Entries - Entry Type: Thing - Starting with L

Little Red River

The Little Red River runs through north-central Arkansas, arising from several different forks in the Ozark Mountains. Major towns situated along the course of the river are Clinton (Van Buren County), Fairfield Bay (Van Buren County), Heber Springs (Cleburne County), and Searcy (White County), though the river also flows north of the old settlement of Georgetown (White County), where it empties into the White River. The Little Red River is dammed just east of Heber Springs, creating the reservoir of Greers Ferry Lake, which is a major regional tourist destination. The Little Red River passes through three different natural divisions of Arkansas: the Ozark Mountains, the Arkansas River Valley, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (the Delta). The forks of the …

Little River (Southwestern Arkansas)

The Little River rises in the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, from which point it cuts west and then south before turning in a southeasterly direction and eventually entering Arkansas between Sevier and Little River counties. The river flows through Arkansas for ninety-two of its total 220 miles before emptying into the Red River near Fulton (Hempstead County). The Little River—not to be confused with a waterway of the same name in northeastern Arkansas—is impounded at Millwood Dam; the resulting reservoir, Millwood Lake, spreads across the corners of four southwestern Arkansas counties. One of its tributaries, the Mountain Fork of the Little River, is sometimes called the Mountain Fork River. The Little River has been the site of human habitation …

Little River County Courthouse

The Little River County Courthouse is located on Main Street in the heart of Ashdown (Little River County). The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the two-story building as architecturally and historically significant as one of the most impressive county courthouses in Arkansas and as the most prominent structure in Little River County. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 26, 1976. After voters moved Little River’s county seat from Rocky Comfort (Little River County) to Ashdown in 1906, the administration of Judge J. B. Arnett oversaw the construction of a new courthouse that began the following year. The county hired architect Sidney Stewart to design the building with the mission to solidify Ashdown’s claim as …

Little Rock [Geological Formation]

aka: Point of Rocks

The Little Rock is the rock outcropping on the Arkansas River used as a navigation point during the early exploration of what would become the state of Arkansas. The town of Little Rock (Pulaski County) was established near this point. Sometimes called the Point of Rocks, it is the first rock on the Arkansas River as one ascends from the Mississippi. This is where the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains first touch the river, creating a natural plateau above the floodplain. The rock is sandstone deposited originally in a deep marine environment 320–300 million years ago, a part of what geologists call the Jackfork Formation. Jean-Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe, one of the earliest European explorers in the region, observed …

Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad

The Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) railroad span was organized in November 1853 as the Little Rock and Fort Smith Branch of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad Company. In 1859, while it was still a company only on paper, the Arkansas General Assembly passed a proposed act allowing the Little Rock and Fort Smith Branch to merge with the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad, forming the Central Pacific Railroad. This merger never happened, but it clearly shows the manipulation of railroad markets in Arkansas. The start of the Civil War in 1861 postponed plans for the proposed Little Rock and Fort Smith Branch. Following the war, in 1866, Congress gave the State of Arkansas ten alternating …

Little Rock Brewing & Ice Company

The Little Rock Brewing & Ice Company opened in August 1898 to much local fanfare. At the time, it was the only brewery in Arkansas. Founders John Doyle of Richmond, Virginia, and Philip Hildenberger of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had both been brewers in their hometowns. They successfully petitioned the City of Little Rock (Pulaski County) for a donation of $2,500 to help remodel the vacant Quapaw Cotton Mills property into a brewery and ice plant. By 1898, the buildings had been vacant for several years. They were ideal, however, for use by a brewery interested in using a gravity-fed brewing process. Importantly, the Quapaw Mills plant was only a couple of blocks from the Arkansas River and a railroad depot, the …

Little Rock City Hall

Little Rock City Hall is located on the northwestern corner of West Markham and Broadway in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Designed by noted architect Charles L. Thompson, it has been the seat of government for the state’s largest municipality since 1908. Interestingly, the Arkansas Gazette heavily opposed the building’s construction, even suing the city to stop it. The old Little Rock City Hall, constructed in 1867, was located at 120–122 Markham Street, the current location of the Statehouse Convention Center. Twenty years after its construction, the old city hall was in ruins, and calls for a new city hall were voiced. Arkansas Gazette editors wrote at the time, “It is to be noticed too, that our worthy council have not …

Little Rock Confederate Memorial

The Little Rock Confederate Memorial at Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery is a memorial shaft erected in 1914 on the burial site of 900 Confederate soldiers who died of disease while stationed in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Five months after the dedication of the Monument to Confederate Women at the Arkansas State Capitol, the Memorial Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) announced plans to mark the burial site of hundreds of Confederate soldiers adjacent to the Little Rock National Cemetery. The Arkansas Gazette reported on October 26, 1913, that the UDC chapter “is erecting a monument…in the southeast portion of Oakland cemetery….A stone coping encloses the plot of ground, where are buried 900 soldiers, most of whom died in St. …

Little Rock Debates on Evolution (1966)

The “Great Evolution Debate,” as it was billed, was held in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on June 28–29, 1966, following a decision by Judge Murray O. Reed on May 27, 1966, which declared that Arkansas’s 1928 law banning the teaching of evolution in Arkansas’s public schools was unconstitutional. A case challenging the right of a state to outlaw the teaching of evolution in public schools had been filed in the Pulaski County Chancery Court, with Little Rock Central High School biology teacher Susan Epperson as the point person. The case was heard in April 1966, leading to the decision by Judge Reed in May. Professor James D. Bales of Harding College (now Harding University) in Searcy (White County) led the …

Little Rock Fire Station No. 9

Little Rock Fire Station No. 9 is a two-story frame building with a brick veneer located at 2023 East Sixth Street in the Garlands Addition of Little Rock (Pulaski County). The fire station was designed by Little Rock architect H. Ray Burks and constructed in 1930 by the C. L. Hardin Construction Company of Little Rock. It was listed on the National Register on September 14, 2020. The Little Rock Fire Station No. 9 is characterized as a blend of Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival architectural elements, with a painted brick exterior, large brick chimneys, and both a steeply pitched gable roof and a gambrel roof with shed dormers, covered in asphalt shingles. The fire station is rectangular, with a …

Little Rock Free Press

aka: Arkansas Free Press

The Little Rock Free Press was an alternative newspaper based in Little Rock (Pulaski County). It began publication on April 20, 1993, and twelve years later, the Freep, as it was commonly called, became the Arkansas Free Press. The Little Rock Free Press covered everything from daily news to controversial topics such as prostitution, homosexuality, night life, drug culture, and Little Rock’s independent music scene. Often incurring the wrath of religious groups and politicians, the Freep was said by its editor to be “provocative Arkansas history with a twist.” In 1993, Little Rock’s previous alternative newspaper, Spectrum Weekly, ceased publication. It had been printed in Russellville (Pope County) but faced opposition from the printer and others after it began running …

Little Rock Picric Acid Plant

Arkansans supported the American effort in World War I in many ways. Some served in the armed forces, while others worked to grow and conserve food and make clothing and bandages for the troops. Many worked in a number of war industries, including a munitions plant built outside of Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1918, tasked with manufacturing a high explosive—a rapid and destructive chemical explosive—known as picric acid. Picric acid (trinitrophenol) is made of phenol and several acid compounds that, when combined under proper conditions, form a honey-like substance that can be loaded into artillery shells. It is stable enough to survive the shock of being fired from a cannon, but, when detonated by a fuse, is very destructive. …

Little Rock Port Authority

aka: Port of Little Rock

The Port of Little Rock, part of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, is operated by the Little Rock Port Authority (LRPA). The LRPA oversees the port, which provides intermodal transportation services to connect U.S. markets to the deep-water ports of the Gulf of Mexico. The port encompasses an industrial park located along the banks of the Arkansas River, approximately seven miles from downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County); the 2,600-acre industrial park has more than forty businesses. The Port of Little Rock operates two river terminals (a river port and a slackwater harbor) and a short-line railroad, as well as Foreign Trade Zone 14. (Foreign-trade zones are designated locations in the United States in which companies are able to delay …

Little Rock Railway & Electric Company (LRREC)

The Little Rock Railway & Electric Company (LRREC) played a key role in the electrification, modernization, and continued operation of the intra-urban streetcar transportation system that served the citizens of Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prior to electrification, the intra-urban streetcar system in Little Rock consisted of animal-drawn conveyances along the first rail lines built in 1877 by the Citizens’ Street Railway Company by businessmen from Little Rock and Hot Springs (Garland County). Over the next decade, technological developments, including the electric lamp (streetlight), more efficient power generation/distribution, and trolley pole systems allowed animal-drawn streetcars to be gradually replaced with electric streetcars. Early on, several streetcar companies—such as Capital City Street Railway Company, …

Little Rock to Cantonment Gibson Road

The Little Rock to Cantonment Gibson Road was constructed between 1825 and 1828 to connect Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Fort Smith (Sebastian County) to the military post at Cantonment Gibson in the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). The road was used extensively during the forced removal of Native Americans from the southeastern United States to the Indian Territory during the 1830s. On March 3, 1825, Congress approved a bill to establish a road from Little Rock to the Indian Territory, continuing the Memphis to Little Rock Road between the Mississippi River and Little Rock that was authorized a year before. In addition to the $10,000 funding, Congress appointed Arkansas pioneers Benjamin Moore of Crawford County, Morgan Magness of Independence County, …

Little Rock University

Little Rock University, founded in 1882, was the second college founded in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and the first of four colleges with “Little Rock” in the name. It was a four-year, liberal arts, coeducational school for white students. According to an Arkansas Gazette article, “The Little Rock University was built by the Freedman’s [sic] Aid Society, by the Arkansas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, north, and the citizens of Little Rock who contributed $10,000 towards it.” The school closed in 1894. The Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, was formed in 1866. Its original purpose was “the relief and education of the Freedmen and people of color in general,” but the mission was …

Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock

Living in Little Rock With Miss Little Rock is a contemporary novel written by Mississippi native and former Arkansas resident Jack Butler. First published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993, the novel is set in Little Rock (Pulaski County) of the early 1980s. Loosely based on the Mary Lee Orsini murder cases in central Arkansas in 1981–1983 and written in a conversational style using multiple points of view, the novel depicts local culture and parodies well-known political figures and issues of the era, including the highly publicized legal contest between the teaching of creationism and evolutionary theory which rocked the state in the early 1980s. Within this context, the author creates a psychological saga of wealth, aspirations to power, and …

Lockesburg High School Gymnasium

Located in Lockesburg (Sevier County), the Lockesburg High School Gymnasium is part of the campus of the town’s former high school. In 2014, it came under the ownership Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas and is used by the college for sporting events and other activities. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 18, 2018. With the creation of Little River County in 1867, the Sevier County seat of Paraclifta (Sevier County) was no longer centrally located in the county. James, William, and Matthew Locke offered to donate 120 acres of land along with an additional sixty acres owned by Royal Appleton for the creation of a new county seat. The county …

Lockesburg Waterworks

The Lockesburg Waterworks, located at the corner of Hickory and Azalea streets in Lockesburg (Sevier County), was constructed in 1936 and installed with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal public relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 2007. As the United States struggled with the Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act included an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was created on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. Lockesburg had a population of 747 citizens …

Log Cabin Democrat

The city of Conway (Faulkner County) was incorporated in 1875 and became the county seat and a well-known center of education in central Arkansas. It is home to Hendrix College and surrounding historic district, the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), and Central Baptist College. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Conway’s population skyrocketed, making it the eighth most populous city in Arkansas at the time of the 2020 federal census. One of its most enduring institutions is its newspaper, the Log Cabin Democrat. The newspaper has existed throughout the history of the city and continues to be printed in the twenty-first century, making it the longest-running publication in Conway. After the Arkansas General Assembly created Faulkner County in 1873, Abel …

Logan County Courthouse, Eastern District

The Logan County Courthouse for the Eastern District is located in downtown Paris (Logan County). The courthouse square is bordered by Main, Express, Walnut, and Elm streets. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the two-story building as architecturally and historically significant as one of the most impressive structures in the county and as a landmark in Paris. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 30, 1976. After the county seat was moved to Paris from Reveille in 1875, many citizens of Logan County found the journey to Paris too troublesome due to mountainous terrain. In 1901, the Arkansas General Assembly split the county into two judicial districts for the citizens’ convenience. Paris was assigned the …

Logan County Courthouse, Southern District

The Logan County Courthouse for the Southern District, built in 1929, is located on the corner of 4th and Broadway in downtown Booneville (Logan County). The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the three-story building as architecturally and historically significant as the sole local example of the Italian Renaissance Revival style. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 8, 1997. Since the establishment of Logan County, citizens in the county’s southern portion faced long routes to reach the county seat in Paris (Logan County). Those needed in court at the Logan County Courthouse in Paris or who had business with county administrations faced traveling over a mountain range that cuts the county in half. In 1901, …

Logan County Museum

aka: Old Logan County Jail

The Logan County Museum located in Paris (Logan County) was founded in 1972 for the purpose of collecting, preserving, and displaying memorabilia depicting life in Logan County. The museum collection ranges from documents, diaries, and old store ledgers to ordinary items used in households and on the farms, as well as equipment used by professional people, miners, and other workers throughout the years. The museum is housed in a building that once served as the Logan County Jail. This building, the third county jail built in Paris, was completed in 1903. The jail was built in two sections. One section consists of four rooms on the ground floor and two rooms in the basement. This area served as the office …

Long Line Rider [Book]

Long Line Rider: The Story of Cummins Prison Farm is a 1971 novel by former prison inmate K. Wymand Keith, the pen name of Leonard Claude Bowen. Based on the author’s experiences at Cummins, the novel appeared at the height of prison reform efforts in Arkansas in the early 1970s. As is true of other writings by former Arkansas inmates, the book, while fiction, corroborates the reported abuses of the pre-Rockefeller period. Long Line Rider takes its name from the riders who supervised lines of other inmates working in the cotton and soybean fields. The riders were trusties (so called because they were trusted by authorities) who lived at the top of the prison hierarchy. At the time, Arkansas prison …

Long Line Rider [Song]

“Long Line Rider” is a 1968 rock song written by Bobby Darin based on the Arkansas prison scandals of that same year. While not a commercial success, the song garnered controversy for its subject matter when CBS executives prevented Darin from playing it on a taping of The Jackie Gleason Show in 1969. The song was also mentioned in congressional testimony concerning prison reform in 1971. In January 1968, Tom Murton, the superintendent of the Cummins Unit in the Arkansas prison system—with the help of an African American inmate informant—dug up several bodies on the prison grounds that he believed had been murder victims. The ensuing scandal became fodder for national and even international headlines, embarrassing Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, who …

Lono Gymnasium

The Lono Gymnasium, built in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), is located at 11702 Highway 222 in the community of Lono (Hot Spring County), approximately twelve miles south of Malvern (Hot Spring County). The building was the gymnasium for the Lono School, and basketball was played for the first time in the new gym in 1939. It is comparable in style to other gymnasiums built by the WPA during the same time period in Arkansas. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 2020. A school opened in Lono in the late nineteenth century. When the gymnasium was built in 1938 by the WPA, a Mr. Crow was the foreman for the job; …

Lonoke Confederate Monument

The Lonoke Confederate Monument is located on the southwest lawn of the Lonoke County Courthouse. A six-foot-tall marble sculpture of a Confederate soldier tops a rectangular shaft mounted upon a large base. The monument was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 3, 1996. Its inclusion is based on Criterion A for statewide significance and Criterion F for commemorative properties. Most of the funding, $1,500, for construction of the monument was provided by the T. C. Hindman Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The chapter secured an additional $500 from the Lonoke County Quorum Court. Dedication of the monument took place on October 20, 1910. Ceremonies began with Mayor Jack Gates leading a Little …

Lonoke County Courthouse

The Lonoke County Courthouse is located at 301 Center Street in downtown Lonoke (Lonoke County). The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the four-story building as architecturally and historically significant as an example of Classical architecture in Lonoke County. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 8, 1982. The present courthouse, constructed in 1928, is the third built in Lonoke County. The first, a frame structure, was built in 1873 and stood until 1881, when a fire destroyed it. The second was built in 1885 and stood until county administrators razed it after completion of the current courthouse on an adjacent site. Architect H. Ray Burks of Little Rock (Pulaski County) designed the new courthouse with …

Lonoke Rock Island Depot

In 1912, the Rock Island Railroad replaced a deteriorating and outdated depot that had been constructed in 1899 along the railroad tracks in Lonoke (Lonoke County). The depot was the center of commerce and travel in the small town. The new brick depot served the city for several decades and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 4, 1984. The town of Lonoke, which was established along the railroad tracks connecting Memphis, Tennessee, to Little Rock (Pulaski County), was incorporated in 1872 and designated the county seat in 1873. The town soon became the commercial center of the area. A small depot, which over time proved to be inadequate, was built along the tracks in 1899. …

Looking Back to See [Book]

Looking Back to See is the autobiography of country music artist Maxine Brown. The book, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2005, provides a detailed look at Brown’s upbringing in Arkansas, her family life during the Great Depression, and the musical career of the Browns—the group that made her famous. Taking her title from one of the Browns’ biggest hits, her memoir provides an unflinching look at her experiences in the music industry and the group’s eventual disbandment in the late 1960s. Brown died in 2019. Maxine Brown was born in Louisiana in 1931, but she grew up in Arkansas in the Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) area. The family moved often when she was young. As a girl, …

Looking for Shiloh

Looking for Shiloh (1968) was the last collection of poetry published by Edsel Ford before his death at the age of forty-one in 1970. Ford spent much of his childhood in northwestern Arkansas and majored in journalism at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). This collection was selected from more than 450 submitted manuscripts to receive the Devins Memorial Award and to be published by the University of Missouri Press. A second printing of the collection was made in 1970. By the late 1960s, Ford was a leading regional poet who was receiving significant national recognition. Ford had served as editor of the “Golden Country” poetry column in the Ozark Mountaineer since February 1958, served as media …

Lost Cause Myth of the Confederacy

The Lost Cause myth consists of a set of ideas about the history of the South that developed following the American Civil War. These beliefs, which are largely considered by historians to be false, were advanced by contemporary Southerners as the so-called true story of the nature of the antebellum South, the reasons for Southern secession, and the character of the South’s people during the course of the war. The story comprised a defense of the South’s “peculiar institution” (slavery), secession, and the war. In Arkansas, the Lost Cause narrative developed with the emergence of various Confederate heritage organizations after the 1890s. These organizations worked to ensure that their interpretation was integrated into the accepted history of the state and …

Lost Louisiana Mine

The Lost Louisiana Mine is an American legend about buried Spanish treasure that has been sought since the Victorian era, primarily in Arkansas’s Ouachita and Ozark mountains regions. The legend’s core narrative is that a Spanish expedition concealed a rich gold mine in the wilderness of Spain’s Luisiana colony (hence the name), and in returning to New Orleans, all but one of the party was killed by Indians. In the early twentieth century, variants of the legend attributed the treasure to either Freemasons or Sephardic Jews exiled from Spain who brought a fortune in gold and jewels with them, or a Catholic or Aztec trove brought from Spanish Mexico. Such Spanish treasure legends were once part of a deeply anti-Spanish …

Love Finds You in Snowball, Arkansas

Love Finds You in Snowball, Arkansas is a 2008 romance novel by Sandra D. Bricker, an inaugural book in the “Love Finds You” series published by Summerside Press, a Christian fiction line acquired by Guideposts in 2010 but shuttered in 2013. The goal of the series was “to give readers a taste of local life across America.” The book centers upon Lucy Binoche, who lives in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where she works in the guest services department of the luxury Conroy Hotel (likely a stand-in for the Capital Hotel). Addressing her thoughts to God, Lucy writes regularly in a prayer journal, the latest entry of which concludes most chapters (some end with recipes). At the beginning of the novel, …

Loy Kirksey House

The Loy Kirksey House is a dogtrot house near the community of Fendley (Clark County). It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 3, 1992. Fendley was popular with residents of nearby communities who visited the chalybeate spring in the area. The Kirksey family resided near Fendley by 1880. William Kirksey was born in 1874 and moved to the property around 1895. A building was standing on the property, likely dating to before the Civil War. It is likely that Kirksey lived in this building before he added on to it to create the complete home. The same year that he moved to the property, Kirksey married Lee Arena Deaton. The couple had at least four …

Lucie’s Place

Lucie’s Place of Little Rock (Pulaski County) is a nonprofit organization providing support for LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer) young adults experiencing homelessness in central Arkansas. Lucie’s Place aims to provide housing, resources, case management, and job skills training. Lucie’s Place is the only organization in Arkansas working to support young LGBTQ+ people experiencing homelessness. Lucie’s Place was founded by Penelope Poppers. After the death of her friend Lucie Marie Hamilton in 2009, Poppers wanted to start an organization to serve the LGBTQ+ community in honor of Hamilton, who was a mentor and advocate to many. In 2011, Poppers—along with Diedra Levi, Mike Lauro, and Karen Thompson (Hamilton’s mother)—planned community meetings, mostly at Boulevard Bread Company on South …

Lum and Abner

From 1931 to 1955, the Lum and Abner radio show brought the town of Pine Ridge (Montgomery County), into the homes of millions of listeners across the country. During World War II, Armed Forces Radio took Lum and Abner around the world. Chester “Chet” Lauck and Findley Norris “Tuffy” Goff, two young comedians from Mena (Polk County), created the characters when they were invited to appear on a statewide flood relief broadcast over KTHS radio in Hot Springs (Garland County) on April 26, 1931. Seconds before being introduced, they created the names Lum Edwards (pronounced “Eddards”) for Lauck and Abner Peabody for Goff. The two old codgers (Lauck and Goff were actually in their late twenties) ran the Jot ‘Em …

Lum and Abner Museum and Jot ‘Em Down Store

The two buildings that make up the Lum and Abner Museum and Jot ‘Em Down Store are the A. A. McKinzie General Store built in 1904 and the J. R. (Dick) Huddleston General Merchandise Store built in 1912 after fire damaged the 1909 structure. They stand on what was in the early twentieth century a crooked dirt road in the unincorporated community of Pine Ridge (Montgomery County). From 1931 to 1955, the Lum and Abner radio show was on the air, set in the Jot ‘Em Down Store in fictional Pine Ridge. In 1936, at the instigation of Dick Huddleston, the citizens of Waters changed the community’s name to Pine Ridge in honor of Lum and Abner. In the twenty-first …

Lustron Houses

After World War II, an influx of returning veterans created housing shortages throughout the country. These shortages led to several housing experiments, including the Lustron Corporation’s efforts to use steel and enameled steel for residential construction of prefabricated homes. Several of the homes were shipped to Arkansas to be built, and one that remained in Little Rock (Pulaski County) until it was demolished in 2019 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lustron was the brainchild of Swedish-born inventor and engineer Carl Strandlund, who met in Washington DC with Wilson Wyatt of the Veterans Emergency Housing Program in 1946. Once the plans for the Lustron house were developed, Strandlund commissioned architects Morris H. Beckman and Roy Burton Blass …

Lynching Reports, Tropes Common to

While the details of Arkansas’s many lynchings (mostly of African Americans) differ widely, some common themes or tropes were used in the newspaper reports related to them. The most common of these were: 1) language employed to dehumanize the victims of lynching; 2) descriptions of the mob as quiet and orderly; 3) statements to the effect that the local African-American community approved of these acts of vigilantism; 4) reports of victims confessing to their crimes prior to being lynched; and 5) statements that perhaps exaggerate the efforts of law enforcement to prevent such violence. The propensity to demonize or dehumanize lynching victims was especially prominent if these people were accused of attacking a white woman or girl. In 1892, the …