The River Valley Arts Center in Russellville (Pope County) offers art classes; week-long immersion art camps; more than forty exhibitions each year; and live performances in storytelling, music, and dance. The center receives small corporate and foundation grants and a grant from the Arkansas Arts Council but is supported mainly by memberships. The impetus behind the establishment of the nonprofit River Valley Arts Center was Richard Barton, who was born and raised in Russellville. After his military service, he studied and painted abroad for about ten years. After returning to Arkansas, he shared his passion for art with others. On June 27, 1981, Barton met with Charolette Doty, John Hlass, Sue Gray, Marge Crabaugh, Bonita Church, Bobbie Moore, Faye Crumpler, …
Riverfest Arts and Music Festival was Arkansas’s premier summer event, offering three days of music on the banks of the Arkansas River in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) and North Little Rock (Pulaski County). Operated by Riverfest Inc., a nonprofit organization overseen by a board of directors, Riverfest attracted more than 250,000 people in 2013, creating an economic impact of more than $30 million in the local community. Founded by the Junior League of Little Rock as the Summer Arts Festival in July 1978, the first Riverfest presented the American Wind Symphony and other activities at Murray Park. Following the event’s initial success, the date of the Summer Arts Festival was moved the next year to its well-known Memorial Day weekend …
Arkansas has approximately 90,000 miles of rivers and streams. Thirty-three rivers are generally recognized as passing through Arkansas or along one of its borders; more than half of Arkansas’s rivers also enter or run along the borders of other states. While river travel has many hazards—including rapids and hidden snags—until the second half of the nineteenth century, the rivers of Arkansas often provided the best means of transportation for residents and visitors, and many cities and towns were established because of their proximity to rivers. A river is a narrow body of water with land on two sides, generally flowing downhill until it empties into another river or into a lake, sea, or ocean. All rivers are streams, but smaller …
Diana Rivers is an author, artist, and promoter of women’s communities and art venues. Rivers has published numerous short stories and eight novels in the genre of speculative fiction, seven of which compose the Hadra series. Rivers lives in Madison County. Diana Rivers was born Diana Duer Smith on October 17, 1931, in New York City and grew up in suburban New Jersey near Morristown. Her parents, Schuyler Smith and Elizabeth Larocque, separated before she was three years old. Her mother wrote poems and stories, publishing a book of verse, Satan’s Shadow, in 1930. Rivers’s great-aunt Caroline King Duer was a poet and an editor for Vogue magazine, and her other great-aunt, Alice Duer Miller, wrote poems, stories, novels, plays, …
Eurith Dickinson (E. D.) Rivers was an important political figure in the American South. From the 1920s to the 1940s, Dickinson served in the Georgia state government as a Democrat. He was visible in both regional and national politics before and after the Great Depression. Although he became an important figure in Georgia’s political history, Rivers was born in southwestern Arkansas. E. D. Rivers was born on December 1, 1895, in Center Point (Howard County). His mother, Millie Annie Rivers, was a native of Tennessee. His father, James Matthew Rivers, was originally from Atlanta, Georgia. His parents were both of English descent and had ancestors who were of English nobility. The family moved to Georgia during Rivers’s early teens. Rivers …
Sam Rivers—a multi-instrumentalist, band leader, and composer who was on the cutting edge of jazz for sixty years—spent three formative years in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he learned, at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic School, how to play the tenor saxophone, the instrument with which he is most closely identified. Samuel Carthorne Rivers Jr. was born on September 25, 1923, in El Reno, Oklahoma. His father, Sam Rivers Sr., was a singer with both the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers (consisting of students at Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville, Tennessee) and the Chicago-based Silvertone Quartet. Rivers’s mother, Lillian Taylor Rivers, was the accompanist for the quartet, which was on tour in Oklahoma when Sam Jr. was born. Both of …
Completed in 1926, the Rivervale Inverted Siphons were a prerequisite to permanent settlement in eastern Poinsett County and adjacent areas in the St. Francis River and Little River basins. The siphons provided relief from overflow and outlet for runoff from Craighead and Mississippi counties and portions of southeastern Missouri. One of the first components in the comprehensive drainage plan devised for Drainage District Number Seven of Poinsett County, the Rivervale Inverted Siphons also permitted the immediate agricultural development and economic exploitation of parts of Poinsett County and those counties in Missouri and Arkansas tributary to District Seven. They were also a necessary response to the proliferation of organized drainage and levee districts in the early twentieth century. The siphons were …
Paul Riviere served as Arkansas Secretary of State from 1979 until 1985 and was a candidate for Arkansas’s Second Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1984. Unsuccessful in that bid, he moved to Brentwood, Tennessee, in 1986, where he established himself as a respected and successful real estate professional in the central Tennessee area. Paul Riviere was born on July 17, 1947, in Monticello (Drew County) to Frank Riviere and Maybell Barnett Riviere. Raised in Monticello, he developed an interest in politics while campaigning with his father, who sought the position of Drew County tax assessor. While a student at Monticello High School, Riviere was elected student body president and selected to be a delegate to …
From the creation of Arkansas Territory to present-day Arkansas, road construction has been critical to the development of the state. The construction of roads helped to increase the population of the state in the early years by improving access to areas west of the Delta. The Delta, made up of swamplands, streams, and rivers located in eastern Arkansas, had always been a major obstacle to travel west from the Mississippi River. The earliest routes used for transportation in Arkansas were rivers and creeks due in large part to the number of open waterways in Arkansas and the fact that travel on foot was difficult in swampy areas. These waterways were used by Native Americans and early explorers. Later, Indian trails …
Andree Yvonne Layton Roaf was an Arkansas attorney and jurist. A 1996 inductee to the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, Roaf distinguished herself in the fields of biology, law, and community service. Andree Layton was born on March 31, 1941, in Nashville, Tennessee. The daughter of William W. Layton, a government official, and Phoebe A. Layton, an educator, she grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and in White Hall and Muskegon Heights, Michigan. She had two sisters. She graduated from high school in Muskegon in 1958. Originally intending to pursue a career in the biological sciences, she attended Michigan State University and received a BS in zoology in 1962. While an undergraduate, she met, and subsequently married in July 1963, another …
Phoebe Alison Roaf, who grew up in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), was the first African American and first woman to be elected as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee. She was consecrated on May 4, 2019, at Hope Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, as the fourth bishop of the diocese. Previously, in 2008, she became the first African American woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. Phoebe Alison Roaf was born in Lansing, Michigan, on March 8, 1964, but grew up in Pine Bluff, the daughter of Clifton Roaf and Andree Layton Roaf. Her father was a dentist who served on the Pine Bluff School Board and the Arkansas State Board of Higher Education. …
Willie Roaf became one of the greatest football players in Arkansas sports history and one of the best offensive linemen ever in the National Football League (NFL). He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2012. William Roaf was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on April 18, 1970, one of four children of dentist Clifton Roaf and attorney Andree Layton Roaf. (Andree Roaf was the first African-American female member of the Arkansas Supreme Court and the second woman ever to serve in that capacity.) Though he played football at Pine Bluff High School, graduating in 1988, he was not recruited by any major colleges. After he was told that he would need to gain more weight …
John Selden Roane was a lawyer, planter, soldier, and governor of Arkansas. He is best known for his service in the Mexican War and his efforts to deal with the state’s financial crisis following the failure of its banking system. John Roane, the son of storekeeper and slaveholder Hugh Roane and Hannah (Calhoun) Roane, was born in Lebanon, Tennessee, on January 8, 1817. He was part of a prominent political family, and his uncle Archibald Roane served as governor of Tennessee from 1801 to 1803. John Roane was educated in a Tennessee common school and later attended Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky. Roane moved to Arkansas in 1837 and settled in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), where he studied law under his …
The Rob Roy was a steamboat plying the route between Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans, Louisiana, when it suffered a fatal boiler explosion near Columbia (Chicot County) in 1836. This was not the first deadly accident involving the Rob Roy’s boilers. On July 19, 1835, the steamboat was approaching the shore to drop off a passenger about fifteen miles above New Madrid, Missouri, when it hit an underwater snag. The collision raised the Rob Roy’s bow several feet above the surface of the Mississippi River, causing a connecting pipe to break in two places and the boilers’ contents to spill out, scalding several deck passengers. At least four people died from the scalding, and three who jumped overboard to escape …
aka: Robert Spears
Bob Robbins became a fixture of Arkansas radio in 1967, when he began working for KAAY in Little Rock (Pulaski County). In 1979, Robbins moved to KSSN 96 FM, Arkansas’s top country station. Robbins stayed with KSSN until the end of 2013. After that, he was heard on classic country station 105.1 “The Wolf.” In 1996, Robbins was named Broadcast Personality of the Year by the Country Music Association. In 2008, he was inducted into the Country Radio Broadcasters’ DJ Hall of Fame. Bob Robbins was born Robert Spears in Auburndale, Florida, on May 16, 1944. His father died from cancer when Spears was one month old. Spears, his siblings, and their mother were living on a farm in Ashford, …
Roy Roberts, a native of Magnolia (Columbia County), rose through the ranks of the automotive industry from management trainee to vice president of General Motors Corporation (GM), only the second African American to hold such a high position in the corporation. He was a pioneer in the field, and by the end of his over twenty-year leadership career with GM, he was one of the most powerful executives in the automotive industry. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2000. Roy Stewart Roberts was born in Magnolia on March 26, 1939. He was one of ten children of Turner Ray Roberts and Erma Lee Livingston Roberts. His father worked at several jobs, and his mother was …
Terrence James Roberts made history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African-American students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The world watched as they braved constant intimidation and threats from those who opposed integration of the formerly all-white high school. Terrence Roberts, the eldest of seven children, was born on December 3, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to William and Margaret Roberts. His father was a World War II naval veteran who worked at the Veteran’s Administration (VA) hospital in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), and his mother ran a catering service from home. Roberts was a sophomore at Horace Mann High School when he volunteered to integrate Little Rock’s Central High …
There is much confusion about the lynching of alleged arsonist Frank Robertson, which occurred in late March 1903. Newspapers from the time give a variety of dates for the event, ranging from March 26 to March 28. Many of the reports were datelined Lewisville (Lafayette County), although other newspapers called it New Louisville or New Lewisville; this would be the present-day Lafayette County seat of Lewisville, which was referred to as “New Lewisville” after the town moved closer to the railroad line in the late nineteenth century. Adding to the confusion, when the U.S. Congress issued an apology in 2005 for its historical inaction on lynching, its report said that Robertson’s lynching occurred on March 27 just across the Louisiana–Arkansas …
Irene Robertson was an interviewer and writer for the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project in Arkansas. She preserved the life stories and experiences of former slaves—or, in some cases, their children—then living in the counties of Crittenden, Lee, Monroe, Phillips, Prairie, and St. Francis. Using her straightforward style of reporting, she prepared 290 out of a total of 300 slave narratives produced in the above counties. She also prepared approximately 116 narratives from interviews with older white residents. Irene Robertson was born in May 1893, possibly in Troy in Greenwood County, South Carolina, near the “Hard Labor” section of Edgefield County, where her parents had lived. Robertson’s father, Samuel Elisha Robertson, a farmer, was born in Edgefield County; he was a …
Thomas Arthur Robertson is a painter known for portraits, abstract paintings, and screen prints whose works are included in numerous public and private collections. Three of his pieces—the watercolor Anthurium and the serigraphs The Orange Point and Flight—are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. Thomas Arthur Robertson was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on July 19, 1911. Robertson’s father, Thomas N. Robertson, was an attorney and secretary of the Arkansas Law School. Following graduation from Little Rock High School, young Robertson enrolled in the law school and began studying contract and real estate law. Soon, however, with his father’s blessing, Robertson decided against legal study in favor of a career in art. …
Wendel Archibald Robertson was a World War I fighter pilot who was one of two World War I flying aces from Arkansas. Wendel Archibald Robinson was born on May 7, 1894, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, the eldest of three children of R. Scott Robertson and Elizabeth Robertson. He grew up in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), where his father worked in a wholesale grocery business, the Reynolds-Davis Grocery Company. He attended schools in Fort Smith prior to going to the Holbrook Preparatory School in Briarcliff, New York, and graduating from Yale University in 1915. He returned to Arkansas, working in his father’s business and with the Clear Creek Oil and Gas Company. Robertson enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Officer Candidate School at …
aka: Robes of the Three Villages
The “Robes of Splendor” are a pair of mid-eighteenth-century animal-hide robes believed to have been painted by a Quapaw artist and given to French colonists. The Three Villages Robe is believed to depict the French settlement at Arkansas Post and a battle scene between two groups of Native Americans, while the Buffalo Dancers Robe includes what appears to be a Quapaw ceremony. Originally in the Musee de l’Homme in Paris, France, they were later moved to the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, also in Paris. The Three Villages Robe, according to the authors of Arkansas Made, “depicts several scenes that include a representation of the eighteenth-century Quapaw villages that were situated on the lower Arkansas River and a European-style settlement …
Reuben William (R. W.) Robins was a highly successful trial lawyer who practiced in state and federal courts for thirty-three years and started a bank in his hometown of Conway (Faulkner County). He then spent the last six and a half years of his life as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, continuing to write opinions on his sickbed until a few days before his death. Robins and his older brother, Francis E. “Frank” Robins, who together with his heirs owned and published the daily Log Cabin Democrat newspaper in Conway for a century, were prominent citizens and political leaders of the city. Their parents, J. William Robins and Minnie Freeman Robins, who were farmers, moved from Shelby County, …
aka: Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium
Built in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) during the Great Depression as a Public Works Administration (PWA) project, the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium—known since 1973 as the Robinson Center Music Hall—frequently hosts touring performances, including Broadway musicals, and is home to the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. Named for Lonoke County native Joseph Taylor Robinson, who was governor of Arkansas and a U.S. senator, the Art Deco building on Markham Avenue near Broadway Street is a major Little Rock landmark. Prior to the construction of the Robinson Center, Little Rock’s largest auditorium for concerts and other public events was at Little Rock High School (now called Central High School). Senator Robinson, a strong supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, helped …
Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Brooks Calbert Robinson Jr. made his debut as a major league baseball player with the Baltimore Orioles at the age of eighteen. By the time he retired as an active player after twenty-three seasons, Robinson was regarded by many as the best third baseman ever to play the game. Brooks Robinson was born in Little Rock on May 18, 1937, to Brooks Calbert and Ethel Denker Robinson. A brother, Gary, was born five years later. His father, a fireman, had played semiprofessional baseball and in 1937 was a member of the International Harvester softball team from Little Rock that played in the finals of the World Softball Championship in Chicago. Robinson began playing baseball at …
Fatima Robinson was described in the New York Times as “one of the most sought-after hip-hop and popular music choreographers in the world” and was once named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 most creative people in the world of entertainment. Her dance choreography has been featured in numerous music videos, movies, and television shows. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2004. Fatima Robinson was born on August 29, 1971, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). At four years of age, she left Arkansas with her mother, Kadijah Furqan, and two younger sisters, moving to Los Angeles, California. She graduated from high school at age sixteen and started to work in her mother’s hair …
Hester Buck Robinson was one of the largest landowners in Prairie County when she died. Her husband once remarked to a friend that she had a “financial brain” and had made more money since they married than he ever made. Hester Buck was born in January of 1896, probably in Wattensas Township, near DeValls Bluff (Prairie County), to William Buck, a farmer, and his wife, Celia. Her father’s older brother, Thomas, had a grocery store at DeValls Bluff. She taught school for a time before her marriage to Elias Brooks (E. B.) Robinson on June 22, 1921. Her grandfather, Silas Buck, owned land a few miles above DeValls Bluff at a point on the west bank of White River that …
Newspapers’ reports of rumors of lynchings have sometimes been recorded as actual lynchings on lists compiled by various organizations, as well as in articles and books. The rumored 1889 lynching of a white man named J. E. Robinson, which created somewhat of a sensation in Texas and Arkansas, is one such instance. Robinson’s name appears on numerous online lynching lists, and in at least one article published in 2001. Terry Anne Scott, however, corrects the record in her 2022 book, Lynching and Leisure. Reports on Robinson’s lynching are also confusing in that it allegedly happened in Arkansas in Texarkana (Miller County), while the alleged crime occurred in Texarkana, Texas. Geography often complicates lynching reports because incidents cross county lines, and …
James H. Robinson was a soldier in the Third Michigan Cavalry who was awarded a Medal of Honor for his actions in Arkansas during the Civil War. However, his record of service proves a mystery, and it appears likely that he was awarded the Medal of Honor in a case of mistaken identity. Little is known about the early life of James H. Robinson. The son of Cyrus Robinson, who was a farmer, and Deborah Robinson, he was eighteen years old when he enlisted in the Third Michigan Cavalry Regiment at Corunna, Michigan, on February 22, 1864, for a three-year term. The Third Michigan had completed its initial three-year term of service and reorganized as a veteran regiment on January …
John Marshall Robinson was a prominent physician, civic leader, and co-founder and president of the Arkansas Negro Democratic Association (ANDA). As a physician, Robinson performed pioneering medical surgery and was involved with a number of medical institutions and organizations in Little Rock (Pulaski County). As a politician, Robinson was the main voice in the state demanding equal black participation in the Arkansas Democratic Party between 1928 and 1952. Born on July 31, 1879, in Pickens, Mississippi, John Robinson was one of eight children of Isabell Marshall and Amos G. Robinson. Robinson attended Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1904. While in Nashville, Robinson met and married India Cox. Robinson’s only …
Joseph Taylor Robinson was governor only a short time before taking office as a U.S. senator. He became Senate majority leader during the Great Depression, after his nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for vice president—the first Arkansan ever on a major party ticket. Joe T. Robinson was born on August 26, 1872, in Concord Township of Lonoke County to James Madison Robinson—a doctor, farmer, and lay preacher from New York—and Matilda Jane Swaim of Tennessee. Usually attending the local one-room schoolhouse during the summer, he received fewer than forty-six months of formal education. He augmented his schooling by reading classics from his father’s extensive library. In his childhood, he chopped cotton and tended to his father’s apple orchard. During …
Samuel Dunn Robinson was a lawyer and horseman whose long and colorful life mixed the two passions in nearly equal proportions. He was a criminal lawyer, prosecuting attorney, justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court for sixteen years, soldier, rancher, cowboy, and professional equestrian. When he died, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette called him “a cross between the Marlboro Man and Clarence Darrow”—a reference to the cowboy icon of cigarette advertisements and the famous lawyer in the 1925 Scopes evolution trial. Sam Robinson was born on March 21, 1899, in Greenville, Mississippi, but lived on the Deerfield Plantation in Chicot County, one of the biggest farms in the most prolific cotton-producing county in Arkansas after the Civil War. He was one of four …
Tommy Franklin Robinson made a statewide name for himself as a controversial Pulaski County sheriff, won a seat in Congress as a Democrat, switched to the Republican Party while in office, and then lost in a 1990 Republican primary race for governor of Arkansas. Tommy Robinson was born on March 7, 1942, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), an only child. His father, Hoover, was a fireman, and his mother, Esther, was a state worker. He grew up in the Rose City area of North Little Rock (Pulaski County), with future Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as a childhood friend. He later married Carolyn Barber of Scott (Pulaski and Lonoke counties); they have six children. Robinson graduated from the University of …
On December 18, 1918, an African-American man named Willis Robinson was hanged by a mob in Newport (Jackson County) for allegedly murdering police officer Charles Williams and wounding Chief of Police Gus C. Martin. Reports indicate that Robinson was a resident of Little Rock (Pulaski County), and the 1910 census listed nineteen-year-old Willis W. Robinson as living in Owen Township with his parents, Charley and Martha Robinson. According to newspaper reports, by December 1918, Robinson, who was described by the Arkansas Democrat as “a very large black negro, weighing about 240 pounds,” was living with his wife at 1003 Jones Street in Little Rock. Robinson was reportedly well known to local authorities. In defiance of a 1917 Arkansas statute forbidding …
Rock ’n’ Roll Highway 67 is a segment of U.S. Highway 67 running approximately 111 miles through White, Jackson, Lawrence, and Randolph counties in northeastern Arkansas, with a portion in Miller County in southwestern Arkansas. Its name is derived from the rockabilly music performed at nightclubs and other venues located on the highway by legendary progenitors of the genre. The designation by Act 497 of the Eighty-seventh Arkansas General Assembly in 2009 has since spawned music festivals, museum exhibits, and plaques in communities situated along the highway. The term “rockabilly”—a portmanteau of “rock ’n’ roll” and “hillbilly”—is defined as a mixture of blues, country and western, and rhythm and blues music that saw its biggest popularity beginning in the post–World War II …
Although the roots of rock and roll music can be traced back much farther, the genre made its musical debut in the early 1950s with artists such as Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis, all of whom helped shape what rock music has become. The music of the 1950s gave way to the 1960s and the popularity of surf music, as well as the very significant “British Invasion.” Arkansas musicians played an important part in this burgeoning genre. In the mid-1960s, Little Rock (Pulaski County), along with many other mid-sized American cities, saw an explosion in the formation of garage bands, all of which began competing for performance spots at school, fraternity, and country club engagements. This excitement …
Rock art is a term archaeologists use to describe images on rock surfaces created both prehistorically and historically. Arkansas has one of the richest concentrations of rock art in eastern North America, primarily in the Ozark and Ouachita mountain areas of the state, with a concentration in the central Arkansas River Valley. Rock art has also been discovered along the Mississippi River escarpment toward the eastern part of the state. Most rock art is found in bluff shelters, but it also occurs on exposed boulders, bedrock outcrops, and in caves. Along with the other archaeological resources in the state, rock art is important to understanding the lives of Native Americans living within the region during the pre-colonial era. Rock art …
The Rock Island Argenta Depot at 1201 East 4th Street in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) is a single-story, Mediterranean-style brick passenger depot built in 1913 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 1989. Shorter College announced plans to convert the building into a technology hub. Though North Little Rock’s development was heavily influenced by railroads, it was not until 1913 that the Rock Island Railroad constructed the first depot to serve the community, possibly to ease local tensions after the Rock Island shops were moved across the Arkansas River to Little Rock (Pulaski County). The presence of a depot on the north side would pay off for the community when it made a successful …
aka: Choctaw Bridge
The Rock Island Bridge is a lift-span bridge crossing the Arkansas River between downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) and North Little Rock (Pulaski County). One of six bridges linking the two downtowns, the Rock Island Bridge was originally constructed as a railroad bridge in 1899; it was converted to serve as a pedestrian bridge in 2011 to complement the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park. In late 1898, the Choctaw and Memphis Railroad was organized with the goal of establishing a railroad into the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). Congress passed legislation authorizing construction of a new bridge across the Arkansas River in January 1899, and the Little Rock Bridge Company formed that May to develop plans for constructing the …
“The Rock Island Line” is a world-famous song—recorded by the likes of Johnny Cash, Harry Belafonte, and Grandpa Jones—the earliest known performances of which are two 1934 recordings made in Arkansas prisons. A tall tale in rhyme, the song’s subject is a train so fast that it arrives at its destination in Little Rock (at 8:49) before its departure from Memphis (at “half past nine”). The collectors responsible for the first recordings were an unlikely pair. John Lomax was a white, Mississippi-born college teacher already well known as a folksong collector, while Huddie Ledbetter was a black, Louisiana-born singer and guitar player just released from prison and soon to be even better known as “Leadbelly.” Arriving in Arkansas in late …
aka: Central Arkansas Transit Authority (CATA)
The Rock Region Metropolitan Transit Authority (Rock Region METRO), previously the Central Arkansas Transit Authority (CATA), is the largest public transit agency in Arkansas. Rock Region METRO provides public transportation services for the metropolitan Little Rock (Pulaski County) area seven days a week. The twenty-two fixed routes and four express commuter routes provide transportation service to 10,000 riders every weekday. A “demand response” Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) para-transit service operates alongside the fixed route hours and coverage area. A heritage streetcar system called the River Rail System operates approximately 3.4 miles of track throughout downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock (Pulaski County). Prior to the creation of CATA, the public transit system was owned and operated by private …
Founded in 2010, Rock Town Distillery is “the first legal distillery of any kind in Arkansas since prohibition.” Its spirits are sold in at least sixteen states and in the United Kingdom. Its current lineup includes more than thirteen different spirits with names referencing the Natural State; all the grains needed to make their vodka, whiskey, and gin—such as corn, wheat, rye, and barley—are acquired from Arkansas farms. Rock Town Distillery has won numerous international awards, including the prestigious double-gold award at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in March 2011. In 2015, Rock Town Distillery’s world-class Arkansas whiskey won the U.S. Micro Whiskey of the Year Award from Jim Murray’s Whiskey Bible. In 2009, Little Rock–based Alltel Communications, LLC, …
Rockabilly, a musical genre that appeared in the mid-1950s, is an early form of rock and roll initially performed by white musicians from the mid-South. Several Arkansans became leading rockabilly songwriters and performers. A distinctly American phenomenon, rockabilly was strongly influenced by developments of the post–World War II period. These include the introduction of the single-play 45 rpm record, the early phases of the civil rights movement, and the increasing mobility and purchasing power of teenagers. Characterized by a blues structure and a moderately fast tempo, rockabilly music celebrated a world of cars, parties, fast living, and sexual relationships. Its use of slang, much of it from African-American origins, and its themes of rebellious youth and self-indulgence, caused disfavor in …
Jeannette Edris Rockefeller was a socialite, arts promoter, and civic activist. She was first lady of Arkansas (1967–1971) during Winthrop Rockefeller’s terms as the state’s thirty-seventh governor. Jeannette Edris was born on July 13, 1918, in Seattle, Washington, to William Edris—a high-profile capitalist of Spokane, Washington—and Frances Skinner Edris, who died during the birth of the family’s second daughter. After the death of her mother, Edris found herself under the strong influence of her grandmother, socialite Jeannette E. Skinner (her namesake), who was the wife of capitalist David Skinner, co-founder and president of Skinner & Eddy Shipyard. During her elementary school years, Edris often traveled with her grandmother to places such as Pasadena, California, and Port Maitland, British Columbia. At …
As governor, Winthrop Rockefeller brought economic, cultural, and political change to Arkansas. “W. R.” or “Win,” as he was known, brought an end to the political organization of former Governor Orval E. Faubus and created a political environment that produced moderate leaders like Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and Bill Clinton. Rockefeller’s personal belief in racial equality became well known, and he ushered in an era that saw large numbers of African Americans elevated to high positions in state government. Rockefeller was a “transitional leader” in the sense that he helped discredit the “Old Guard” domination of the Faubus years and, in so doing, made Arkansans more receptive to political and social change. Winthrop Rockefeller was born on May 1, 1912, …
Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, known in his adopted state of Arkansas as Win (or Win Paul to differentiate him from his father, Winthrop Rockefeller), was a scion of Rockefeller family, which made its fortune with Standard Oil. Like his father, who was the first Republican to be elected governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction, Winthrop Paul Rockefeller abandoned his East Coast roots and established a life in the more rural environs of Arkansas before making a name for himself in Republican politics, eventually being elected lieutenant governor. However, his political career was cut short when, at the age of fifty-seven, he died of complications related to a rare blood disorder. Win Rockefeller was born on September 17, 1948, in New York, the …
Rockport is one of the oldest named places in Arkansas, and one of several communities that claims it was “almost” selected for the state capitol. Although the present city is overshadowed by Malvern (Hot Spring County), Rockport served as the county seat of Hot Spring County from 1846 to 1879 and was a landmark community of Arkansas for many years both before and after that time. European Exploration and Settlement through Early Statehood Large novaculite boulders in the bed of the Ouachita River made the location of Rockport ideal as both a river crossing and a resting place for weary river travelers. These boulders gave the community its name. A plaque in Rockport states that Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto …
Established in 1851 and expanded for the first time around 1900, the Rockport Cemetery is the oldest burial ground in the Hot Spring County town of Rockport. The oldest sections of the cemetery were added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 28, 2002. The first settlers in the Rockport area arrived by the 1820s. A post office serving the community opened in 1837, and the settlement became the county seat in 1846. Never a large town, the community did have several churches, stores, and law offices by 1850. Some sources report that land for the establishment of a cemetery was given by John A. Miller in 1851. This is unlikely, as Miller was only fifteen years old …
There are three basic classes of rocks: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. Igneous rocks are those that solidified from magma (molten rock). Metamorphic rocks are formed from pre-existing rocks in a solid state by heat, pressure, and/or chemical activity. Sedimentary rocks are made up of particles of sediment cemented together. In Arkansas, the overwhelming majority of surface and near-surface rocks are sedimentary rocks. There are a few igneous rocks and some very low-grade metamorphic rocks, but these occupy little area. Out of Arkansas’s total area of 53,179 square miles, only about fifteen square miles are composed of igneous rocks. In the Ozark Plateau and Ouachita Mountains, there are indications of some very low-grade metamorphic effects on the rocks in restricted areas, …
aka: Rock Point (Independence County)
Rocky Point, originally called Rock Point, is located on Highway 167 (Batesville Boulevard), about seven miles south of Batesville (Independence County), the county seat. Once a thriving community, twenty-first-century Rocky Point consists of a rock quarry called Rocky Point Materials. Rocky Point represents the dividing line between the Southside School District and the Midland School District of Pleasant Plains (Independence County). Rock Point is the rock formation at the southern point of where the Caney Creek bottoms end. In the early days of settlement, the bottomland provided suitable soil for small-scale farming, and the hill area was good for hunting small game, deer, and bears. Ample pasture land allowed for the running of cattle. Initially a part of the Round …