Entries - Gender: Male

Lavey, John Thomas “Jack”

John Thomas “Jack” Lavey was one of a handful of Arkansas lawyers who made equality claims for African Americans in courts and defended civil rights activists who were jailed during the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His cases in federal courts established the right of African Americans and women to equal pay and promotions in public and private workplaces. Jack Lavey was born on October 19, 1932, in a northern suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, to Francis Lavey and Theresa Lavey. His mother was Italian, and his father, who was Irish, was a telephone lineman and a union member. Lavey played football and graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He received a …

Lavy, Thomas Lewis

Thomas L. Lavy was an accused terrorist who committed suicide, hanging himself in his jail cell in Little Rock (Pulaski County) while awaiting trial in December 1995. While his death ended the ongoing investigation, it also left numerous questions as to what he had done and what he had intended to do. Thomas Lewis Lavy was born on December 18, 1941, in Winfield, Missouri, the second child of Littleton Lavy and Cora Yates Lavy. He was raised in Troy, Missouri, where he received his basic education. Following school, Lavy apparently joined the U.S. Army, although there are questions about the time and nature of his service. While there are reports that he was a military policeman in the Korean War, …

Lawhon, Jay Noal

Jay Noal Lawhon of McCrory (Woodruff County) was a star Razorback football player. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1944 but turned down the offer on doctor’s advice. During World War II, Lawhon served in the U.S. Navy Air Corps. After the war, he taught vocational agriculture in Arkansas high schools and was a high school principal. He was the founder of Lawhon Farm Services, the 1988 Arkansas Business of the Year. In 1975, Lawhon and wife Lillian founded a non-denominational charity, the World Christian Relief Fund, Inc. (WCRF). Jay Lawhon was born on July 16, 1919, in Monarch (Marion County), a small hill community near Harrison (Boone County), to Thomas Jefferson and Sarah McPherson Lawhon. He was …

Lawrence, Tracy Lee

With rural Arkansas beginnings, Tracy Lee Lawrence took Nashville, Tennessee, by storm in the early 1990s to become one of the most popular country recording artists of that decade. Lawrence quickly gained a fan base with his physical appeal, vocal ability, good-guy image, and succession of hit songs. Tracy Lawrence was born on January 27, 1968, in Atlanta, Texas. Reared by his stay-at-home mother, JoAnn Dickens, and his stepfather, Dwayne Dickens, a banker, Lawrence had two brothers and three sisters. In 1972, the Dickens family moved to Foreman (Little River County), where Lawrence sang in the choir of the local Methodist church and learned to play guitar. While his mother wanted him to become a Methodist minister, Lawrence aspired to …

Lawrence, William M.

William M. Lawrence was a prominent physician in Batesville (Independence County) from 1848 until his death. He was appointed the surgeon general of the state of Arkansas in 1881. William Lawrence was born on November 22, 1826, in Kentucky, the son of James McKinney Lawrence and his first wife, Lucy D. Martin Lawrence, who was from Missouri. He had two brothers (one of them a son to his father’s second wife, Margaret Ann Vaunter Lawrence) and three sisters. Lawrence moved with his family to Fulton, Missouri, when he was a young child. About 1843, he began “reading medicine” under Dr. Robert Blakely in Fulton. He attended medical school at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, studying under Dr. Joseph McDowell. Following …

Lay, Henry Champlin

The Right Reverend Henry Champlin Lay was the third missionary bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. The diocese was land the Church defined as also including Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) and what would later become the states of New Mexico and Arizona. Lay was also bishop of the Diocese of Arkansas when it was allied with the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. He again served the original missionary territory when the national church reunited in 1865. Henry Champlin Lay was born on December 6, 1823, in Richmond, Virginia. He was the son of John Olmsted Lay and Lucy May Lay. He was educated in Richmond and New York City. Lay graduated from the University of Virginia …

Leavy, Calvin James “Slim”

Calvin James “Slim” Leavy, vocalist and guitarist, recorded “Cummins Prison Farm,” a blues song that debuted on Billboard’s rhythm and blues chart on May 2, 1970, and stayed for five weeks, reaching No. 40. It was also the No. 1 song on the Memphis, Tennessee, station WDIA. Leavy was the first person charged under a 1989 Arkansas “drug kingpin law” targeting crime rings. Calvin Leavy was born on April 20, 1940, in Scott (Pulaski and Lonoke counties), the youngest son of fifteen children born to the musical family of Johnny Leavy and Cora James Leavy. Both parents sang in the church choir at Mount Lake Baptist Church in Scott, and several family members played musical instruments. Leavy started out singing …

Lebow (Lynching of)

A group of men lynched a white man named Lebow (also spelled as Lebo), described as a “villain, murderer and horse-thief,” in Polk County in August 1877, apparently ending a series of crimes by which he had terrorized the area. The Fort Smith Independent reported on August 8, 1877, that “an old man named Lebow was hung by a party of men last week in Polk County, for foully murdering two men who were travelling in the direction of Hot Springs. Lebow has been a terror to the citizens of Polk County for many years.” He apparently operated from his home on one of the major roads through the county to kill and steal. “Many travelers have lost their horses, …

Ledbetter, Calvin Reville (Cal), Jr.

Calvin Reville (Cal) Ledbetter Jr. was a professor, author, politician, and philanthropist. He taught political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) from 1960 to 1997, after which he was named Professor Emeritus of Political Science. He also served five consecutive terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives, from 1967 to 1977. Ledbetter is widely remembered for his dedication to higher education as well as his efforts to foster constitutional reform in Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s. Cal Ledbetter was born on April 29, 1929, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Virginia Ledbetter and Cal Ledbetter Sr. (II); his father served as president of the Boyle Realty Company. Ledbetter received his undergraduate degree from the Woodrow Wilson School …

Lee County Executions of 1881

Two African American men convicted of murder, Isaac Green and John Harden, were hanged in Marianna (Lee County) on July 15, 1881, in what were the first judicial executions in Lee County. John Harden (or Hardin), age twenty, a native of Lewisburg, Tennessee, reportedly killed William Brown on August 21, 1879, at Barton (Phillips County). Harden suspected Brown was having an affair with his wife and struck him with a briar hook, “almost severing his head from his body,” with one newspaper stating that “one blow with the weapon was sufficient to take the life of the man he hated.” Harden’s trial was delayed for some time, but he was convicted in May 1881 and sentenced to hang on July …

Lee, Burwell

Burwell Lee came to Arkansas Territory from Tennessee in 1830 as a preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church and a missionary to  Native Americans. Because he organized the Methodist Society at Batesville (Independence County) in 1835, which hosted the first session of the new Arkansas Conference of the church the following year, he is referred to as one of the fathers of the Methodist Church in Arkansas. Burwell Lee was born on October 20, 1809, in Davidson County, Tennessee. His father was Braxton Lee, who had come to Davidson County from Virginia around 1796. In Davidson County records, there is a marriage for Braxton Lee to Polly Hunter on May 20, 1808, although it is uncertain if these are Lee’s …

Lee, Clifton Phifer (Cliff)

Arkansas native Cliff Lee is a major league baseball pitcher. He has pitched in both the National and American Leagues, winning All-Star recognition in both circuits. Clifton Phifer Lee was born on August 30, 1978, in Benton (Saline County) to Steve Lee, who was a firefighter and one-time member of the Benton City Council, and his wife, Sharon Lee. Lee grew up in Benton and graduated from Benton High School in 1997. Following graduation, he was drafted by the Florida Marlins but decided to attend Meridian Community College in Meridian, Mississippi. Drafted in 1998 by the Baltimore Orioles, he again deferred, instead attending the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). The left-handed Lee had one solid season pitching …

Lee, Daniel Lewis (Execution of)

Convicted along with an accomplice of a triple murder and robbery that took place in Arkansas, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed by the U.S. government on July 14, 2020. Lee was born on January 31, 1973, in Yukon, Oklahoma. His mother said that he suffered from seizures and a neurological impairment. He spent time in mental health facilities but was removed at least once due to violence toward staff members. At the age of seventeen, Lee participated in the murder of twenty-two-year-old Joseph Wavra III in Oklahoma City. He pleaded guilty to a robbery charge, the murder charge was dropped, and he received a five-year suspended sentence. At some point before April 1996, Lee lost his left eye, reportedly in …

Lee, Haeng Ung

Haeng Ung Lee was the founder of the American Taekwondo Association (which later became ATA Martial Arts), headquartered in Little Rock (Pulaski County). ATA has over 300,000 members worldwide, making it the largest organization in North America dedicated to the discipline of taekwondo. Haeng Ung Lee was born on July 20, 1936, in Manchuria in northeastern China. Little is known about his early life, but shortly after World War II, he and his family moved to Korea. He began training in the martial arts in 1953. Lee progressed rapidly, earning his first-degree black belt only a year later. Upon graduating from high school in 1956, Lee joined the Republic of Korea Army, serving as a martial arts instructor for military …

Lee, Hubert L.

Hubert L. Lee, who lived in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) as a child, was a soldier in the U.S. Army who received a Medal of Honor for his heroic actions in battle during the Korean War. Hubert L. Lee was born in Arburg, Missouri, on February 2, 1915, the son of railroad fireman Charles Lee and Beulah Lee. Five years later, they were living in North Little Rock’s Ward 4. The family later moved to Leland, Mississippi, and it was there that Lee was inducted into the U.S. Army during World War II. He served with distinction, winning a Bronze Star and Silver Star for heroism in fighting in North Africa and Italy. Lee remained in the army and …

Leflar, Robert Allen

Robert Allen Leflar was one of Arkansas’s most renowned legal scholars, a champion of racial equality, longtime dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County), and president of two state constitutional conventions. Robert Leflar was born on March 22, 1901, in Siloam Springs (Benton County), the son of Lewis D. Leflar—who was a drayman, former deputy U.S. marshal in “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker’s court, and former Alma (Crawford County) town marshal—and Viva Mae Pilkenton of Siloam Springs. The oldest of eight children, Leflar later said that his mother, a high school graduate, was the chief influence on him and his siblings getting an education. Leflar worked his way through the University of Arkansas (UA), beginning …

Lemke, Walter John

Walter John Lemke established the department of journalism at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1928 and served as the head of the department until his retirement in 1959. The university named the department the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism in his honor in 1988. In addition, he founded several historical and journalistic organizations. Walter Lemke was born on January 6, 1891, in Wausau, Wisconsin, to Carl Lemke and Ulrika Block Lemke. Lemke attended the University of Wisconsin and the University of Indiana. He received his AB degree from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, which is near Cleveland, in 1911. The college later awarded him an honorary doctor of letters degree in 1962. He earned …

Lemley, Harry Jacob Jr.

Harry Jacob Lemley Jr. was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who served during World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War before retiring as a lieutenant general in 1971. Harry Jacob Lemley Jr. was born on February 1, 1914, in Hope (Hempstead County), the son of future U.S. District Court judge Harry J. Lemley Sr. and Caroline McRae Lemley. After graduating from Hope High School, Lemley attended the Marion Military in Marion, Alabama, in preparation for his appointment to West Point. Remembering his time at West Point, Lemley wrote years later: “West Point devastated me mentally and physically, as I was grossly immature in every respect. I nevertheless toughed it out, as I …

LeSane, Henry (Execution of)

Henry LeSane was an African American sharecropper hanged at Marianna (Lee County) on May 16, 1902, for the ambush murder of a local farmer. John Greenwood, who was thirty-five at the time of the 1900 census, was a Black farmer who owned his home and lived in Lee County’s Union Township with his wife Hattie and their six children. Henry LeSane (sometimes spelled Lessing) was a twenty-two-year-old sharecropper who lived next door to Greenwood with his wife and daughter, likely renting from Greenwood. In late January 1901, Greenwood was driving a wagonload of cotton to the cotton gin at Oliver Owens’s farm when LeSane allegedly shot him in the back five times with a .44-caliber Colt pistol. “Greenwood was killed …

Lester, Julius

Julius Lester, who spent considerable time in Arkansas as a child, was an author, musician, photographer, and civil-rights activist. A longtime educator, he was recognized by numerous organizations and institutions for his artistic and literary efforts. Julius Lester was born on January 27, 1939, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Woodie Daniel Lester, who was a Methodist minister, and Julia Smith Lester. Lester spent his earliest years in Kansas City, Kansas, living there from 1941 to 1954. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1954 but spent most summers on the Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) farm of his grandmother, who was the daughter of a former slave and a German Jew. Her father had immigrated to the United States and settled in …

Levels, Jacob (Execution of)

Jacob Levels was an African American man hanged in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on June 21, 1878, for murdering another Black man the previous year. Jacob Levels was a single man, and Robert Swan’s wife cooked for him. On June 8, 1877, Swan “quarreled with his wife concerning her intimacy with Levels.” When Levels spoke up for the wife, Swan cut his cheek with a pocketknife. Levels went for a shotgun, but Swan fled. Two days later, Swan went to Levels’s house with another man and attempted to apologize, without success. On June 12, Swan went into Little Rock (he presumably lived outside the city) and told an acquaintance that he and Levels had reconciled, but that evening Levels went …

Levine, Sam M.

Sam M. Levine was a lawyer and politician in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) who served two stints in the Arkansas General Assembly, first in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, each time in the House of Representatives and then the Senate. A leader in the second-largest Jewish community in the state, Levine made history by delivering a filibuster in the Senate in the final minutes of the biennial legislative session in March 1959 that undermined the last efforts of Governor Orval E. Faubus and white supremacists to keep Little Rock (Pulaski County) schools closed to avoid integrating. Levine’s famous thirty-three-minute speech, which began as the clock in the Senate ticked toward noon and adjournment sine die on March 12, …

Lewis, Charles (Lynching of)

Charles Lewis, an African American man, was hunted by an armed posse and killed in Hope (Hempstead County) on October 17, 1911, for allegedly making threats to the wife of a prominent local planter. The incident was poorly reported in state newspapers, perhaps due to the coverage afforded the more dramatic lynching of Nathan Lacey near Forrest City (St. Francis County) the previous day. According to the Arkansas Democrat, “Charley” Lewis, as he was called, went on October 17 to the home of one Mrs. Lewellan, “the wife of a prominent planter a few miles south of Hope,” where, “in the absence of the family he used very abusive language to Mrs. Lewellan and finally threatened her and used the …

Lewis, David Levering

David Levering Lewis is a Pulitzer Prize–winning American historian best known for his works on the African-American experience in the twentieth century. He has written biographies of two of the most important figures in the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as a reader on the Harlem Renaissance. In 1999, Lewis was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” David Lewis was born on May 25, 1936, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the son of John H. Lewis, an educator and principal of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and Urnestine (Bell) Lewis, who taught high school math. Lewis attended parochial school in Little Rock and then continued his education in Ohio and …

Lewis, David S. (Execution of)

David S. Lewis was hanged at Batesville (Independence County) on April 29, 1859, for murdering his father-in-law in White County about a year earlier. David S. Lewis, twenty-four, was the son of Abner and Mary Lewis of Pickens County, South Carolina, and was married to a daughter of Will C. Bewler. Lewis, described as “a drinking, worthless scamp,” was immigrating to Texas with Bewler and his wife, the family’s three daughters, and Lewis’s child when he and Bewler had an argument over some property. Lewis then left the party, riding ahead to Searcy (White County). Lewis proceeded to get drunk “and had his passions highly inflamed by the suggestions of some rowdys [sic]…concerning the aggravating character of his father-in-law’s treatment …

Lewis, Henry Jackson

Henry Jackson Lewis, who was born into slavery, has been called the first black political cartoonist. His drawings appeared in publications across the nation. H. J. Lewis was born in Water Valley, Mississippi, in 1837 or 1838. As a child, he fell into a fire, maiming his left hand and blinding his left eye. Nothing further is known about his youth, but by 1872, he was living in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), where he worked as a laborer in the mid- to late 1870s. By 1879, he was selling drawings of city and Arkansas River scenes to the national publication Harper’s Weekly, and he later sold similar drawings to Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. On October 25, 1882, a Pine Bluff …

Lewis, Paul Tyrone

Paul Tyrone Lewis was an American artist who is remembered for the realism of his landscape paintings. In a career that spanned six decades beginning in the 1950s, Lewis created compositions that were skillfully executed and sought after throughout the United States and internationally. Tyrone Lewis, as he was known, was born on November 29, 1938, in Mena (Polk County) to Paul Goodwin Lewis and Wynogene Hubbard Lewis. He had one sister. Lewis’s parents met during the Great Depression while Paul was employed on a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) project near Mena. Wynogene’s family had migrated to that area from Fort Worth, Texas, where her father, Hans Heron Hubbard, was a well-known and respected artist in the 1920s. Painting was …

Lewis, Sanford (Lynching of)

At midnight on March 23, 1912, a mob hanged Sanford Lewis from a trolley pole in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). He had been suspected of shooting Deputy Constable Andy Carr, who sustained a fatal wound above the eye. Although the Arkansas Gazette refers to this as the first lynching in Sebastian County, it was actually the first lynching of an African American there. The murder of a white man named James Murray in the county on December 6, 1897, was described in many media outlets as a lynching. Deputy Constable Andy Carr was probably the Andy Care [sic] listed on the census as living in Ward 4 in Fort Smith in 1910. Living with him were his wife, Della, and …

Lewisburg into Yell and Searcy Counties, Scout from

A pair of Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) soldiers led scouting operations into their home counties in March 1865, bringing back intelligence of Confederate operations. Colonel Abraham H. Ryan of the Third Arkansas reported on March 23, 1865, that Yell County native Lieutenant William M. Boles had returned to Lewisburg (Conway County) that day from a twelve-day expedition in Yell County, reporting that the scouting party had killed several Confederates near Danville (Yell County). Boles learned during his scout that Colonel John T. Coffee was planning to bring 300 men from rebel camps at Center Point (Howard County) to harvest wheat in the bottomlands of the Fourche La Fave River to feed Confederate troops in southern Arkansas. Sergeant Ebenezer D. Arnold …

Lewisburg to Strahan’s Ferry, Expedition from

The expedition for Lewisburg (Conway County) to Strahan’s Landing (Johnson County) saw a Union anti-guerrilla operation’s mission shift to protecting steamboats carrying desperately needed supplies to the garrison at Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Major George L. Childress left the Union base at Brownsville (Lonoke County) on November 21, 1864, with 300 men of the Eighth Missouri Cavalry Regiment (US) and 200 troopers of the Ninth Iowa Cavalry under Major Willis Drummond for temporary duty at Lewisburg, where Colonel Abraham Ryan’s Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (US) was involved in heavy anti-guerrilla activity. After arriving on November 24, the cavalrymen from Brownsville were sent out two days later to “scour [the] country above Dover (Pope County) and on the Big Piney.” After …

Lewisburg, Scouts from (August 11–14, 1864)

The scouts by troops from the Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (US) from Lewisburg (Conway County) were sent out in search of Confederate troops and guerrillas as General Joseph O. Shelby’s men operated in north-central and eastern Arkansas in the late summer of 1864. Shelby’s troops had been operating north of the Arkansas River and between the White and Mississippi rivers since May 1864, forcing irregular troops into service with established regiments, conscripting every male aged fifteen to fifty into Confederate service, sinking the USS Queen City in Clarendon (Monroe County), and skirmishing with U.S. soldiers throughout the region. In early August, Shelby sent Colonel Archibald Dobbins to attack federally leased farms in Phillips County while Colonel Thomas McCray gathered recruits …

Lewisburg, Scouts from (June 1864)

The scouts from Lewisburg (Conway County) were conducted in an effort to locate Confederate troops under Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby who were recruiting soldiers and attacking Union targets in central and eastern Arkansas during the summer of 1864. Shelby drove off troops from the Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) and Fourth Arkansas Cavalry (US) garrisoning Dardanelle (Yell County) in the early hours of May 17, 1864, and spent the next two days moving approximately 1,200 Confederate soldiers across the Arkansas River to begin operations behind Federal lines along the river. Union forces struggled to determine the location of the Confederate force and, by late May, had abandoned their bases at Batesville (Independence County) and Jacksonport (Jackson County). Shelby officially took …

Lewisburg, Scouts from (September 6–12, 1864)

A flurry of Union scouting expeditions set out from Lewisburg (Conway County) between September 6 and 12, 1864, as Colonel Abraham H. Ryan tried to determine the locations of Confederate troops while Major General Sterling Price was beginning his invasion of Missouri in the fall of 1864. Ryan, commanding the Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) from its base at Lewisburg on the Arkansas River, began sending scouting expeditions into the region on September 6 to determine where Price’s troops were operating; they, in fact, were beginning to cross the Arkansas at Dardanelle (Yell County) on September 6. A patrol of the Third Arkansas scattered Confederate pickets and captured thirteen horses at Norristown (Pope County) on the same day. Ryan dispatched scouts …

Lightfoot, Claude M.

Claude Lightfoot was an Arkansas-born Communist who became involved in politics after moving to Chicago, Illinois. A frequent candidate for public office in Chicago from the 1930s to the 1950s, Lightfoot represents the impact of the Great Migration out of Arkansas and both the possibilities and limitations of black liberation in northern cities. Claude M. Lightfoot was born on January 19, 1910, in Lake Village (Chicot County). His grandmother, who separated from her husband, acquired a farm of her own and raised her twelve children to adulthood. Shortly after Lightfoot’s birth, his parents moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County), where his father worked for a railroad company and his mother as a domestic worker, while young Claude stayed with his …

Lightfoot, G. P. F. (Lynching of)

In December 1892, African-American Baptist minister G. P. F. Lightfoot, referred to in most accounts as “Preacher Lightfoot,” was murdered by a group of African Americans in Jackson County in retaliation for taking their money and promising them nonexistent passage to Liberia. Interest in immigrating to Africa started early in the United States. The Back-to-Africa movement dates back to 1816, when the American Colonization Society (ACS) was established to help free blacks resettle in Africa. The Republic of Liberia was established in 1847 and was recognized by the U.S. government in 1864. Following the Civil War, many newly freed Arkansas slaves became interested in the movement, especially those in majority-black counties in the Arkansas Delta. The Liberian Exodus Arkansas Colony …

Lighton, Will

aka: William Rheem Lighton

In 1908, writer William Rheem (Will) Lighton bought land in Fayetteville (Washington County), named it Happy Hollow Farm, and used “scientific agriculture” ideas to turn it into a successful farm. Even more successful was an article, “The Story of an Arkansas Farm,” which was published in the Saturday Evening Post on January 22, 1910. The article resulted in a stream of curious visitors. By the time it was expanded into a book, Happy Hollow Farm (1914), it had attracted more than 200 back-to-the-land settlers to Fayetteville. Will Lighton was born on July 13, 1866, in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, the son of William and Lydia Rheem Lighton. He married Laura McMaken on April 8, 1890, in Atchison, Kansas, set up their …

Lile, James Buel

James Buel “The Arkansas Knifesmith” Lile is one of the most accomplished and famous custom knife makers in American history. He carved his first fixed-blade knife from wood at the age of eight, and by age eleven, he was grinding old files into fixed-blade knives. James Lile was born on August 22, 1933, in Russellville (Pope County) to Leona and Buel Lile. His father was a coal miner who later worked for Arkla after the mines closed, and his mother was a housewife who also worked twenty years at the Local International Shoe factory. In 1952, at the age of nineteen, Lile met and worked for Winthrop Rockefeller welding bull pens being built at the Mountain Top Ranch on Petit …

Lily White Republicans

The post-Reconstruction “Redemption” era witnessed Democratic Party forces sweeping Republicans from all branches of state government in Arkansas. Their regime instituted so-called progressive reforms such as the Election Law of 1891, which disenfranchised many African-American voters, who traditionally supported the Republican Party. From the late 1890s onward, the stigmatized biracial Republican Party remained hopeless underdogs in every statewide electoral contest—and most local ones. Practically the only way Republicans could hope to hold public office remained through federal political patronage appointments. Former governor and state Republican Party leader Powell Clayton controlled the distribution of these federal civil service jobs, which he extended to supporters including African Americans who won his confidence during Reconstruction. By the 1880s, distinct friction had developed between …

Lindquist, Evan Leroy

Evan Leroy Lindquist of Jonesboro (Craighead County) was an American artist renowned as an artist-printmaker and art educator. His works are in permanent collections of many major galleries across the United States and around the world. Evan Lindquist was born on May 23, 1936, in Salina, Kansas, to Elmer L. Lindquist and Linnette Shogren Lindquist. His father was a corporate officer for a chain of retail lumber firms, and his mother was a homemaker. In 1945, Lindquist’s family moved to Emporia, Kansas, where Lindquist built a calligraphy business while in junior high school, encouraged by his father, an expert in ornamental penmanship. The business included creating certificates and charters for national organizations. His calligraphy experience led to a very recognizable …

Lindsey, Bruce Robert

Bruce R. Lindsey is a prominent Arkansas attorney and longtime friend and associate of Bill Clinton. Having first met Clinton when they both worked in the office of Senator J. William Fulbright, Lindsey went on to serve as one of the president’s top aides. Bruce Robert Lindsey was born on March 27, 1948, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Robert Sours Lindsey and Grace Grimme Lindsey. He has one sister. Lindsey’s father was one of the most influential attorneys in Little Rock, as well as a major figure in the city’s Presbyterian Church. Lindsey grew up in Little Rock and received his undergraduate degree from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, followed by a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington …

Lindsey, Donnie Lee, Sr.

Donnie Lee Lindsey, longtime bishop within the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) in Arkansas and noted businessman, founded the regionally famous Lindsey’s Barbecue in North Little Rock (Pulaski County). He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2015. Donnie Lee Lindsey was born in Bluff City (Nevada County) on April 17, 1924, to Newton Lindsey and Anna Lindsey. His father was a sharecropper. By the 1930 census, he had one brother and four sisters. The family moved to the Maumelle (Pulaski County) area when Lindsey was four years old. In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Lindsey described himself as a rebellious youth who dropped out of school, only returning at age seventeen to attend the …

Lindsey, Elijah (Eli)

The Reverend Elijah (Eli) Lindsey was an important figure in early Arkansas Methodism. At age eighteen, living near the present town of Jesup (Lawrence County), he traveled and organized the Spring River Circuit and is thus celebrated as the first to preach and spread the message of Methodism in Arkansas. Eli Lindsey was born in 1797 in Rutherford County, North Carolina, to James William Lindsey Jr. and Rachel Burkett Lindsey. His father fought with the patriots at the significant Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780. By 1790, these families had moved to Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and they resided in Rutherford County, North Carolina, by 1800. Lindsey’s family gradually moved to Christian County, Kentucky, where his uncle Carlton …

Linebarger, Clarence A.

Clarence A. Linebarger was the general manager and part-owner of Bella Vista (Benton County), a successful summer resort in northwestern Arkansas, from 1917 to 1952. In addition to the day-to-day management, he designed most of the resort’s amenities, including more than 500 summer residents’ cottages, accommodating the owners’ specifications while preserving the natural landscape. C. A. Linebarger was born on August 17, 1889, in West Union, Indiana, to Samuel and Mary Linebarger. He was the third of three children. His family passed through Benton County later that year en route from Indiana to Crowley, Louisiana, where they became rice farmers. After his mother contracted tuberculosis, she asked her husband to take her to Bentonville (Benton County), because she was impressed …

Linton, Henri

Henri Linton has been recognized as one of the most talented artists working in the state of Arkansas. He has also served as chair of the art department at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). Henri Linton was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1944. After discovering his artistic talents early, he soon began painting and visiting museums. To buy art supplies, he took on odd jobs such as painting signs and shining shoes. After entering a national art contest as a teenager, he won a four-year scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio. Linton earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Boston University and a master’s degree in art from the University of Cincinnati …

Liston, Sonny

aka: Charles Liston

Charles “Sonny” Liston was a noted boxer who briefly reigned as Heavyweight Champion after a first-round knockout against Floyd Patterson. However, his career was marred by criminal activity and, later, accusations of mob connections and throwing fights. Sonny Liston was born on May 8, probably 1932, to Tobe and Helen (Baskin) Liston, African American sharecroppers in rural St. Francis County. He was one of many children—one account lists twenty-two siblings and half-siblings. Liston was raised on heavy farm work, many beatings, and with virtually no schooling. At the age of thirteen, he ran away to St. Louis, Missouri, following his mother, who had left earlier. There, he committed various muggings and robbery. Soon caught (his crimes were inept, spur-of-the-moment, strong …

Little River County Lynching of 1878

According to a letter published in the Arkansas Gazette on December 1, 1878, a lynching was perpetrated in Little River County in late November of that year, precipitated by a murder carried out for the purposes of robbing a man. The names of the principals in the affair were not named in the Arkansas Gazette’s account, although an abbreviated version in other papers named the lynched man as Hilliard and the murder victim as Ferris. The letter in question is written by a person named only as “J. F. B.” and described as a “friend” from the community of Lockesburg (Sevier County). The letter relates that two white men traveling from Texas crossed the Red River together at Harris’ ferry. …

Little Rock College

Little Rock College was the second attempt by the Diocese of Little Rock to establish an institution of higher education. Andrew Byrne, Arkansas’s first Roman Catholic prelate, began St. Andrew’s College near Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in 1849, but it closed in 1861 due to the Civil War. John B. Morris, Arkansas’s third Catholic bishop, established Little Rock College using the wealth accumulated by his predecessor, Edward M. Fitzgerald, who died in 1907. Fitzgerald left so much to his successor that, in addition to the college, Morris eventually founded St. Joseph’s Orphanage in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), a diocesan newspaper, and a seminary. Little Rock College opened in September 1908, situated between 25th and 26th streets, and Gaines and State …

Little Rock Executions of 1885

A pair of African American men, Rush Johnson and Lige Parker, were hanged together in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on February 12, 1885, after being convicted of first-degree murder. Rush Johnson, described as a “young, muscular black negro,” was employed on the Pulaski County plantation of former governor Henry Massie Rector in the spring of 1884. On May 18, a steamboat arrived at the Rector place on the Arkansas River, and Carrie Johnson, “a heavy-set, copper-colored, depraved woman,” bought whiskey from it and got drunk. She went to the plantation store and got into an argument with superintendent John Wall, who kicked her out, with Johnson accusing him of striking her. Rush Johnson, described as Carrie Johnson’s “paramour,” was heard …

Little Rock Executions of 1892

Tom Bailey and L. D. Slaughter, two African American men convicted of first-degree murder, were hanged together at Little Rock (Pulaski County) on May 6, 1892. J. F. Hackman, a traveling salesman for the Tunison Map Company of Jacksonville, Illinois, arrived at McAlmont Station near Little Rock on December 22 (some sources say December 28), 1889, where he met Tom Bailey, a local man. The two quarreled over the price of a map, and Hackman attempted to strike Bailey, who “then knocked Hackman down and went off, but came back and, while Hackman was in a comatose condition, cut his throat.” Bailey then robbed the salesman’s corpse, dragged the body to a lake, and tied it to a cypress knee …

Little Rock Fortifications (Civil War)

Both Confederate and Union forces constructed fortifications to protect Arkansas’s capital between 1863 and 1865, with the Confederates concentrating their efforts on the north side of the river while Union works were built primarily south of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Following the Confederate defeat in the July 4, 1863, Battle of Helena, most of the Confederate troops in the state fell back to central Arkansas and braced for a Union offensive toward Little Rock. Major General Sterling Price reported that, in late July, “I commenced the construction of a line of rifle-pits and other defensive works on the north side of the Arkansas [River], and pushed them forward to completion as rapidly as I could.” The works stretched from Big …