Modern Era

Arkansas League of the South
The League of the South was founded in 1994 with the announced intention of explaining and celebrating the Sou...
Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission
The Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission was created by Act 1216 of 1993. It is an offshoot of the Marti...
Black Americans for Democracy (BAD)
aka: Students Taking a New Direction (STAND)
aka: Black Students Association (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville)
The Black Americans for Democracy (BAD) was a group organized by Af...
Black Lives Matter
#BlackLivesMatter (BLM) began as Alicia Garza’s social media hashtag protest on Saturday, July 12, 2013, aft...
Black Power Movement
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker Willie Ricks coined the “black power” slogan in Ju...
Blytheville Boycotts of 1970–1971
In the opening months of 1970, a group of African Americans in their mid-twenties sought to bring the social a...
Evangeline Katherine Brown (1909–2001)
Evangeline Katherine Johnson Brown was a longtime educator and activist in the Arkansas Delta who served as a ...
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998)
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was one of the best-known and most recognizable symbols of African American rebellion i...
College Station Freedom School
While the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education marked the end of legally sanction...
Cuban Refugee Crisis
Arkansas played a part in the international drama of 1980, when 125,000 Cubans left their homeland for a new l...
Earle Race Riot of 1970
The Earle Race Riot of 1970 broke out in the late evening of September 10 and continued into the early hours o...
Eugene Ellison (Killing of)
The 2010 “police-involved shooting” death of Eugene Ellison in his own apartment in Little Rock (Pulaski C...
Dick Gregory (Arrest of)
In February 1964, African-American satirist Dick Gregory was jailed in the Jefferson County Jail in Pine Bluff...
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 ...
Perlesta Arthur "Les" Hollingsworth (1936–2007)
Perlesta Arthur “Les” Hollingsworth was a lawyer whose battle for equal justice for African Americans took...
Bobby James Hutton (1950–1968)
At the age of sixteen, Robert James (Bobby) Hutton was the first recruit of the Black Panther Party. He partic...
Gertrude Newsome Jackson (1923–2019)
Gertrude Newsome Jackson was a local activist in the Marvell (Phillips County) area who, along with her husban...
Little Rock School Desegregation Cases (1982–2014)
aka: Little Rock School District, et al v. Pulaski County Special School District et al.
From 1982 until 2014, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Distr...
Little Rock Uprising of 1968
What became known as the Little Rock Uprising of 1968 was triggered by the controversial killing of inmate Cur...
March Against Fear (1969)
aka: Walk Against Fear (1969)
For four days between August 20 and 24, 1969, Lance Watson (alias S...
Marianna Boycotts of 1971–1972
In the early 1970s, African Americans in the rural Delta community of Marianna (Lee County), lacking represent...
Robert "Say" McIntosh (1943–2023)
Robert “Say” McIntosh was a restaurant owner, political activist, and community organizer distinctly tied ...
National Black Political Convention (1974)
Little Rock (Pulaski County) hosted the second National Black Political Convention (NBPC) at Robinson Auditori...
Annie Zachary Pike (1931–)
Annie Zachary Pike is a farmer and community activist from Phillips County who became the first African-Americ...
Adolph Reed Sr. (1921–2003)
Adolph Reed Sr. was a distinguished educator and activist. As a political scientist, he approached politics fr...
Andree Yvonne Layton Roaf (1941–2009)
Andree Yvonne Layton Roaf was an Arkansas attorney and jurist. A 1996 inductee to the Arkansas Black Hall of F...
Roosevelt Levander Thompson (1962–1984)
Roosevelt Levander Thompson was a very accomplished Arkansan who achieved many things during his short lifetim...
John Winfred Walker (1937–2019)
John Winfred Walker was a lawyer who emerged from segregated schools and society in southwestern Arkansas to w...
White Revolution
Headquartered in Mountain View (Stone County), White Revolution was a neo-Nazi group founded by Arkansas nati...
Leonard Lee Williams (Killing of)
Leonard Lee Williams, a nineteen-year-old African American man, was killed on Sunday, August 17, 1969, at the ...
Sue Cowan Williams (1910–1994)
Sue Cowan Williams represented African American teachers in the Little Rock School District as the plaintiff i...