Entries - Entry Type: Group

Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society

The Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society was founded on September 27, 1974, by a group of individuals who were interested in history and preserving the heritage of Baxter County. The organization, originally known as the Baxter County Historical Society, is officially chartered in Arkansas as a nonprofit organization. In 1999, the name was changed to the Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society. The mission of the society is to preserve and interpret the history of Baxter County by acquiring, preserving, and showcasing artifacts; acquiring, preserving, and making available for research records documenting the social, economic, and political history of the county through an active archival program at the Baxter County Archives; promoting historical and genealogical research; and educating children …

Bean’s Rangers

Captain Jesse Bean’s Ranger Company was one of six companies of mounted militia authorized by Congress in 1832. Led by a member of a prominent Arkansas family, the company formed a part of the first mounted battalion in the U.S. Army for seventeen years. Its actions are representative of the militarization of Arkansas’s western border and the area beyond during the territorial period. Influenced in 1815 by a need for economy and a deep-rooted fear of standing armies, Congress had eliminated cavalry, considered by some to be a uniformed elite, from the army. However, the Black Hawk War in Illinois and Wisconsin reminded legislators of the utility of cavalry, and, on June 15, 1832, Congress authorized President Andrew Jackson to raise …

Benton County Historical Society

The Benton County Historical Society (BCHS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting, publishing, and otherwise preserving and disseminating the history of Benton County. The BCHS arose from a June 22, 1954, meeting of twenty-six people at the Masonic Youth Center in Rogers (Benton County). The records preserved over the years show that the attendees came from all townships of the county. At this meeting, temporary officers of the yet unnamed group were elected as follows: J. Wesley Sampier (chairman), Ray Henry and Louise Plank (vice chairs), and Huey Huhn (secretary/treasurer). These temporary officers had to nominate a slate of officers and draw up a constitution and by-laws. Word of mouth and notices in the newspapers promoted the first public …

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 African-American students at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) to provide a united voice seeking to change discriminatory practices on campus. The campus was officially integrated in 1948 when Silas Hunt enrolled in the University of Arkansas School of Law. However, two decades after integration, the black student population was still small, and black faculty and staff even fewer. In April 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the black students on campus formed BAD to advocate for themselves. The organization exists today as the Black Students Association. BAD’s first public action took place the month after King’s assassination. The student newspaper, the …

Black and Tan Republicans

The Republican Party of Arkansas was formed in April 1867. Powell Clayton—a Union officer during the Civil War who moved to Arkansas to become a planter early in Reconstruction—became the key leader of the party. During Reconstruction, Republicans were elected to state offices at all levels—including governor. This Republican dominance ended, however, with the enfranchisement of former Confederate loyalists as Reconstruction ended in the state in 1874. Even after Reconstruction, the party remained visible, with newly enfranchised African Americans joining white Republican loyalists in biracial support of the party, with many Black men being elected to local office and the Arkansas General Assembly. In order to attract white Democrats, one faction within the Republican Party, known as the “Lily Whites,” …

Black History Commission of Arkansas

The Black History Commission of Arkansas (BHCA) was created as the Arkansas Black History Advisory Committee in 1991. Senator Jerry Donal Jewell introduced legislation that passed as Act 1233, establishing the seven-member, governor-appointed committee. In 1995, Act 980 changed the committee’s name to the Black History Commission of Arkansas. The BHCA was charged with preserving and promoting Arkansas’s African American history, as well as advising the Arkansas History Commission (which later became the Arkansas State Archives) with respect to gathering, developing, and keeping the history of Black Arkansans. Ronnie A. Nichols, director of the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-West Helena (Phillips County), and North Little Rock (Pulaski County) educator and civic leader Curtis Henry Sykes were elected as the first chairman …

Black Lives Matter

#BlackLivesMatter (BLM) began as Alicia Garza’s social media hashtag protest on Saturday, July 12, 2013, after a Sanford, Florida, jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges stemming from his killing of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin. Garza and her best friend of ten years, activist Patrisse Cullors, were joined by New York City executive and activist Opal Tometi in creating BLM’s digital platform. Since that time, BLM has become recognized as the major civil rights movement in twenty-first-century America, including in Arkansas. From the beginning, Black Lives Matter participants in Arkansas have been incredibly diverse, and protests in towns and large cities often were majority white. In late February 2012, George Zimmerman followed, confronted, and shot unarmed seventeen-year-old …

Black Oak Arkansas

Black Oak Arkansas, a popular rock and roll band of the 1970s from rural Arkansas near Black Oak (Craighead County), was the first Arkansas rock band to have significant commercial success. Originally called the Knowbody Else, the band was formed in 1965 by singer James “Jim Dandy” Mangrum from Black Oak and guitarist Rickie Lee Reynolds from Manila (Mississippi County). The band was signed to Stax Records and released an album, The Knowbody Else, on Enterprise, a Stax subsidiary, as well as Early Times, which was released on Stax. Despite the failure of these albums, the band continued touring the nation and was “discovered” in California by Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, who signed the band in 1970. They changed …

Black Power Movement

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker Willie Ricks coined the “black power” slogan in June 1966 during the March Against Fear in Mississippi. The term was subsequently popularized by national SNCC chair Stokely Carmichael. Those who used the slogan often left its precise meaning deliberately ambiguous. In general terms, the black power movement is usually taken to mark a shift in emphasis from the earlier civil rights movement by advocating black separatism and black nationalism over inter-racialism and racial integration, and by advocating armed black self-defense over a strict adherence to nonviolence. More recently, historians have questioned just how dramatic a break the black power era represented from the civil rights era. Instead, they have noted that many of the …

Black Union Troops

aka: African American Union Troops
aka: United States Colored Troops

Many former African American slaves and freedmen from Arkansas answered President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help put down the Confederate rebellion. Across the war-torn nation, 180,000 Black men responded. An estimated 40,000 lost their lives in the conflict. Lincoln later credited these “men of color” with helping turn the tide of the war, calling them “the sable arm.” The official records from the U.S. government credit 5,526 men of African descent as having served in the Union army from the state of Arkansas. Between 3,000 and 4,000 additional Black soldiers served in Arkansas during the war, including in artillery, cavalry, and infantry regiments. In addition, Black soldiers manned all of the batteries and fortifications at Helena (Phillips County) from …

Black United Youth (BUY)

Black United Youth (BUY) was a militant, black power–inspired youth organization that grew out of War on Poverty programs in Pulaski County in the mid-to-late 1960s. It had chapters in Little Rock (Pulaski County), North Little Rock (Pulaski County), Arkadelphia (Clark County), and Benton (Saline County). BUY’s activities in Little Rock are the best documented of all the chapters. BUY’s Little Rock president was Bobby Brown, the younger brother of Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine. BUY was, according to Brown, “an eyeball to eyeball organization” dedicated to “direct confrontation with white people for making changes.” Brown stated that BUY included “schoolteachers [and] professional people” as well as “street people [and] gangsters” from the local neighborhoods among …

Bonnie and Clyde

aka: Barrow Brothers
aka: Barrow Gang

Arkansas was frequented by Bonnie Parker, Clyde Chesnut Barrow, and their associates, collectively known as the Barrow Gang, between 1932 and 1934. The gang’s criminal exploits in Arkansas included murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery, and automobile theft. Western Arkansas was also on the circuit of back roads Clyde Barrow used to evade lawmen from other states. The most serious crime committed in the state by the Barrow Gang was the murder of Marshal Henry D. Humphrey of Alma (Crawford County), committed while the gang was hiding out in a tourist camp in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in June 1933. Bonnie Parker (October 1, 1910–May 23, 1934) and Clyde Barrow (March 24, 1909–May 23, 1934) both grew up in poverty in …

Brindletails [Political Faction]

Dissention within the Republican Party of Arkansas began following the 1868 constitutional convention. The schism in the Arkansas Republican Party, like in the national party, threatened to end the party’s political dominance in the state. Two groups within the state party—the Minstrels (aligned with the national regular Republican leadership) and the Brindletails (aligned with the Liberal Republican movement)—emerged. The Minstrel faction, allegedly named due to the past profession of one of its members, relied on newcomers (often pejoratively labeled “carpetbaggers”). Joseph Brooks, who broke with Governor Powell Clayton and the political machine under his control, formed a faction of the Republican Party known as the “Brindletails,” named because his voice was said to sound like a Brindletail bull. Brooks criticized …

Brothers of Freedom

One of several farmers’ organizations formed in Arkansas during the early 1880s, the Brothers of Freedom originated in Johnson County in 1882. Founded by Isaac McCracken and Marion Farris, the organization spread rapidly across northwestern Arkansas, recruiting between 30,000 and 40,000 members within three years. The Brothers of Freedom ceased to exist in 1885 when it merged with another Arkansas-based farmers’ organization, the Agricultural Wheel, and assumed the name of the latter organization. The impact of the Brothers of Freedom lived on, however, not only through the Agricultural Wheel but also through the Union Labor and Populist parties. McCracken and Farris organized the Brothers of Freedom, originally (but only briefly) as a secret organization, in order to enable farmers to …

Browns, The

A vocal trio from southern Arkansas, the Browns had several country hits. They were also instrumental in the development of the elegant, often orchestral “Nashville sound,” which replaced the string bands of earlier eras. The Browns began as a duo featuring Jim Ed Brown, born in 1934 in Sparkman (Dallas County), and his sister Maxine, born in Campti, Louisiana, in 1931. Their sister Bonnie, born in Sparkman in 1938, joined the group in 1955. The Browns grew up in the piney woods near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), where their father, Floyd Brown, worked as a log hauler and farmer. The group began its recording career for Fabor Records in southern California shortly after Jim Ed and Maxine graduated from high …

Buddhists

Buddhists in Arkansas are represented by ethnic immigrants who bring to the state the religious practices of their homelands as well as native Arkansans who have turned to Buddhism for their spiritual needs. Though less than one percent of the population of Arkansas, Buddhists in the state have established temples testifying to their presence, in addition to meeting in a variety of formal and informal groups. Buddhism can be described as a religion, a philosophy, a psychology, a practice, or a way of life. Buddhism’s essentially non-theistic framework, along with its emphasis on personal experience as the only true validation of its teachings, sets it apart from most other religious systems. Despite the varied schools of Buddhist thought and practice, …

Bullfrog Valley Gang

The Bullfrog Valley Gang was a notorious counterfeiting ring that operated in the wilderness of Pope County during the depression of the 1890s. The gang’s origin and methods were mysterious, but the New York Times reported its demise on June 28, 1897. The article said deputy U.S. marshals attached to the federal district court at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) had captured three men, effectively breaking up “the once-famous band of counterfeiters known to secret service operators all over the United States as the Bullfrog Valley Gang.” Previous arrests were reported in Arkansas earlier in the year. In all, some fifteen men were arrested and convicted in federal courts at Fort Smith and Little Rock (Pulaski County). Others, in Arkansas and …

Caddo Nation

Caddo Indians enter written history in chronicles of the Hernando de Soto expedition, which describe encounters during the Spanish passage through southwest Arkansas. When the Spaniards crossed the threshold to Caddo country on June 20, 1542, they entered a nation uniquely distinguished by language, social structure, tradition, and way of life. Caddo people were sedentary farmers, salt makers, hunters, traders, craftsmen, and creators of exquisite pottery who buried their dead in mounds and cemeteries with solemn ritual and a belief that the dead traveled to a world beyond this. Caddo language was unlike any spoken by other groups the Spaniards met as they explored northeast Arkansas and the Southern states east of the Mississippi River. Caddo communities—called villages or towns …

Capital Citizens’ Council (CCC)

The Capital Citizens’ Council (CCC) was one of many similar organizations established throughout the South to resist implementation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s May 1954 decision that school segregation was contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. Formed in 1956 from a Little Rock (Pulaski County) affiliate of the like-minded Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) group, White America Incorporated, to oppose School Superintendent Virgil Blossom’s plan for the gradual integration of Little Rock’s schools, the CCC was the most important segregationist organization during the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. The CCC combined traditional racist rhetoric about miscegenation and states’ rights diatribes with allegations of integrationist bias against working-class people. It claimed that there was an alliance between the National Association for …

Capitol Zoning District Commission

The Capitol Zoning District Commission (CZDC) is a state government agency created by the Arkansas General Assembly in Act 267 of 1975 to be a proponent of the historic preservation and development around the Arkansas State Capitol Building and Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Several historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places are located within the CZDC, including the Governor’s Mansion Historic District, the South Main Street Historic District, and several blocks of the MacArthur Park Historic District. The agency issues permits to those who want to alter the exterior of historic structures and regulates land use in those areas. The CZDC was created to address a transitioning neighborhood with declining residential use around the …

Carpenter’s Produce

Carpenter’s Produce is an agricultural enterprise based in Grady (Lincoln County) that supplies produce for both regional farmers’ markets and national grocery chains such as Walmart and Kroger. The Carpenter family has long been an important symbol of African-American success in the field of agriculture, especially in a time and place when many independent black farmers faced monumental difficulties in remaining solvent. Carpenter’s Produce was established by Abraham Carpenter Sr. and his wife, Katie. In 1969, Katie Carpenter planted a one-acre vegetable garden and began selling her produce locally. At the time, Abraham Carpenter, then almost forty years old, was working at Seagram’s Lumber Mill in nearby Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Using some of his earnings, he purchased thirty additional …

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags

“Carpetbaggers” is a slang term denoting men who adhered to the newly formed Republican Party, which followed the demise of the Whig Party, and gained control of Arkansas politics and government after the end of Civil War. Many of these men were former Union soldiers. The correct term is Radical Republicans. Southerners coined the pejorative term carpetbaggers and claimed that these men came into the state with only what could be packed in a suitcase made from carpet scraps. The belief was that these men were uneducated opportunists who came to Arkansas only to plunder and take advantage of the bankrupt, defeated, and humiliated people of the state. Noted carpetbaggers included Thomas Meade Bowen, a lawyer, and Powell Clayton, an …

Carroll County Historical and Genealogical Society

On September 6, 1955, a group of citizens consisting of Alice Baker Gentry, Ruth Trimble, Lois Stubbs, Cora Pinkley Call, Frances McClelland, Coy Logan, Boyd W. Johnson, and Edwin L. Chaplin met in the Methodist church in Berryville (Carroll County) with Ted Worley, executive secretary of the Arkansas History Commission (now called the Arkansas State Archives). The purpose of this meeting was to make plans for organizing a historical society in Carroll County. During this meeting, Worley discussed the early history of Carroll County, the importance of preserving early records of the county, and how other county historical societies had been organized and managed. The next meeting was set for September 29, 1955, at the county library for the purpose …

CARTI

aka: Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute

CARTI is a not-for-profit organization that treats cancer patients, even if they cannot pay. As of 2013, CARTI has treated more than 220,000 patients. CARTI is headquartered in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and has locations in the city at St. Vincent Health and Baptist Health Medical Center, as well as radiation therapy centers in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), Conway (Faulkner County), Searcy (White County), Mountain Home (Baxter County), and Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). It has hematology and oncology locations in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Heber Springs (Cleburne County), Benton (Saline County), Morrilton (Conway County), El Dorado (Union County), Clinton (Van Buren County), and Monticello (Drew County). During the 1960s, radiation therapy in Arkansas consisted of individual cobalt units treating …

Cate Brothers Band

The Cate Brothers, identical twins Earl and Ernie (born Ernest), once exemplified the country-style rock and roll that flourished in the Ozark Mountains area of northwestern Arkansas, before adding rhythm and blues (R&B), soul, and funk to their approach in a distinctly unpretentious way. The Cates were born in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1942 and grew up in Springdale (Washington and Benton counties). Although not born to a musical family, the Cates taught themselves how to play their instruments and were heavily influenced during their teenage years by Ronnie Hawkins, whose ever-changing band, the Hawks, was at that time composed of the personnel who eventually became famous as Bob Dylan’s backup ensemble, the Band: pianist Richard Manuel, keyboardist Garth Hudson, …

Central Arkansas Development Council

The Central Arkansas Development Council (CADC) was developed in direct response to the Economic Opportunity Act, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 20, 1964. Part of Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” CADC was created to “alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty” for central Arkansas residents. CADC’s focus is to help low-income individuals and their families become self-sufficient. To that end, CADC provides food, job training, affordable housing, transportation, and financial literacy to low-income individuals and families in central Arkansas. CADC’s Senior Activity Centers provide social activities and meals to people over the age of sixty. In the twenty-first century, CADC’s service area includes twelve Arkansas counties: Montgomery, Pike, Clark, Hot Spring, Dallas, Ouachita, Calhoun, …

Central Arkansas Radio Emergency Network (CAREN)

The Central Arkansas Radio Emergency Net (CAREN) is the oldest of several amateur radio clubs in the central Arkansas area. CAREN’s focus is on providing public service event support and emergency communications. To facilitate these services, CAREN operates VHF/UHF radio repeater sites throughout the central region of the state. Ham radio operators are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 97 (Amateur Radio Service), after passing an examination for one of several classes of license. The Amateur Radio Service has five main purposes: 1) providing emergency communications as a noncommercial service, 2) advancing the radio art, 3) advancing communications and technical skills, 4) expanding a pool of trained operators, …

Central Arkansas Water

Central Arkansas Water (CAW) is the largest utility of its kind in the state, providing fresh drinking water to about 450,000 residents of Central Arkansas across Pulaski, Lonoke, Saline, and Grant counties. CAW serves Little Rock (Pulaski County), North Little Rock (Pulaski County), Alexander (Pulaski and Saline counties), Cammack Village (Pulaski County), College Station (Pulaski County), Sherwood (Pulaski County), Wrightsville (Pulaski County), Shannon Hills (Saline County), the Little Rock Air Force Base, Cabot (Lonoke County), Bryant (Saline County), Salem (Saline County), Sardis (Saline County), Woodland Hills (Pulaski County), Jacksonville (Pulaski County), and unincorporated areas of Pulaski County. The 145th Street Water and Sewer Improvement District, the Brushy Island Public Water Authority, the Sardis Water Association Public Water Authority, the Ridgefield Estates Public Facilities …

Cherokee

The Europeans named the Cherokee as one of the Five Civilized Tribes. (The other four were the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.) At the time of European contact, the Cherokee inhabited a region consisting of what is now western North Carolina and parts of Virginia, Georgia, and eastern Tennessee. Over the next two centuries, the tribe expanded through the southern Appalachians, reaching further into Georgia as well as into South Carolina, northeastern Alabama, and across the Cumberland River into Kentucky and West Virginia; some of this expansion occurred following the displacement of other tribes. By the 1780s, Cherokee migration into Arkansas had begun, largely in response to pressure to move away from Euro-American settlements in the East following the Revolutionary …

Chi Omega

Chi Omega, the largest women’s fraternal organization in the world, was founded at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) on April 5, 1895. By 2022, more than 400,000 women had been initiated into Chi Omega. The national headquarters are in Memphis, Tennessee. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock, UA, and Arkansas State University (ASU) have Chi Omega chapters, and there are many alumnae chapters in Arkansas. Contrary to popular usage, Chi Omega has always referred to itself as a fraternity rather than a sorority. The first members, referred to as the Five Founders, included Ina May Boles, Jobelle Holcombe, Alice Simonds, Jean Vincenheller, and Dr. Charles Richardson, a Fayetteville dentist and a member of Kappa Sigma. …

Chickasaw

Heading east, the ancestral Chickasaw crossed Arkansas looking for a new homeland at some point in prehistory. Heading west beginning in 1836, the Chickasaw crossed Arkansas again as the tribe was removed to its new home in Indian Territory. Between these two events, the Chickasaw interacted periodically with tribes living in Arkansas, most notably the Quapaw, whom they warred against during much of the eighteenth century. In all versions of the Chickasaw migration story, the people came from the west, usually from central Mexico. They were led by twin brothers Chatah and Chikasa, who followed a divinely inspired fabusa, or leaning pole. In these versions, the people necessarily must have passed through the land that became Arkansas to get to …

Chinese

The introduction of the Chinese to Arkansas can be traced back to their roots as a sojourners’ society—men who left the Chinese “motherland” ready to amass wealth in the United States before returning to their families in China. However, Arkansas did not offer vast riches like that of the fabled gam sahn, or “Golden Mountain,” among the gold mines of northern California. What Arkansas did offer was work in the cotton fields of the Delta. Following a regional conference on Chinese immigration organized by planters from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas and held in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 13, 1869, local planters met in their own smaller conventions to begin the importation of Chinese labor. There was extensive debate on the …

Choctaw

The Choctaw are of the Western Muskogean language stock, which is also the same stock as the Chickasaw. When first encountered by Europeans, the Choctaw were located in three geographic divisions in the area that is now Mississippi and western Alabama. The three divisions each had some distinguishing cultural practices, which may indicate they had separate origins and that the Choctaw came together as a single people only in more recent times. There are two widespread traditions within the Choctaw about their origins. One is that they came from the far west and were led eastward by a sacred pole that was placed in the ground each night; one morning, the pole did not lean but stayed straight upright near …

Christadelphians

Christadelphians have had a presence in Arkansas since 1852, but their impact upon the state is difficult to measure. Christadelphians, following an interpretation of Christianity as basically apolitical, consider themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Consequently, they neither individually nor as a group engage in civic affairs but await political change to be effected upon the return of Jesus Christ. The Christadelphian movement was founded in 1847 by John Thomas, a medical doctor from London, England, who sailed to New York in 1832 and later traveled on to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became associated with Alexander Campbell and the Restoration movement. His studies during this period led to debates with Campbell, and the two parted company. Those …

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

The Christian movement called “Disciples” (among other names) came to Arkansas in the 1830s. Ministers who were initially associated with other denominations began work in the state, and then, as Disciples moved west, they were caught up in the wave of those leaving behind their former ties and becoming “Christians only.” Disciples in the United States The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is one of three denominations descending from the Stone-Campbell movement of the nineteenth century, which has its source in the Second Great Awakening—a period during which a number of Christian denominations underwent changes due to revivals and several new sects were created. Along with Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Disciples help make the “three …

Christian Scientists

aka: Christian Science
aka: Church of Christ, Scientist

Despite smaller numbers of followers than other denominations in Arkansas, the Christian Science movement has had a significant impact upon the state. A review of the Arkansas code yields numerous citations and accommodations for Arkansans who find that religious nonmedical healthcare meets their healthcare needs. These citations and accommodations are found in both criminal and civil codes and have been introduced in large part by Christian Scientists. Mary Baker Eddy, “the only American woman to found a lasting American-based religion,” according to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, founded the First Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 “to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” Thirteen years earlier, …

Church of God in Christ (COGIC)

The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is a predominantly African-American Pentecostal Christian denomination, headquartered at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Its doctrine and practice are charismatic in nature, much like the Assemblies of God, meaning that they emphasize personal religious experience and divinely inspired powers, such as healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues. Founded in Arkansas in 1897, the COGIC is the fourth-largest Christian denomination in the United States (as of 2003), with 5.4 million members, behind the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the United Methodist Church. Its founder, Charles Harrison Mason, became a Christian in 1879. He was baptized by his brother, who was then pastoring near Plumerville (Conway County). Mason later became a minister …

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

aka: Mormons

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes shortened to the LDS Church, Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ) was first introduced into Arkansas upon the arrival of missionaries Henry Brown and Wilford Woodruff, who came in to Arkansas from Clay County, Missouri, on January 28, 1835. Jonathan Hubble and his wife were the first Arkansas converts. They were baptized by immersion, as is the custom among Latter-day Saints, on February 22, 1835. Years later, Wilford Woodruff, the first LDS missionary to preach in Arkansas, would become the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From that modest 1835 beginning, Mormons in Arkansas numbered 27,559 by 2012 and 35,405 by 2023. LDS meetinghouses (chapels) …

Church of the Nazarene

The state of Arkansas was one of the cradles for the early expansion of the Church of the Nazarene, America’s largest Wesleyan-holiness denomination. Nazarenes are evangelical Methodists who emphasize John Wesley’s core preaching, including the conversion of sinners, the sanctification of believers, and the witness of the Holy Spirit to these Christians’ experiences. The Nazarenes grew from the nineteenth-century holiness movement in American Methodism. The denomination was constituted by mergers in 1907 and 1908 of three regional Wesleyan-holiness bodies located on the East Coast, on the West Coast, and in the South. A strong missionary spirit emerged early in Nazarene life; that spirit is the primary reason why the denomination today is global in scope and structure and why over …

Churches of Christ

The churches of Christ make up the second-largest religious fellowship in Arkansas in regular attendance numbers, behind the Southern Baptists and just ahead of the United Methodists, according to a 2000 study. Congregations of the churches of Christ are found in all of the state’s seventy-five counties. Of the three branches of the Restoration Movement, the others being the Christian Churches and the Disciples of Christ, the churches of Christ are the largest branch. This was not always so, however. Background The Restoration Movement, which emerged out of the nationwide Second Great Awakening which swept the frontier beginning in the 1790s, began dually on the Kentucky frontier in 1801, under the leadership of Barton W. Stone, and in 1809 in …

Churchill’s Arkansas Division (CS)

The largest unit of Arkansas Confederate troops during the Civil War, this division saw action in both Arkansas and Louisiana. It was named for its commander, Major General Thomas James Churchill. The first regiments that eventually belonged to the division were organized in the summer of 1862. After the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, Major General Earl Van Dorn led the majority of Confederate troops in the state east of the Mississippi River, where most remained for the duration of the war. Arkansas was left almost completely defenseless, and the new commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, Major General Thomas C. Hindman, immediately began efforts to raise new units of troops in the state. Numerous …

Civil War Refugees

The Civil War that beset Arkansas for four years quickly depleted the modest infrastructure and resource base that then existed throughout the young state. The burden of armies supplying themselves with forage and requisitions from civilians compounded with marauding guerrillas and bushwhackers left many citizens utterly destitute, threatened with starvation. During wartime, order was often imposed only by means of military superiority over opposing forces, and civilized society in much of Arkansas began to break down as the fighting wore on. The prospect of survival in a war-torn state turned thousands of Arkansans into refugees who sought the charity of bare sustenance within Union lines or by leaving Arkansas altogether. Even before the war, Arkansas was bitterly divided from within …

Civil War Roundtable of Arkansas (CWRTA)

Jerry Russell, Bill O’Donnell, and Cal Collier began the Civil War Roundtable of Arkansas (CWRTA) in March 1964 during the height of the national Civil War Centennial celebrations. Russell served as its first president. The CWRTA has been active continuously since 1964, with eleven meetings each year (no meeting in December). The CWRTA has sponsored a number of bus tours over the years to regional Civil War battlefields and sites, including the Pea Ridge National Military Park (with Professor Bill Shea of the University of Arkansas at Monticello as the guide) and sites associated with General Frederick Steele’s Camden Expedition through southern Arkansas (guided by Ed Bearss, the retired chief historian of the National Park Service). In commemoration of the …

Clark County Historical Association

The Clark County Historical Association (CCHA), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization since 1978, researches, preserves, and disseminates the county’s history. Brainchild of philanthropist Jane Ross and retired teacher Amy Jean Greene, it originated on October 30, 1972. A cross-section of county residents have provided leadership, including local politicians and representatives of both Ouachita Baptist and Henderson State universities. The association has remained egalitarian in membership and outlook, though membership (which averages about 250) has gone from a majority within to a majority outside the county. With Ross Foundation financial assistance, Greene led the association for the first five years. Quarterly meetings, always Sundays at 2:00 p.m., occurred mostly in Arkadelphia (Clark County) churches, and featured interested amateurs talking about a wide …

Claybrook Tigers Baseball Team

An African American semi-professional baseball team located in eastern Arkansas during the 1930s, the Claybrook Tigers played and often beat some of the best Negro League teams around. The small Delta town known as Claybrook, in the southern part of Crittenden County, was an unlikely home for a competitive baseball team. It no longer exists, but at that time it was the farming and logging operation of John C. Claybrook, a hard-working and enterprising man who became one of the most successful Black businessmen in the region. Reportedly, Claybrook formed the team to entice his sports-loving son not to leave the farm for the city life he desired. By the early 1930s, Claybrook had built a stadium on the farm …

Coast Guard Auxiliary

aka: U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary

The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, established by Congress in 1939 to assist the U.S. Coast Guard with all missions except military operations and law enforcement, is composed of more than 32,000 volunteers worldwide. Its traditional role has been promoting recreational boating safety through public education courses, assisting with search and rescue missions, conducting marine safety patrols on lakes and rivers, supporting regattas and marine events, and offering free vessel safety checks for recreational boaters as well as commercial vessels. Before members of the auxiliary can inspect a boat, a detailed instruction course is required. The course must be repeated every three years. In 1962, eighty avid Arkansan boaters, primarily from two boat clubs in the Little Rock (Pulaski County) metropolitan area, provided …

Cobbites

The Cobbites were a religious group that began in White County in 1876 under the leadership of the Reverend Cobb. Their strange behavior eventually culminated in the gruesome murder of a local citizen and several Cobbites. The group did not last past 1876. Cobb called himself “the walking preacher.” Little is known about him, not even his full name, other than that he came from Tennessee to White County in 1876. To his followers, he claimed to be God or Jesus Christ. He apparently believed he could perform the works of God, and he used a sycamore pole to command the sun to rise each morning and did the same each evening to command it to set. His followers were …

College Station Freedom School

While the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education marked the end of legally sanctioned school segregation, the implementation of the mandate was slow in coming. The College Station Freedom School was a short-lived effort in 1970 that shined a spotlight on the challenges that school officials and families, Black and white, faced in making the promise of Brown real. While Brown signified a legal end to school segregation, the southern response was anything but supportive, and no state offered a higher profile example of that approach, as well as the potential fallout, than Arkansas with the crisis at Central High School in the fall of 1957. The process of desegregation remained slow, and it was …

Committee on Negro Organizations (CNO)

The Committee on Negro Organizations (CNO) was an Arkansas-based civil rights organization that focused its efforts on voting rights. Seeking both to expand the voting opportunities for the state’s African American population, as well as their voting participation, it was a forerunner of the movement whose efforts came to fruition with the enactment of the national Voting Rights Act in 1965. The CNO was organized by Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) attorney William Harold Flowers. Flowers had previously written to Walter White, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), requesting assistance for the local chapter of the NAACP. However, NAACP attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall replied with little more than sympathy. Consequently, Flowers …

Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools (CROSS)

Formed in 1959 to bolster the segregationist cause in the aftermath of the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools (CROSS) represented one of the many political pressure groups active in the city during the late 1950s. During the so-called Lost Year of 1958–59, Little Rock’s public schools were closed by Governor Orval Faubus, foreshadowing a subtler assault on integrationists and moderates within the school system. The Arkansas General Assembly Extraordinary Session of 1958 subsequently passed Act 10, requiring teachers to sign affidavits listing their membership in all organizations. Act 115 passed by the Regular Session of 1959 called for the dismissal of any teacher who was a member of …