eskridge was a judge on the Superior Court of Arkansas Territory, which eventually became the Arkansas Supreme Court. Though he left the spotlight to others, he played a substantive role in the development of the Arkansas court system. While there is little documentation on his early life, it appears that Thomas Eskridge was born around 1797 to William Eskridge and Elizabeth Scott Eskridge in Staunton, Virginia. He came from a large family with possibly as many as ten children. It is believed that he received his legal training serving as a clerk for a Virginia lawyer. He moved to Arkansas in 1820 or 1821, just as the Arkansas Territory was developing and its judiciary was taking shape. Eskridge …

Eudy, Sid

aka: Sid Vicious

Sid Eudy is a professional wrestler who has used the ring names Lord Humongous, Sid Justice, Sid Vicious, and Sycho Sid. He is the only Arkansan to win the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) Championship and the World Championship Wrestling (WCW) World Heavyweight Championship. Sidney Ray Eudy was born on December 16, 1960; according to some sources, his birthplace was West Memphis (Crittenden County). Eudy got started in the business with the help of professional wrestlers Randy Savage and Lanny Poffo. Eudy spent the beginning of his career wrestling in the southern United States as Lord Humongous, a persona who wore a hockey mask. In 1989, he signed a contract with World Championship Wrestling, a company based in Atlanta, Georgia. He …

Fogleman, John Albert

John Albert Fogleman was a lawyer who spent seventy years in the profession, including fourteen years as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, the last one as chief justice. Fogleman was an unusually congenial litigant and judge, liked by his colleagues and opponents and known for his scholarship, copious opinions, and rigid, conservative application of constitutional and statutory law.  A descendant of pioneer settlers of Crittenden County, John Fogleman was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 5, 1911, one of three sons of John Franklin Fogleman and Marie Julia McAdams Fogleman. He was reared and educated in Marion (Crittenden County) and enrolled at the University of Arkansas (UA) in  Fayetteville (Washington County) at the age of fifteen, where he received a bachelor of arts degree. As a freshman at the university, he met and, three years later, married Annis Adell Appleby …

Ford, L. L. (Execution of)

L. L. Ford was one of two men hanged for the 1879 murder of a Crittenden County man, though many believed him innocent and he denied being involved in the crime. On October 26, 1879, four masked men rode up to the home of John Broadway, age fifty-five, about ten miles north of Marion (Crittenden County). One of them was John Potter, who worked for Broadway and believed that Broadway had $300 in his home. When Broadway tried to defend himself, another robber, Hiram Jeffries, shot him down. The four men fled, having netted only eight dollars. Potter, Jeffries, L. L. Ford, and Cal Huey were arrested and charged with Broadway’s murder. Huey got a change of venue to Mississippi …

Fox, Warren (Lynching of)

On July 9, 1915, an African-American man named Warren Fox was lynched in Crittenden County for allegedly murdering a white man named John Millett. There is almost no information available on the principals in this incident. The Arkansas Gazette identified Millett as a “Frenchman and gardener” who worked for G. W. Sims on his plantation at the Crittenden county community of Kanema. Although the Gazette noted that Millett had previously been in Caruthersville, Missouri, and Johnson City, Illinois, he is not listed in census records for Arkansas, Missouri, or Illinois. Similarly, there is no record of an appropriate Warren Fox in Arkansas census records. George W. Sims, however, is well known. He owned extensive property in Crittenden County and worked …

Gammon, John, Jr.

John Gammon Jr. was a founder and first president of the Arkansas Negro Farmers Association, in addition to being a rural civil rights activist who challenged segregated schools in his native Crittenden County. His reputation was such that he was remembered after his death as “Eastern Arkansas’s Martin Luther King.” Born in Marion (Crittenden County) on June 8, 1904 (as listed on his World War II draft card, although sources vary on his birth date and year), to farmers John Gammon and Mary Jane Ray Gammon, he was a 1927 graduate of Memphis, Tennessee’s LeMoyne Normal Institute (the predecessor to LeMoyne-Owen College). In 1931, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Arkansas AM&N College (now the University of Arkansas at Pine …

Garland, Mamie Odessa Hale

Mamie Odessa Hale Garland served as midwife consultant for the Arkansas Department of Health from 1945 to 1950 and is credited with training the state’s elderly and illiterate “granny midwives” to ensure that they knew the proper techniques to manage the medical aspects of pregnancy, labor, and delivery and could complete birth certificates. Her contributions led to Arkansas’s improved maternal/infant mortality rates and regulation of midwives. Mamie Odessa Hale was born November 19, 1910, in Keeny’s Creek, West Virginia. She was the third child born to Emanuel Hale and Minnie Maude Creasy Hale. In 1941, Hale attended the Tuskegee School of Nurse-Midwifery for Colored Nurses in Alabama, a program sponsored by the Children’s Bureau; a bachelor’s degree was required to …

Gathings, Ezekiel Candler “Took”

Ezekiel Candler “Took” Gathings represented Arkansas’s First Congressional District for thirty years (1939–1969). Throughout this period, he championed the interests of the neo-plantation elite who dominated politics and society in that region and was one of a powerful bloc of conservative Southern Democrats who frequently fought against social reform legislation introduced by more liberal members of their party. “Took” Gathings was born the youngest of eight children of Melville W. Gathings and Virgie Garner Gathings on November 10, 1903, in Prairie, Mississippi. As an infant, his parents referred to him as “Sugar,” which his two-year-old brother pronounced “Tooker”; hence, the nickname that eventually supplanted his given name. His family later moved to Earle (Crittenden County), where he graduated from high …

George Berry Washington Memorial

The George Berry Washington Memorial, located near Earle (Crittenden County), is the burial place of a man born a slave who rose to become an African-American social leader and one of the largest landowners in the county in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. George Washington Jr. was born on December 25, 1864, the son of George Washington and Hanna Washington. His parents were both born in Kentucky and were possibly the slaves of James G. Berry, one of Crittenden County’s largest landowners, who moved to Arkansas from Kentucky as early as 1833. In May 1883, Washington—who now went by the name George Berry Washington—married eighteen-year-old Ella Rostelle. They had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1886 and a second daughter, …

Gilbert, John (Lynching of)

John Gilbert was an African American man lynched on July 20, 1903, near Pinckney Landing on the Mississippi River in Crittenden County following a shootout with his employer. Henry J. Hubert, thirty-five, leased a plantation from S. P. Williford of Memphis, Tennessee, on Cat Island on the Mississippi River about thirty miles south of Memphis. Hubert was known as a largely even-tempered man who “was not known to encourage a quarrel unless he thought an injury had been done him, and then his courage asserted itself without regard for the consequences.” John Gilbert and Jim Hawker were among the people who worked for Hubert, and the pair owed him between $12 and $15. Another local planter named A. L. Tribble …

Gilmore (Crittenden County)

Gilmore is a small incorporated community in northern Crittenden County, situated along U.S. Highway 63, about two miles south of the Poinsett–Mississippi county line. Gilmore attracted interests in the timber industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and later became an agricultural community after the land was cleared. The first white settlers began immigrating to the Gilmore area in the 1850s, about thirty years before construction of the first nearby railroad. Virginia-born John Gilmore, for whom the community and later rail station were named, moved to the area with his family by way of Missouri in the late 1850s. As a young man, he distinguished himself as a hunter and outdoorsman and made his fortune as one of …

Great Balls of Fire!

Great Balls of Fire! is a 1989 motion picture loosely based on pioneering rock and roll star Jerry Lee Lewis. Several scenes of Great Balls of Fire! were filmed on location in the Arkansas towns of Marion (Crittenden County) and West Memphis (Crittenden County), with other filming taking place in nearby Memphis, Tennessee. It starred Dennis Quaid as Lewis, Winona Ryder as the thirteen-year-old cousin whom he married, and Alec Baldwin as another cousin, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. The 108-minute film was based on a book by Myra Brown Lewis and was directed by Jim McBride. It follows Jerry Lee Lewis’s early career in 1956 through 1959 as he rose to stardom. A pivotal plot point is his controversial marriage to …

Green, Steve

In 1910, an Arkansas tenant farmer named Steve Green fled the state to Chicago, Illinois, after allegedly killing his employer, William Sidle (sometimes referred to as Seidel or Saddle), near Jericho (Crittenden County). He narrowly escaped extradition back to Arkansas after his case was taken up by prominent African Americans in Chicago, including Ida Wells-Barnett. There is no record of Steve Green in Arkansas census records. According to an article written by W. E. B. Du Bois in the November 10, 1910, issue of The Crisis, Green was born in Tennessee in 1862 and was totally uneducated. There was an African American named Steve Green living in Civil District 15 in Shelby County, Tennessee, in 1900. He was born in …

Greenock (Crittenden County)

Greenock was a promising settlement, active in the 1820s and 1830s, located near the banks of the Mississippi River in northeastern Arkansas. Before its demise, it was designated as the inaugural county seat of Crittenden County. Alexander Ferguson, his wife, and three sons (William, Horatio, and Allen) arrived in the Arkansas Territory in 1820 and settled in present-day Crittenden County near the banks of the Mississippi River. During the next few years, the family established its own homestead and began developing plans for the founding of a town. Horatio Ferguson provided fifty acres for the sum of one dollar, with John Fooy supplying an additional five acres. In 1827, William Ferguson, who was serving as justice of the peace and …

Greer, William Ezra

William Ezra Greer was a minister and civil rights and social activist in Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s. Ezra Greer was born in Illinois around 1925, but a lack of documentation makes it impossible to identify his exact date of birth. Not much is known about his early life, but early on he became a minister with the Church of God in Christ. He became particularly active in the Church of God in Christ’s department of evangelism and directed the public relations efforts of the church. Greer also served as a “national evangelist” for the church and conducted revivals around the country. He appears to have been assigned to Alabama; settling in Birmingham in the early 1950s, he served …

Hallelujah

Hallelujah (1929), one of the earliest Hollywood feature films shot on location in Arkansas, was innovative in several ways. It was the first talking picture made by popular director King Vidor and one of the first Hollywood pictures with an exclusively African American cast. It also introduced an early form of sound dubbing. Vidor had wanted to make a movie with an all-Black cast for many years, but studio chiefs at Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) rejected the idea until Vidor suggested making a musical. Even then, Vidor had to defer his usual $100,000 directing salary against any of the film’s profits. Hallelujah tells the story of a young sharecropper-turned-preacher who must fight the temptations of a beautiful city girl. The …

Hodges, Asa

Asa Hodges was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives. He represented the First District of Arkansas in the Forty-Third Congress, serving from 1873 to 1875. Asa Hodges was born on January 22, 1822, near Moulton, Alabama, to William Hodges and Jeanette Daugherty Hodges. He and his family later moved to Marion (Crittenden County). After receiving his early education in local schools, he graduated from LaGrange College in LaGrange, Missouri, in 1848. Hodges also studied law and was admitted to the Alabama state bar in 1848. He then began to practice law, working first in the offices of L. P. Walker in Florence, Alabama, and later forming a legal partnership with Thomas M. Peters, who would later …

Hopefield (Crittenden County)

Hopefield was a small town on the Mississippi River in eastern Crittenden County near present-day West Memphis (Crittenden County) and across from present-day Mud Island in Memphis, Tennessee. As a railroad terminal and river landing, the town was pivotal in the development of transportation and commerce between Tennessee and Arkansas during the nineteenth century, but devastation from war, disease, commercial setbacks, and the geological power of the Mississippi itself ultimately destroyed Hopefield in the early twentieth century. Hopefield traces its origin to a Dutch immigrant named Benjamin Fooy (also spelled “Foy”), who established a Spanish encampment (Foy’s Point) in 1795, which was built to regulate river traffic and discourage American encroachment past the Mississippi River. He had been appointed by the …

Hopefield, Burning of

This punitive expedition relates to Union army efforts to secure Memphis, Tennessee, as a supply and hospital base capable of supporting ongoing operations against Vicksburg, Mississippi. It stands as an early example of the shift toward hard war tactics that would increase throughout the remainder of the war. The decision to burn the village of Hopefield (Crittenden County), directly across the Mississippi River from Memphis, had roots in events initiated in January 1863, including a similar expedition conducted against Mound City (Crittenden County). In early January, under orders from Trans-Mississippi Department commander Lieutenant General Theophilus H. Holmes, Captain James H. McGehee led his unattached company of Arkansas cavalry on an extended raid through Crittenden County with orders to scout the …

Horseshoe Lake (Crittenden County)

The town of Horseshoe Lake is located on the old Seyppel area in Crittenden County at the east end of the lake from which it takes its name. Horseshoe Lake is predominately a bedroom community, with the surrounding area consisting of farmland where cotton, feed corn, soybeans, and milo are grown. Some cattle are also raised on the high ground of the levee. The Great River Road encircles the lake. Several legendary blues musicians, including B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, and Hurbert Sumlin, once played in juke joints on the plantations. Pre-European Exploration The remnants of Native American civilizations surround Horseshoe Lake. The oldest recorded Indian mounds in the area are believed to be pre-Mississippian, as evidenced from artifacts found dating back to around …

Jennette (Crittenden County)

Jennette is a largely African-American town in western Crittenden County, located north of the Shearerville (Crittenden County) exit on Interstate 40. Jennette is variously spelled Jeanette, Jennettee, and Jenette. The location of what is now Jennette was swampy hardwood forest until early in the twentieth century, when the Edwards Fair Lumber Company, based in Crawfordsville (Crittenden County), cleared the land. Various drainage ditches were dug to make the cleared land suitable for farming. The origin of the name Jennette is unknown. Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church was established in Jennette around 1900. A post office opened in Jennette in February 1904 and continued operating until May 1927. A school was organized on the Baptist church property in 1908. The school …