Entries - Starting with H

Hicks, Dan

Daniel Ivan Hicks was a cross-genre singer/songwriter specializing in a type of music he referred to as “folk jazz.” He served as front man for his band, the Hot Licks, off and on since 1968. Dan Hicks was born on December 9, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the only child of Ivan L. Hicks—a career military man—and Evelyn Kehl Hicks. The family moved to northern California when Hicks was five years old. The family settled in Santa Rosa, and Hicks resided in the area north of San Francisco for the rest of his life. Hicks started playing drums in grade school and played snare drum in his high school marching band. At age fourteen, he was accompanying high school …

Hicks, Ed

Ed Hicks was one of twelve African-American men accused of murder following the Elaine Massacre of 1919. After brief trials, the so-called Elaine Twelve—six who became known as the Moore defendants (including Ed Hicks and his brother Frank) and six who became known as the Ware defendants—were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. The appeal of his and others’ sentences led to the U.S. Supreme Court case of Moore v. Dempsey. Ultimately, the Ware defendants were freed by the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1923; after numerous legal efforts, the Moore defendants were released in 1925. Ed Hicks was born on December 23, 1873, in Dublin County, North Carolina, to Lucy Hicks. Hicks and his wife, Mattie Hicks, married …

Hicks, Robert (Lynching of)

In late November 1921, a young African-American man named Robert Hicks was lynched near Lake Village (Chicot County) for writing a letter to an eighteen-year-old white woman. While the identity of the woman remains a mystery, Hicks was probably the same Robert Hicks who was living with his mother, Minnie, in the household of his stepfather, Henry Singleton, in South Charlton Township of Chicot County in 1910. At that time, he was eight years old. In 1920, at eighteen, he was still in South Charlton Township working on a cotton farm owned by his uncle, Jessie E. Cooper. While newspaper reports put his age at twenty-three or twenty-five, the census information shows that he was only nineteen at the time …

Higden (Cleburne County)

Higden is a town in the northwestern corner of Cleburne County, located along Highway 16. It sits at the west end of the Higden Bridge, which spans a segment of Greers Ferry Lake and serves to connect Higden with the larger town of Greers Ferry (Cleburne County). Prior to the nineteenth century, the only inhabitants of the land that would become Cleburne County were Native Americans. The Osage controlled the area and used it primarily as a hunting ground. In 1808, the United States purchased the area from the Osage, and European Americans began settling in the area. In 1817, the United States established a treaty with the Cherokee, giving the Cherokee all the land between the White River and …

Higginson (White County)

Born as a railroad depot, Higginson is a second-class city in White County, a few miles south of Searcy (White County). Searcy was created as the county seat because of its central location in White County, but before the Civil War, most residents of the county lived in the northwestern half, as southern White County was still dominated by swampland. Although the Military Road ran through the location that would become Higginson, no settlement is reported there prior to construction of the railroad. The Cairo and Fulton Railroad was incorporated in Arkansas in 1853, with a plan to link southern Illinois with Texas for freight and passenger service. The Civil War delayed construction, and tracks were not laid across White County until …

High, Fred

aka: Fredrick Green High

Fredrick (Fred) Green High, who lived in Carroll County from birth to death, was one of Ozark folk culture’s most notable characters. His contributions to Ozark heritage are evident in the many recordings of his folk song performances. The John Quincy Wolf Folksong Collection at Lyon College consists of a dozen recordings of High, and Missouri State University’s Max Hunter Collection contains thirty-one additional High recordings. A 1953 Arkansas Gazette feature captured his near legendary status in the Ozarks: “Everybody in north Arkansas knows Fred High for he seldom misses a fair, festival, picnic, public sale, apple peeling, corn husking, or other public gathering.” Fred High was born on January 15, 1878, to Jacob and Sarah Ann (Roberts) High in …

Highfill (Benton County)

Highfill is a town in Benton County that has been shaped by the area’s changing transportation needs. It emerged due to railroad construction in the early twentieth century and is now home to the Northwest Arkansas National Airport. Jason Woodward and Silas Gorden acquired land shortly before the Civil War in the area that would become Highfill. The town was named for Hezekiah Highfill, a Civil War veteran who bought land near Woodward’s and Gorden’s tracts of land in 1885. All three families established apple orchards on their land. A community called Hoover—reportedly named for Stanford University student Herbert Hoover, the future U.S. president, who surveyed the area in the early 1890s—existed a mile or two south of Highfill’s orchard. …

Highland (Sharp County)

When the school districts of Ash Flat (Sharp County) and Hardy (Sharp County) consolidated in 1962, they chose to build a new high school halfway between the cities. That location is now the second-class city of Highland. When Sharp County was created in 1868, much of it consisted of heavily forested hillsides. The first official landowners in what would become Highland were Thomas Irvie, who bought his land in 1889, and Thomas J. Harris, who bought his land in 1895. By this time, the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway had been built through Hardy, facilitating shipping of the timber that was being cut in Sharp County and the crops grown on the cleared land. Already the area was being called Highland, …

Highway 7/51 Bridge

aka: Arkadelphia Bridge

The Highway 7/51 Bridge crosses the Ouachita River in Arkadelphia (Clark County). The bridge was originally placed in 1933 at the Arkansas Highway 7/U.S. Highway 67 crossing of the Caddo River north of Arkadelphia. It was moved to its current position in 1960 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 2006. It is also known as the Arkadelphia Bridge. The Ouachita River played an important role in the settlement of Arkadelphia, with the town growing along the western bank of the river. While the shallow nature of the river made most water travel impossible, locals were able to ship goods down the river in small craft. The arrival of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad in …

Highway 79 Bridge

Located in Clarendon (Monroe County), the Highway 79 Bridge spanned the White River for eighty-eight years until the structure was demolished in 2019. Constructed in 1930–1931, the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 1, 1984. The western approaches were added to the National Register on September 28, 2015. The first settlers in the Clarendon area arrived around 1816. More people began to settle in the community, and by 1828, both a post office and a ferry across the White River opened. Located just south of the mouth of the Cache River, the city grew over the decades, although it was plagued by floods and was completely destroyed during the Civil War. After the war, …

Hiking

Hiking is one of the most popular outdoor recreational activities in Arkansas. Hikers can choose from over 250 trails to meet a range of objectives—casual strolls, exploration of history, nature appreciation, scenic beauty, vigorous day hikes in rugged terrain, or backpacking. Trails range in length from less than a mile to over 200 miles and range in difficulty from the easiest, handicapped accessible trails to rugged and extremely difficult trails. The largely rural state has an estimated 1,800 miles of trail, taking advantage of two mountain ranges, 600,000 acres of lakes, 9,700 miles of streams and rivers, and varied terrain. Each of the six geographic divisions of Arkansas has hiking trails. The large extent of public lands in Arkansas is …

Hilderbrand, Joe

As a fugitive from Arkansas justice in the 1960s, Joe Hilderbrand gained notoriety and even a measure of national acclaim by evading a horde of lawmen with airplanes and bloodhounds who chased him and a girlfriend through the wilds of the Ozark Mountains after he failed to return to Cummins Prison Farm from a furlough to visit his ailing father. It was one of the largest manhunts in Arkansas history. Legends accrued around the mountaineer—that he was innocent of any serious crime and a scapegoat for incompetent and embarrassed law enforcement agencies. Life magazine did a piece on Hilderbrand and the young woman, Frances Standridge, who helped him evade the posses. At least four ballads were written about Hilderbrand and …

Hildreth, James Earl King

James Earl King Hildreth, a leading HIV/AIDS researcher, is dean of University of California–Davis College of Biological Sciences. Previously, he was employed by Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was director for the Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research; program director of the Research Centers in Minority Institutions; director of the Meharry Center for Translational Research; associate director at the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center for AIDS Research; and professor of internal medicine, microbiology, and immunology. At the Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research, he worked on a cream that kills the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). James Earl Hildreth was born in Camden (Ouachita County) on December 27, 1956, to Lucy and R. J. Hildreth. He is the youngest of seven …

Hill Wheatley Downtowner Motor Lodge

aka: Springs Hotel

The Hill Wheatley Downtowner Motor Inn, located at 135 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs (Garland County), was constructed in the mid-1960s in the Modernist style of architecture by the noted Little Rock (Pulaski County) firm of Eichenbaum and Erhart. The hotel, built by Hot Springs real estate magnate Hill Wheatley, thrived during the late 1960s and the 1970s as one of only a few buildings in the downtown area to have a Modernist design. It became the Springs Hotel in 2006 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Construction on the ten-story building began in 1963 and was completed at a cost of $2 million. It was part of a construction boom in Hot Springs during the …

Hill, Daniel Harvey

Daniel Harvey Hill was a Confederate general, professor, and president of what is now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), then called Arkansas Industrial University. Born on July 12, 1821 in York District, South Carolina, to Solomon Hill and Nancy Cabeen Hill, Daniel Harvey Hill was the youngest of eleven children. His father died four years later, and his mother raised the children with the help of her eldest son, William. The family owned a small plantation, and Hill grew up working the land. Entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1838, Hill graduated four years later, ranking twenty-eighth in a class of fifty-six. Originally assigned to the Engineer Corps, Hill instead served in the …

Hill, David Allen

Originally from Hot Springs (Garland County), author David Hill has written magazine articles that have won acclaim, being featured in Esquire, GQ, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and in various other print and digital publications. His first book, The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice, brought him international praise and was named as a Notable Book for 2020 by the New York Times. David Allen Hill was born on July 13, 1977, in Hot Springs to James Hill, who was a construction worker, and Pamelia Hill, who managed the Sawmill Depot restaurant and later owned Uncle Reuben’s Restaurant in Hot Springs. David Hill …

Hill, Jack Edward

Jack Hill was a broadcast journalist and documentary filmmaker who won national awards with station KAIT in Jonesboro (Craighead County) and eventually founded his own company in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to produce some sixty long-form features. Jack Hill was born in Rogers (Benton County), the only child of William Radus Hill and Grace Fields Hill. He attended Rogers High School, graduating in 1958 as senior class president. As a junior, in 1957, he played forward for the school’s only state champion basketball team. At the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), he majored in speech, participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, and served as chaplain of his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter. After obtaining …

Hill, James French

French Hill is a U.S. congressman from Arkansas’s Second District who was first elected in 2014. He is associated with the wave of new conservatives who made up the Tea Party Movement that helped the Republicans regain the majority in the House of Representatives in 2010. Prior to running for office, he held a number of staff and appointive governmental positions and also had a successful business career. Since taking his seat in 2015, Hill has established himself as a reliable conservative vote, strongly supportive of pro-business measures and a loyal supporter of former president Donald Trump. James French Hill was born on December 5, 1956, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The only child of Jay French Hill and Patricia …

Hill, Joseph Morrison

Joseph Morrison Hill was elected chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1904, the first person to defeat a sitting justice after Arkansas began electing Supreme Court justices in 1864. Although he served less than five years before resigning, Hill enjoyed a long and eminent career as an attorney, winning major cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also was a founder of the state tuberculosis sanatorium at Booneville (Logan County), which became the largest treatment facility for tuberculosis in the nation, and was president of its board of trustees most of his life. He died there in 1950. Joseph Hill was born on September 2, 1864, at Davidson College in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, the son of Daniel …

Hill, Julia Lorraine “Butterfly”

Julia Lorraine “Butterfly” Hill is an environmentalist, poet, writer, educator, speaker, and founder of the organization Circle of Life. She earned international fame as an environmental activist by protecting an old-growth forest in northern California from clear-cutting by a logging company. To prevent the logging, she lived in one of the trees—a 1,000-year-old redwood known as “Luna”—for 738 days until an agreement was reached with the Pacific Lumber Company. Julia Butterfly Hill was born on February 18, 1974, in Mount Vernon, Missouri, to Dale Edward Hill, a traveling minister, and Kathleen Anne DelGallo; she has two brothers. Her parents later divorced. Until she was ten, Hill lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where her parents had started a church called Freedom Chapel. …

Hill, Mars Andrew, III

At the age of seventy-five, retired engineer Mars Andrew Hill III published a well-received coming-of-age novel, The Moaner’s Bench (1998). The novel draws heavily on Hill’s own childhood as an African American growing up during the 1920s and 1930s in rural Arkansas. Mars Hill was born into a prosperous merchant-class family in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). His father owned a grocery store and forest land. When his father died of complications from diabetes, the eleven-year-old Hill was placed in the care of his wealthy uncle. At the age of fourteen, Hill moved to Chicago, Illinois, to live with his maternal aunt. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he completed a degree in architectural engineering at the …

Hill, Robert Lee

Robert Lee Hill was an African-American leader who was forced to flee Arkansas during the bloody Elaine Massacre of 1919. He spent the rest of his life in Topeka, Kansas, repairing freight cars for the Santa Fe Railway. Robert Hill was born in Dermott (Chicot County), the son of Robert L. Hill Jr. and Elizabeth Griffin Hill. He was born on June 8, but the exact year of his birth is inconsistently reported in official records, ranging from 1892 on his World War I draft registration card to 1898 on his Kansas death certificate. Hill married Hattie Alexander in 1916. In 1917, Hill was working at the Valley Planting Company in Winchester (Drew County). Hill was a grand counsellor, with …

Hill, Samuel Billingsley

Samuel Billingsley Hill was an Arkansas-born politician who represented the state of Washington in Congress for over a decade. An expert on taxation and an influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Hill left the House in 1936 to accept a presidential appointment to the United States Board of Tax Appeals (now the Tax Court of the United States), where he served for approximately seventeen years. Samuel B. Hill was born on April 2, 1875, in Franklin (Izard County). One of eight children born to Margaret Billingsley Hill and William Hill, he received his early education in the area’s common schools before attending the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He graduated from the university’s law …

Hill, Thomas Lionel

Thomas Lionel Hill is a track and field star, who, as a student at Arkansas State University (ASU), was ranked number one in the world in the high hurdles by Track and Field News. After graduating from ASU, he claimed the bronze medal in the 110-meter hurdles at the 1972 Olympic Games. Tom Hill was born on November 17, 1949, in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of five sons of Mattie Hill, who was a domestic worker. He grew up in the Magnolia Housing Project and attended Walter L. Cohen High School in New Orleans. In high school, Hill participated in track and field, competing particularly in the high jump and long jump. As a senior, he took third place in …

Hill’s Plantation, Action at

aka: Action at Cache River
aka: Action at Cotton Plant
aka: Action at Round Hill

The major Confederate attempt to halt General Samuel Curtis’s march across northeast Arkansas and destroy his army took place near the Cache River in July 1862. The Confederates were decisively defeated, allowing Curtis to proceed on to Clarendon (Monroe County) and ultimately to Helena (Phillips County), where he resupplied his army. The Federals turned Helena into an important river base and held the town for the rest of the war. Troops from Helena captured Little Rock (Pulaski County) the following year. In the summer of 1862, Union Major General Samuel R. Curtis led the Army of the Southwest through northeast Arkansas in an attempt to capture Little Rock. Facing shortages and a supply line stretching to Rolla, Missouri, Curtis decided …

Hillbillies

The “hillbilly” has been an enduring staple of American iconography, and Arkansas has been identified with the hillbilly as much as, if not more than, any state. Despite the lack of scholarly consensus on the origin of the term—historian Anthony Harkins gives as the most likely explanation that Scottish highlanders melded “hill-folk” with “billie,” a word meaning friend or companion—there is no shortage of hillbilly images in American popular culture. Whether a barefoot, rifle-toting, moonshine-swigging, bearded man staring out from beneath a floppy felt hat or a toothless granny in homespun sitting at a spinning wheel and peering suspiciously at strangers from the front porch of a dilapidated mountain cabin, the hillbilly, in all his manifestations, is instantly recognizable. Wrapped …

Hillcrest Hall

aka: Bible Church of Little Rock

The Bible Church of Little Rock (later called Hillcrest Hall) was constructed in 1961 on one of the last undeveloped lots in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Midland Hills area of the Hillcrest neighborhood opened to development in three phases, beginning in October 1908 and ending in May 1911. However, the triangular section of land bordered by Kavanaugh Boulevard and Martin and Lee streets was never developed, possibly because of its steep terrain. In 1961, the Bible Church of Little Rock acquired the property as a site for a permanent sanctuary for a congregation that had met in a home at 1814 Broadway since it was formed by eight families in 1951. The congregation hired architect …

Himes, Chester Bomar

Chester Bomar Himes, a renowned writer of protest novels and detective fiction, spent part of his childhood in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), where his father, Joseph Sandy Himes Sr., was a teacher in the 1920s at Branch Normal College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). Chester Himes was born on July 29, 1909, in Jefferson City, Missouri, where his father taught blacksmithing and wheelwrighting at the Lincoln Institute (later Lincoln University), a land-grant college for African Americans. Joseph Himes, with wife Estelle Bomar Himes and sons, moved to Pine Bluff in the fall of 1920 to teach mechanical trades and African American history at Branch Normal. Around 1921 or 1922, Himes’s brother Joseph Jr. was blinded in …

Hinderliter Grog Shop

Hinderliter Grog Shop is a two-story, hand-hewn log cabin in the heart of downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County). Considered the oldest remaining structure still standing in Little Rock, Hinderliter Grog Shop reflects architecture common in Arkansas during the 1820s and 1830s. Chester Ashley sold Lots 7, 8, and 9 on Block 32 to Jesse Hinderliter for $128.10 sometime between 1820 and 1830. Hinderliter built the grog shop (with grog being defined as alcoholic liquor such as rum, sometimes cut with water and served warm) on the corner of Cumberland and Mulberry (now Third St.) sometime between 1828 and 1831. After his death in 1834, the property was sold at public auction to pay off Hinderliter’s debt to Ashley. The building …

Hindman Hall Museum

Hindman Hall Museum is a single-story structure made out of precast concrete (rather than concrete cast on site). Completed in 1965, it contains a visitor’s center and museum for the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 15, 2020. In 1961, the estate of the late Biscoe Hindman, son of Confederate General Thomas C. Hindman, bequeathed the Prairie Grove Battlefield Park with a $100,000 grant for creating some sort of memorial for General Hindman at the park. As the collection of Civil War artifacts grew at the Prairie Grove Battlefield Park Museum, additional space was needed. By 1963, the Prairie Grove Battlefield Park Commission had decided that the grant would …

Hindman, Thomas Carmichael

Thomas Carmichael Hindman was a prominent attorney and Democratic politician prior to the Civil War. In the crisis prior to that war, he was a major player in bringing about the state’s secession. He subsequently served in the Confederate army as a brigadier general, playing a prominent role in the defense of Arkansas and later serving in the Army of Tennessee. Thomas Hindman was born on January 28, 1828, at Knoxville, Tennessee, one of Thomas Hindman and Sallie Holt Hindman’s six children. His father was a planter and a federal agent for Indian affairs in Tennessee. In 1841, his father purchased a new plantation in Ripley, Mississippi, and the family moved there. Hindman went to local schools, and then, like …

Hinds, James

James M. Hinds was an Arkansas politician during the Reconstruction era. He served as a representative to the Arkansas Constitutional Convention of 1868 and to the U.S. Congress upon Arkansas’s readmission to the Union after the Civil War. During his four months as representative, Hinds helped introduce a bill for the sale of what is now Hot Springs National Park, aided in establishing agricultural colleges, and promoted the interests of black soldiers. Upon the passage of the Reconstruction Acts, Hinds advocated the measures on a state level, as well as taught enfranchised African-American men about their newly acquired rights as citizens. His assassination by a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member was deemed politically motivated. He is one of the six …

Hindsville (Madison County)

The town of Hindsville is near U.S. Highway 412 in western Madison County. Hindsville was established in Vaughan Valley, one of the few areas in the Ozark Mountains that consists of large flat acres suitable for farming. Osage hunted and fished in the Ozark Mountains until after the Louisiana Purchase made Arkansas part of the United States in 1803. Settlers first began arriving in Vaughan Valley in the 1830s. John Hinds, for whom the town would be named, built the first house in the valley in 1832. His brother William Hinds arrived in 1832, as did brothers David and Samuel Vaughan, along with Andrew Smith (who is thought to have married Abigail Hinds, a sister of the Hinds brothers). A …

Hindus

An estimated 15,000 Hindus were living in Arkansas by the first decades of the twenty-first century. This small group of Arkansas Hindus is very committed to preserving and promoting the religious and cultural diversity of its religion. Hindus also contribute significantly to the educational and economic life of Arkansas. Hinduism is regarded by many scholars as the world’s oldest living religion, and it is the third largest in number of adherents. Currently, there are about one billion followers, ninety percent of whom live in India, where the religion originated. Hinduism is not only a religion but also a culture and a philosophy. Fundamental to the ideas and practices is the belief in ultimate truth/reality, called Brahman, and its identity with …

Hinegardner, Verna Lee Linxwiler

Verna Lee Linxwiler Hinegardner was appointed the poet laureate of Arkansas in 1991 by Governor Bill Clinton and held the post until 2003. In addition to writing and publishing her own poetry, she was active in many literary societies and activities that promote a greater appreciation of poetry. Verna Lee Linxwiler was born on January 2, 1919, in Morrisonville, Illinois, to Fred and Retta (Hendricks) Linxwiler. Her father was a farmer. She graduated from Lichfield Community High School in 1936 and attended Lincoln Junior College in Lincoln, Illinois. She married Marshall Andrew Hinegardner on December 12, 1937. The couple had three daughters. After World War II, the Hinegardners lived in Meridian and Vicksburg, Mississippi, before moving to Hot Springs (Garland County) …

Hinemon University School

Hinemon University School was established in 1890 at Monticello (Drew County) by an organization of local community and business leaders known as the Monticello Educational Society. As a semi-private and non-sectarian preparatory boarding school, Hinemon offered white boys and girls from across the Delta region an opportunity to obtain a quality secondary-level education. The school’s stated purpose was to “prepare pupils for university” and to give them “sufficient knowledge for good educational work as teachers or in other professions.” Students at the Hinemon University School were immersed in the study of English, mathematics, Latin, science, Greek, music, and the visual arts. They were introduced to the discipline of philosophy and to languages such as German and French. Some courses were …

Hines, Jim

Jim Hines, born in Dumas (Desha County), was an Olympic track and field star who won gold medals at the 1968 Olympics in the 100-meter dash and the 4×100-meter relay, as well as establishing world records for both. His record for the 100 meters stood for fifteen years. James Ray (Jim) Hines was born on September 10, 1946, in Dumas, the ninth of twelve children of Charlie Hines and Minnie West Hines. In 1952, the family moved to Oakland, California, where his father worked in construction and mother in a cannery. As a center fielder on the Lowell Junior High School baseball team, he caught the eye of the McClymonds High School track coach, who asked Hines to join the …

Hinton, Thomas Melvin

Thomas Melvin Hinton was a classically trained artist who produced many realistic and impressionistic oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings. His paintings won many awards in Arkansas and nationally and are on permanent exhibit at museums and other public and private venues. Thomas Hinton was born on October 4, 1906, to a prominent Texarkana (Miller County) couple, Thomas Jonathan Hinton, who was a plantation owner and businessman, and Mina Kinser Hinton. He had two sisters. As a toddler, he was stricken with polio and became crippled in one leg, though his father made sure that his son learned to ride horses and manage the plantation. Commuting from the city to the farm on Red River became increasingly difficult, so Hinton’s mother’s …

Hispanic Women’s Organization of Arkansas (HWOA)

The Hispanic Women’s Organization of Arkansas (HWOA) is a non-profit organization founded in July 1999 by a group of women, mostly Hispanic, concerned with the well-being of their families and their community. HWOA engages in activities that reflect the mission “to advance educational opportunities for Hispanic women and their families, to celebrate and teach others about our culture, and to become active participants in the community.” Through programs and events, the organization strives to increase participation by Hispanics in community activities, opening channels for better understanding across cultures and bringing the diverse northwest Arkansas community together. HWOA arose in Springdale (Washington County) out of the need of the founding members to have a support system in their new adopted community. …

Historic Arkansas Museum

aka: Arkansas Territorial Restoration

What is now the Historic Arkansas Museum (HAM) opened in 1941 as the first state-supported history museum in Arkansas, under the name Arkansas Territorial Capitol Restoration, commonly shortened to Arkansas Territorial Restoration. Originally consisting of a half-block of historic houses in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County), the museum site has expanded to the equivalent of two city blocks and now features a wide array of programs, too. The first history museum in Arkansas accredited by the American Association of Museums (1981), the Historic Arkansas Museum has become—with the Old State House—the de facto state history museum. Its mission emphasizes the frontier period and the work of Arkansas’s artists and artisans from prehistoric times to the present. Pioneering preservationist Louise Loughborough …

Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash

aka: Johnny Cash Boyhood Home

When the Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash opened in 2014, it became the fourth heritage site established by Arkansas State University (ASU) to preserve the history and culture of eastern Arkansas. The site consists of two main structures in Dyess (Mississippi County): the Dyess Administration Building, located at 110 Center Drive, and the Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash, located at 4791 W. County Road 924. The museum allows visitors to explore the construction of one of America’s first and largest New Deal agricultural resettlement colonies, see what it was like to live in the colony, and learn how colony life influenced and helped shape legendary musician Johnny Cash as well as music promoter Gene Williams. The white, …

Historic Preservation

Arkansas has an active preservation community with a notable success record in saving buildings, sites, and neighborhoods. The tools successfully used in Arkansas were developed on the national stage and successfully transplanted to the state. The first preservation achievements were the result of strong individual leadership focused on saving landmark buildings. The first major success was what is now called the Old State House (Arkansas’s first state capitol building), which was constructed beginning in 1833. It remained the capitol until 1911, when construction of the present Arkansas State Capitol was sufficiently completed for occupancy. Since 1901, the legislature and the governor had debated the idea of selling the old building once it was vacated. This proposal garnered serious attention again …

Historic Washington State Park

Historic Washington State Park, originally called Old Washington Historic State Park, is one of fifty-two state parks operated by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism. This park primarily exists to preserve and interpret the history of the town of Washington (Hempstead County), emphasizing its political, cultural, and architectural history in the nineteenth century. Washington was a major stopping point on the Southwest Trail that connected St. Louis, Missouri, to Fulton (Hempstead County) on the Red River. Many pioneers and settlers traveled this route on their way to Texas and the Southwest. Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie each traveled separately through Washington before they fought for Texas’s independence. While in Washington, Bowie commissioned local blacksmith James Black to …

Historical Archaeology

Archaeologists do more than study the ancient remains of Native Americans; they are also interested in the lives of the explorers, colonists, settlers, and their descendants who contributed to the more recent history of America. Even during periods when written records were kept, not everything about the past was recorded. The details of everyday life often are neglected in historical accounts, but archaeologists believe that these details contribute to a fuller understanding of the past. This more recently developed field of archaeological study is called historical archaeology, and perhaps its greatest strength is its partnership with other fields of study, including history, archival documentation, architectural studies, and folklore. When combined, these different approaches provide a richer and more complex understanding …

History of Hot Springs Gambling Museum

The History of Hot Springs Gambling Museum located at 3339-C Central Avenue in Hot Springs (Garland County) preserves, restores, and displays gambling memorabilia from Hot Springs’ rich gambling history. In particular, the museum covers early twentieth-century gambling in Hot Springs. The museum was established in 2016 as a partnership between two Hot Springs gambling history collectors, Lanny Beavers and Chris Hendrix, to display their collection for public viewing. The museum features a vast collection of items from notable Hot Springs venues such as the Vapors, the Southern Club, the Belvedere Club, Oaklawn Park, and the Essex Park Racetrack. The collection holds eighty functional slot machines, fifteen of which were used in Hot Springs, in addition to ten gaming tables among …

Hmong

The Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia, and their presence in Arkansas stems from the evacuation of allied groups by the U.S. government at the end of the Vietnam War. As of the 2010 federal census, there are 2,143 Hmong residents of the state, concentrated in northwestern Arkansas. Prior to the Vietnam War, little was known in the West about the thousands of tribes of hill people throughout Southeast Asia, mostly peasants with ancestry going back to China, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. During the Vietnam War, one of these groups, the Hmong, was sympathetic to the American forces, but circumstances did not allow the Hmong to obtain legal status in Thailand at war’s end. Even before the fall …

Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area

Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area in northwest Arkansas offers outdoor recreational activities such as hiking, boating, and fishing, as well as sites of historical interest. In addition, it is the only Arkansas state park where hunting is allowed. The property was once the home of the first lumber magnate of northwest Arkansas and contained the largest sawmill in the state. The three state agencies that technically manage the property are Arkansas State Parks, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, and Arkansas Game and Fish. The addition of “Conservation Area” to the name of the park was added to represent the work of Arkansas Natural Heritage and Arkansas Game and Fish. Starting in the 1840s and continuing throughout his life, Peter Van Winkle, who …

Hocker, Willie Kavanaugh

Willie Kavanaugh Hocker of Wabbaseka and Pine Bluff, both in Jefferson County, was a schoolteacher, poet, and active member of civic groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Colonial Dames Society. She was also the designer of the Arkansas state flag, one of only two women in the United States who have had state flag designs adopted. Willie Hocker was born on July 21, 1862, in Madison County, Kentucky. She was the youngest child of William K. and Virginia Brown Hocker, who moved their family to Arkansas in 1870, settling in Dudley Lake Township near Wabbaseka. Her father was a farmer/planter who, according to the Goodspeed history, had served with …

Hodges House

The Hodges House is located on Arkansas Highway 7 in Bismarck (Hot Spring County). Constructed in 1907 in the folk Victorian style, the home was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 2, 1995. The home was constructed by Dr. Lee Bray and his wife, Clara. The couple lived in the home until 1925, when Dr. Thomas Hodges and Charlotte Hodges bought the house. It appears that the Hodgeses bought the Brays’ medical practice. Thomas Hodges was born in Kentucky in 1868 and grew up in Missouri. After medical school, he established a medical practice in the state and married Charlotte Mikulus in 1925. The couple moved to Bismarck shortly after the wedding. Thomas worked as a …

Hodges v. United States

Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1 (1906) is a U.S. Supreme Court case resulting in the overturning of the convictions of three white men convicted in 1903 of conspiring to prevent a group of African-American workers from holding jobs in a lumber mill in Whitehall (Poinsett County), a small town in northeastern Arkansas. It was overruled by another Supreme Court decision in 1968, but the decision in Hodges represented an important step in the evolving judicial interpretation of the constitutional amendments passed in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Court’s decision imposed a strict limitation on the application of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime), as well …