Education

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Entry Category: Education - Starting with M

Madden, Ed

Ed Madden is a poet, activist, and educator who has written, co-written, and edited numerous books and anthologies. His poem “Sacrifice” was selected for the Best New Poets 2007 anthology. In 2015, he was named the first poet laureate of Columbia, South Carolina. Ed Madden was born on September 13, 1963. Originally from Newport (Jackson County), Madden grew up on a rice farm. His family was devoutly Christian. Madden studied English and French at Harding University in Searcy (White County) and graduated with a BA in 1985. He received a BS in biblical studies from the Institute for Christian Studies in Austin, Texas, in 1992; an MA from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin in 1989, and a PhD …

Maddox Seminary

In 1898, the Reverend Alvin Stewart Maddox established the Maddox Seminary for young women in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The school lasted less than a decade before closing, with Maddox relocating to Eureka Springs (Carroll County), where he opened Crescent College in 1908. In the summer of 1898, yellow fever was raging in Mississippi, where Maddox was serving as the president of the Union Female College of Oxford, a position he had held for four years. He was planning for the fall semester at the college, had hired faculty, had had a catalog printed, and was traveling the state promoting the college. Some students had already committed to enroll, but while he was away from Oxford, the town was quarantined, …

Maddox, Alvin S.

The Reverend Alvin Stewart Maddox established two female educational institutions in Arkansas: Maddox Seminary in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Crescent College in Eureka Springs (Carroll County). He was a noted educator and businessman. Alvin Stewart Maddox was born on August 17, 1868, to Thomas Frederick Maddox and Amanda Lee Nance Maddox in Rutherford County, Tennessee. He grew up in Rutherford County with his ten brothers and sisters, one of whom died young. His grandfather was a ruling elder of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and the family grew up with a strong religious background. By 1889, he and brother Finis Ewing Maddox were working for the Cumberland Presbytery and were accepted as candidates to study for the ministry at Cumberland …

Maddox, Finis Ewing

The Reverend Finis Ewing Maddox was vice president of Maddox Seminary in Little Rock (Pulaski County), having helped his brother, the Reverend Alvin S. Maddox, to establish the institution. He also served as the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Texarkana (Miller County) and founded the First Congregational Church of Texarkana. While he was at the First Presbyterian Church, he was charged with heresy. Finis Maddox was born on December 9, 1870, to Thomas Fredrick Maddox and Amanda Lee Nance Maddox in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He was the seventh of ten children and grew up with a strong religious background. His grandfather was an elder of the Presbyterian Church. Maddox decided to study for the ministry in college and …

Maddox, Ode Lee

Ode Lee Maddox was a long-serving and influential member of the Arkansas General Assembly as well as a dedicated career educator. By combining his passion for education with his well-developed political skills, he played a central role in the development of the Arkansas public education system. Ode Lee Maddox was born on October 2, 1912 in Oden (Montgomery County). He was the youngest of four children of Hugh Maddox and Alice Edwards Maddox. He received his early education at Caney Elementary, an experience he believed so central to his future accomplishments that he often said that his most important educational experience had been at the “University of Caney.” He graduated from Oden High School in 1932. On October 6, 1934, …

Makemie College

Makemie College, a Presbyterian institution chartered by the Arkansas General Assembly on January 7, 1853, was named for the Reverend Francis Makemie, considered by many to be the father of American Presbyterianism. The “Act to Incorporate Makemic [sic] College” is remarkably vague. It notes that the institution will be under the control of the Synod of Arkansas and allows trustees Samuel J. Baird, Thomas W. Newton, Joshua F. Green, Edwin R. McGuire, D. C. Montgomery, and William L. McGuire to locate the college “at such point within this State as they may select,” and to “establish in it departments for instruction in the arts and sciences, and any of the learned professions.” The trustees, who had yet to hold their …

Malvern-Hot Spring County Library

The Malvern-Hot Spring County Library was established in 1928 by the efforts of the Women’s Club of Malvern (Hot Spring County). The Women’s Club was formed on March 8, 1899, giving “intellectual culture” as the object of their organization. The goal of the Women’s Club was to erect a building for a meeting place and a public library, and each member was required to donate a book upon joining the club. Each year, half of the yearly dues was set aside for a library fund. The group was successful in procuring many books and later housed them a collection in a building on Main Street. They opened the building several days a week, staffed by volunteers from the Women’s Club. …

Maness Schoolhouse

The Maness Schoolhouse, located at 8801 Wells Lake Road near Barling (Sebastian County), is a 1937 structure built with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It features a porch and amenities constructed in 1943 by German prisoners of war (POWs) held at Camp Chaffee. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 29, 2003. In 2015, the building was rehabilitated to become a restaurant. The first school in the area south of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) near Barling known as Massard Prairie consisted of a log building, which was later replaced by a wood-frame structure, known as the Massard Schoolhouse, all around the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Another school building …

Massey, Mary Elizabeth

Mary Elizabeth Massey was a history professor noted for her early studies of women in the Civil War, years before women’s history courses became common in university history departments. Her books have continued to be important decades after their publication. Mary Elizabeth Massey (she used her full name throughout her life) was born on December 25, 1915, in Morrilton (Conway County) to Mary McClung Massey and Charles Leonidas Massey. After graduation from Morrilton High School, she attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). For multiple years, Massey was president of her sorority (in an era when Hendrix had fraternities and sororities), and she served on the Interfraternity Council, the dormitory council, and the Student Senate, in addition to serving one-year …

Matthews, Jess Walton

Jess Matthews had a forty-four-year career in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with the Little Rock School District as teacher, coach, and administrator. For nearly two decades, he was principal of Little Rock High School, which was renamed Little Rock Central High School in 1953. He guided that school through the troubled years of desegregation, including the mob protest and military intervention in 1957 and the 1958–59 school closure. Jess Walton Matthews was born on June 7, 1900, in Blue Mound, Kansas, to Jesse W. Matthews and Lutie Woods Matthews. He graduated from high school in La Harpe, Kansas, and was in the U.S. Army during World War I. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State Teachers College of Pittsburg …

Maynard Baptist Academy

aka: Abbott Institute
aka: Ouachita Baptist Academy
The Maynard Baptist Academy—first known as the Abbott Institute and then as the Ouachita Baptist Academy—was a boarding school founded in 1894 in Maynard (Randolph County). At the time, most schools typically had only one room and went only as far as the eighth grade. The Abbott Institute was founded in 1894 by the Abbott (or Abbot) family from the Maynard area. While they themselves lacked much education, they saw great value in educating the young people of the area and surrounding areas. Eli Abbott had been very successful in land speculation in the Fourche River and Current River bottomland while also farming. The institute drew students from a wide area of Arkansas and from other states. The school had …

McBrien, Dean Depew (D. D.)

Dean Depew (D. D.) McBrien was a college professor and academic administrator at Henderson State Teachers College (HSTC)—now Henderson State University (HSU)—in Arkadelphia (Clark County) for eighteen years. D. D. McBrien was born on November 14, 1892, in Tecumseh, Nebraska, to Jasper Leonidas McBrien and Eva Forbes McBrien. The oldest of five children, McBrien graduated from high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1909 and entered the University of Nebraska. McBrien first worked at the high school level, serving as principal of the high school in Phillips, Nebraska, in the 1912–13 school year. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1914 and obtained a position at Arkansas State Teachers College (ASTC)—now the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) in Conway (Faulkner …

McCain, Paul Moffatt

Dr. Paul Moffatt McCain served as president of Arkansas College (which later became Lyon College) from 1952 to 1969, the second-longest consecutive presidential tenure in the institution’s history. Only the first president, Isaac J. Long, served longer. McCain led the college though a period of growth, with enrollment tripling, the budget increasing by more than 600 percent, the location moving a mile to the east, and new academic buildings and residence halls springing up. His most significant accomplishment, however, was gaining accreditation for the school from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, a step that gave Arkansas College greater credibility and opened the door to new funding resources. Paul McCain was born on January 25, 1920, in Atlanta, …

McGraw, Patricia Washington

Patricia Washington McGraw, a scholar, professor, and author, has made a significant impact throughout the country and the world as an educator and African American cultural preservationist. Patricia Washington was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to William and Ruth Washington, natives of Danville (Yell County), on May 6, 1935. While she was growing up in a time of school segregation and Jim Crow laws, her parents instilled in her the value of education and the importance of embracing her African American heritage. In 1953, she graduated from all-Black Dunbar High School in Little Rock. McGraw graduated from San Francisco State College in California in 1957 and earned a master’s degree in American literature from the college in 1967. She …

McKay, Eugene

Eugene McKay was a prominent educator in Arkansas in the second half of the twentieth century. He is most closely identified with Arkansas State University–Beebe (ASU–Beebe), where he spent just short of five decades, eventually rising to become the school’s chancellor, a post he held for a little over twenty years before retiring in 2016. Eugene McKay was born on May 5, 1941, in Amagon (Jackson County). His parents were farmers. Much of McKay’s early life was spent picking and chopping cotton. The McKay family moved frequently to do farm work, but they were usually in the Amagon area. McKay attended a number of rural schools in Amagon, Wiona (Independence County), and Charlotte (Independence County) before the family settled in …

McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education

The 1981–82 federal court case McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education constituted a challenge to the state’s Act 590, which mandated the equal treatment of creation science in classrooms where evolution was taught. On January 5, 1982, U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton ruled Act 590 unconstitutional in light of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. His determination that creationism constituted a religious doctrine rather than a scientific theory had a profound impact on the nation, the ramifications of which are still being felt today. The draft of the model act which eventually became Act 590 originated in an Anderson, South Carolina, organization called Citizens for Fairness in Education. Its founder, Paul Ellwanger, working from a model prepared …

Meahl, Helen Mae Eidson Buchanan

Helen Meahl served in the Fifty-fifth Arkansas General Assembly, representing Nevada County, from 1945 to 1946. She later served as a professor of sociology in Tennessee and Pennsylvania.  Helen Mae Eidson was born in Springdale (Washington and Benton counties) on September 3, 1912, one of four children in the family of Robert Anson Eidson, who was a farm laborer, and Ruby Ann O’Neil Eidson, a homemaker. After graduating from Springdale High School in 1931, she lived with an aunt and uncle in Oklahoma for a year then attended Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee for one semester.  Moving back and enrolling at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), Eidson was vice president of the Home Economics Club, president of the Baptist Student Union, active in the YMCA, on the editorial staff of Arkansas Agriculturalist magazine, and named Who’s Who in Ag School, one of four senior women …

Mercer, Christopher Columbus, Jr.

Christopher Columbus Mercer Jr. was an advisor to Daisy Bates during the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. As field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), his legal background helped Bates understand and respond to the flood of litigation against the NAACP. Christopher Mercer was born Castor Mercer Jr. on March 27, 1924, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), to Castor C. and Tarvell Linda Mercer; his mother soon changed his name. His father worked as a mechanic for the St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt) Railroad. His mother owned a dry-cleaning business. He has one brother and one half-brother. Mercer received his AB in social services from Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College …

Meriwether, John Thompson (Jack)

John Thompson (Jack) Meriwether was a city administrator whose later career in higher education channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to Arkansas colleges and universities. Meriwether was city manager—the city’s chief administrator—of Texarkana (Miller County) and then Little Rock (Pulaski County). He was an officer at a bank in his hometown of Paragould (Greene County) and was general manager of the Arkansas Gazette for several years. He also served as vice president for governmental relations for the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). Jack Meriwether was born on November 23, 1933, to Ray Meriwether and Marie Thompson Meriwether in Paragould. His father and his uncle, Bill Meriwether, ran a hardware store started by his grandfather in 1883. Meriwether and his …

Millar, Alexander Copeland

Alexander Copeland Millar was a prominent Methodist minister, educator (elected one of the nation’s youngest college presidents), and publisher. Alexander Millar was born May 17, 1861, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to William John Millar and Ellen Caven. His father engaged in the drug business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until the great fire of April 10, 1845, destroyed at least one third of the city, including his drug business and his family’s home. Later, William Millar tried his hand at being an inventor. In 1867, he moved his family to Missouri, where he bought a farm near Brookfield in Linn County. In 1885, Alexander Millar graduated from the Methodist-affiliated Central College in Fayette, Missouri. Four years later, he earned an MA from Central …

Miller, Asbury Mansfield

Asbury Mansfield (A. M.) Miller was an African American man who served for many years as an educator in Batesville (Independence County). A. M. Miller, the son of Randal and Pollie Miller, was born on February 4, 1893, in Perla (Hot Spring County). His father, a native of Mississippi, worked in a sawmill there. Miller graduated from Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and he later did graduate work at what is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). During World War I, he worked as a waiter at Fort Logan H. Roots in North Little Rock (Pulaski County). On May 25, 1921, he married Ethel O. Walter in Clark County. At around this time, he …

Miller, Eliza Ann Ross

Eliza Ann Ross Miller was an African-American businesswoman and educator, as well as the first woman to build and operate a movie theater in Arkansas. She was the wife of prosperous Helena (Phillips County) businessman, state legislator, and church leader Abraham Hugo Miller. After her husband’s death, she continued his business operations while also providing leadership in the Helena school system. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1999. Eliza Ross was born in Arkadelphia (Clark County) on September 6, 1869, to George and Sarah Ross. On June 15, 1887, she married Abraham H. Miller in Arkadelphia. The couple had eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood. Abraham Miller, who had been successful in real …

Missionary Baptist College

In the decade before the Great Depression, Missionary Baptist College opened its doors in Sheridan (Grant County). This small denominational educational institution brought the advantages of higher education to what was then a rural area, and though it operated only briefly, it exerted profound influence upon Missionary Baptist education in the state. The churches of the State Association of Missionary Baptist Churches of Arkansas, organized in 1902, have long maintained a commitment to Christian education, especially the training of student ministers. Three years after its founding, the association took over the operation of Buckner College at Witcherville (Sebastian County) in western Arkansas. However, its location far from the center of the Landmark Baptist movement in the state hindered its support, …

Missionary Baptist Seminary

The Missionary Baptist Seminary and Institute serves as the oldest educational institution among Missionary Baptists in the state of Arkansas. The school fulfills the role of training pastors in the Bible and the foundational principles of pastoral work. The Missionary Baptist Seminary and Institute was started on April 1, 1934, when Antioch Baptist Church, located at 22nd and Brown streets in Little Rock (Pulaski County), passed a motion during a regular business meeting to start the school. The Great Depression led to the closing of the Missionary Baptist College of Sheridan (Grant County), and the new seminary was started in response. Conceived by pastor Benjamin Marcus Bogard and two other men, J. Louis Guthrie of Oklahoma and Conrad Nathan Glover, …

Mississippi County Community College Solar Power Experiment

In 1976, the Department of Energy and the Solar Energy Research Institute were allotted funds for a Total Energy Solar Photovoltaic Conversion System that would be the largest of its kind in the world. The location chosen for the project was Mississippi County Community College (MCCC), now Arkansas Northeastern College (ANC), in Blytheville (Mississippi County). The project design included the installation of solar panels, as well as additional funding for the college facility. The main purpose of the project was to build an energy-efficient structure and harness solar power from the panels in order to coordinate, monitor, and manage energy production. With the United States facing an energy crisis in the mid-1970s, President Jimmy Carter created a comprehensive energy plan …

Mitchell, James

James Mitchell was president and editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Democrat from the time he purchased the paper with W. D. Blocher in 1878 until shortly before his death in 1902. As editor, Mitchell made the paper a powerful statewide force backing Democratic policies and candidates. At the same time, he argued forcefully, both in the paper and through frequent public speeches, for economic diversification in the state, for educational improvement, for equal pay and improved opportunities for women, and for other progressive measures. James Mitchell was born on May 8, 1832, at Cane Hill (Washington County) to James Mitchell, a farmer, and Mary Ann Webber. He was the third of ten children whose parents had moved their family from Indiana …