County: Crittenden - Starting with T

During the mid-1970s and early 1980s, John “Big John” Tate gained notoriety as a successful amateur and professional boxer. As a member of the U.S. Olympic team at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada, Tate won a bronze medal in the heavyweight division. In 1979, Tate defeated Gerrie Coetzee to claim the World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight title. The WBA is an internationally recognized professional boxing organization. John Tate was born in West Memphis (Crittenden County) on January 29, 1955. The second of Bonnie Archer’s seven children, Tate did not know his father (Lavon Tate) and grew up in poverty. Tate struggled academically and left school in the seventh grade. Illiterate and unskilled, he toiled in a variety of …

Johnnie Harrison Taylor was a popular gospel and rhythm and blues singer, known as the “Philosopher of Soul,” whose recording career spanned forty-six years. His single, “Disco Lady,” was the first single ever to be certified platinum. He was added to the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1999. Johnnie Taylor was born in Crawfordsville (Crittenden County) on May 5, 1934. The official date of his birth was not revealed until after his death; he had long claimed to be four years younger. The youngest of three siblings, he was raised by his grandmother in West Memphis (Crittenden County). She was religious and made sure he attended church regularly. He made his church singing debut at age six, and inspired …

Turrell is an incorporated city located along Interstate 55 in northern Crittenden County, about five miles south of the border with neighboring Mississippi County. The town first coalesced in the 1880s around timber-cutting operations owned by Wisconsin native Fletcher E. Turrell, for whom the town is named. Turrell ran the Turrell-Lily Lumber Company, among other local business ventures, and also served as the first postmaster. Aided by the presence of a railroad constructed in 1883, other timber-related businesses thrived at Turrell throughout its history until the cleared forest acreage was utilized as farmland, as it is today. Well before the construction of the railroad, Native Americans once had an established village and built several mounds at what is now Turrell, …