Elizabeth Jacoway (1944–)

Elizabeth (Betsy) Jacoway is a historian, educator, and writer whose scholarship focuses on Arkansas history and the political and social history of the American South. She is particularly known for her work on reform movements and the civil rights movement, especially the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis of 1957–1959. Through her research, teaching, and public history work, Jacoway has played a significant role in situating Arkansas history within broader regional and national narratives.

Elizabeth Jacoway was born on June 16, 1944, and raised in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the daughter of attorney Bronson Cooper Jacoway and Daisy Tribble Jacoway, who was involved in community service; she has two brothers. She attended the city’s public schools and was a student at Forest Heights Junior High School during the desegregation crisis at Central High. Because her family’s position within Little Rock’s business and professional community isolated her somewhat, she later recalled being largely unaware at the time of the full significance and impact of the events surrounding the crisis.

After graduating from Hall High School in 1962, Jacoway attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College from 1962 to 1964 and then completed her BA at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1966. She pursued graduate study at the University of North Carolina, where she was influenced by historian George B. Tindall and began critically examining the history of the modern South and the events she had witnessed as a child. Jacoway earned an MA in 1968 and a PhD in history in 1974. Jacoway married lawyer Timothy Fagan Watson on September 7, 1978, and they have two sons.

Jacoway taught briefly at the University of Florida before returning to Arkansas in 1975. She subsequently taught at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for three years and later at Lyon College in Batesville (Independence County). While teaching, she began what would become a decades-long research project on the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis, drawing on extensive archival research and oral history interviews with participants and observers.

Jacoway devoted approximately thirty years to researching the events of 1957–1959. This work culminated in Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation (2007), a comprehensive study of the political, social, and personal dimensions of the crisis. The book was widely recognized for its depth of research and contribution to public understanding of the events. It received the 2008 Willie Lee Rose Prize, awarded by the Southern Association for Women Historians for the best book in Southern history by a woman, and the 2008 Booker Worthen Literary Prize, awarded by the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) for the best work, fiction or non-fiction, by an author living in Arkansas.

Jacoway co-edited Understanding the Little Rock Crisis: An Exercise in Remembrance and Reconciliation (1999), and her scholarship also includes articles and essays on Southern history, including work on Southern businessmen and desegregation. Jacoway has contributed to public history initiatives and appears as a historian in the documentary Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock, in which she provides historical context on civil rights activist Daisy Bates and the desegregation crisis. Jacoway’s 2019 edited volume No Straight Path: Becoming Women Historians, published by Louisiana State University Press, examines the diverse routes through which women enter the historical profession, often shaped by personal background and experience, and offers insight into how historians come to define themselves and their work.

Materials accumulated during Jacoway’s more than thirty years of research for Turn Away Thy Son are preserved by the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, consisting of interview transcripts, research files, drafts, and audio and video recordings. Jacoway later made her home in Newport (Jackson County), where she continued to write and engage with Arkansas history.

For additional information:
Elizabeth Jacoway Little Rock Crisis Collection (BC.MSS.10.48). Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Central Arkansas Library System, Little Rock, Arkansas. Finding aid online at https://arstudies.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/findingaids/search/searchterm/BC.MSS.10.48 (accessed March 24, 2026).

Jacoway, Elizabeth. Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

Savage, Mollie. “Collecting Oral History: Interview with Elizabeth Jacoway.” Toasted Cheese, July 15, 2009. https://www.toasted-cheese.com/absolute-blank/collecting-oral-history-interview-with-elizabeth-jacoway/ (accessed March 24, 2026).

Williams, Helaine R. “Elizabeth Jacoway.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 4, 2007. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/feb/04/elizabeth-jacoway-20070204/ (accessed March 24, 2026).