Gender: Male

Read, Opie

Opie Read was a newspaperman, author, and lecturer. He cofounded the comic newspaper the Arkansaw Traveler and wrote several successful novels. Arkansas provided much of his education as he worked for three Little Rock (Pulaski County) newspapers: the Arkansas Gazette, the Arkansas Evening Democrat, and the Evening Ledger. His work as city editor and his associations with the state’s antebellum elite provided him with decades of literary material. Opie Read was born on December 22, 1852, in Nashville, Tennessee, the youngest of eleven children. (His middle name is recorded various sources as either Pope or Percival, with the consensus being that it was like the latter.) His parents were Guilford and Elizabeth Wallace Read. Read’s early life was spent in …

Rebsamen, Raymond Henry

Raymond Henry Rebsamen was a Little Rock (Pulaski County) businessman who started a number of small businesses in different industries including insurance, printing, real estate, and automobile sales. Rebsamen was deeply involved in shaping the landscape of modern Little Rock through urban planning organizations like Metroplan, of which he was a founding member, and through his donations of land within the city for public use in sports, leisure, and education. Raymond Rebsamen was born on April 8, 1898, in Lancaster, Texas, to William Frederick Rebsamen and Edna May Miller Rebsamen. The family moved to Fort Smith (Sebastian County), where Raymond and his younger brothers, Paul and Lloyd, were educated in the public schools. Rebsamen attended the University of Arkansas (UA) …

Rector, Elias

Elias Rector was appointed U.S. marshal for the Territory of Arkansas later served as superintendent of Indian Affairs. During the Civil War, he sought to make treaties with Native American tribes on behalf of the Confederacy. Rector was the subject of the poem “The Fine Arkansas Gentleman, Close to the Choctaw Line,” written by his friend Albert Pike. Elias Rector was born on September 28, 1802, in Fauquier County, Virginia. He was the youngest of nine sons born to Wharton Rector and Mary Vance Rector, who was a native of North Carolina. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Illinois, where Elias Rector spent the early part of his youth. The family relocated again, this time to St. Louis, …

Rector, Henry Massie

Henry Massie Rector was the state’s sixth governor. He was part of Arkansas’s political dynasty during the antebellum period, but he was not always comfortable in that role and played a part in its downfall. Henry Rector was born on May 1, 1816, at Fontaine’s Ferry near Louisville, Kentucky, to Elias Rector and Fannie Bardell Thurston. He was the only one of their children to survive to maturity. Elias Rector, one of the numerous Rectors who worked as deputy surveyors under William Rector, the surveyor-general for Illinois and Missouri, served in the Missouri legislature in 1820 and as postmaster of St. Louis, Missouri. He also surveyed in Arkansas and acquired, among other speculations, a claim to the site of the …

Rector, James Alcorn “Indian”

James Alcorn “Indian” Rector, who took the silver medal in the 100 meters at the 1908 Olympic Games, was the first Arkansan to win an Olympic medal. His nickname “Indian” is said to have been given to him by his teammates or East Coast track fans who said he ran like an Indian. Born on June 22, 1884, in Hot Springs (Garland County), James Alcorn Rector was the fourth of six children of Elias William Rector and Rosebud Alcorn Rector. His paternal grandfather, Henry Massie Rector, served as governor of Arkansas, while his maternal grandfather, James Lusk Alcorn, served as governor of Mississippi. His father practiced law and was a representative in the Arkansas General Assembly. After attending schools in Hot Springs, …

Rector, Rickey Ray (Execution of)

Rickey (or Ricky) Ray Rector was the third death row inmate to be executed in Arkansas after the reinstatement of capital punishment in the state in 1990. He was executed despite concerns over his ability to understand the difference between life and death or the consequences of his actions. On March 22, 1981, Rector entered Tommy’s Old Fashioned Home-style Restaurant in Conway (Faulkner County), where he had previously been denied entrance to a private party. Rector fired several shots, killing Arthur Criswell and wounding two others. Two days later, Rector entered his mother’s home while the police were there questioning his mother and sister. Rector shot and killed Robert Martin, a Conway police officer, before running outside and shooting himself …

Rector, William Field (Billy), Sr.

William Field Rector was a Little Rock (Pulaski County) businessman and civic leader who founded the real estate firm Rector-Phillips-Morse, Inc. (now RPM Group) and the nonprofit group 50 for the Future. He played a dominant role in shaping the development of Little Rock from the 1950s into the 1970s, especially in his attempt to serve what he believed to be the business community’s interests during the Desegregation of Central High School in the mid-1950s and busing efforts in the decades following. William Field (Billy) Rector was born on June 28, 1912, on a farm near Palarm in Faulkner County to Henry M. Rector and Nancy Rector. He was the great-grandson of Henry Massie Rector, the Confederate governor of Arkansas …

Reed, Adolph Sr.

Adolph Reed Sr. was a distinguished educator and activist. As a political scientist, he approached politics from an academic perspective but also actively participated in the broad political process, being particularly involved with labor and civil rights efforts. Adolph Reed was born in 1921 to Alphonso Reed and Mary Reed. While he spent his early years in Dumas (Desha County), he attended Dunbar High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Like many African Americans during this period, his family migrated north, arriving in Chicago in the late 1930s. There, he worked as a railroad dining car waiter before heading to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended Fisk University. While he ultimately earned his degree from Fisk, his studies were interrupted by …

Reed, Eddie

Eddie Reed was a cancer researcher, medical oncologist, and leader in public policy addressing disparities in healthcare in the United States. Reed is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. Eddie Reed was born on December 17, 1953, the son of Floyd and Gennora Reed, who raised a family of eighteen children on a farm near Hughes (St. Francis County). Reed and his siblings received their early education in Hughes’s public schools, and all received a college education and had distinguished careers as lawyers, doctors, teachers, and public servants. Reed attended Philander Smith College, a historically black institution in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he achieved academic distinction. In the summer following his sophomore year, he was chosen …

Reed, James Byron

James Byron Reed was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Sixth District of Arkansas in the Sixty-eighth through the Seventieth Congresses, serving from 1923 to 1929. James B. Reed was born near Lonoke (Lonoke County) on January 2, 1881, to William R. Reed and Georgia A. Reed. He attended the local schools as well as Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) before ultimately graduating from the law department of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1906. He was admitted to the bar that same year and began a private practice. He also ventured into politics, winning election to the Arkansas House of Representatives, where he served in 1907. Reed was …

Reed, Pearlie Sylvester

Pearlie Sylvester Reed spent more than a quarter century of his career working in agriculture, serving four major regions of the United States and initiating sweeping progressive and anti-discrimination policies in the 1990s. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2012. Pearlie S. Reed was born in Heth (St. Francis County) on June 14, 1948. He was one of eighteen children of Floyd L. Reed and Gennora Reed. Reed attended school in the nearby town of Hughes (St. Francis County) and graduated from the segregated Mildred Jackson High School. As a student at what is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), Reed began his career in agriculture in 1968 as an intern in …

Reed, Roy

Roy Reed, author of an incisive biography of Governor Orval Faubus, was a renowned writer and reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and The New York Times. He taught journalism for sixteen years at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). As a teacher, he stressed not only the importance of telling stories accurately but of telling them well, with careful attention to language. Roy Reed was born on February 14, 1930, in Hot Springs (Garland County) to Roy E. Reed, a mail carrier and later a storeowner, and Ella Meredith Reed, a homemaker. His younger sister, Hattie, died in 1964. Reed grew up in Piney, an unincorporated Garland County community near Hot Springs. Piney was racially mixed, and …

Reeves, Bass

Arkansas native Bass Reeves was one of the first Black lawmen west of the Mississippi River. As one of the most respected lawmen working in Indian Territory, he achieved legendary status for the number of criminals he captured. Bass Reeves was born enslaved in Crawford County in July 1838. His owners, the William S. Reeves family, moved to Grayson County, Texas, in 1846. During the Civil War, Bass became a fugitive slave and found refuge in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) amongst the Creek and Seminole Indians. Reeves is believed to have served with the irregular or regular Union Indians that fought in Indian Territory during the Civil War. After the Civil War, Reeves settled in Van Buren (Crawford County) with …

Reeves, Willis (Execution of)

Willis Reeves was hanged on July 15, 1881, in Van Buren (Crawford County) in a botched but ultimately successful execution for the slaying of an African American youth the previous year. Willis Reeves, who a newspaper wrote was “chunky, muscular, dark-brown and had a malignant countenance,” became involved “in a dispute” with a Black youth named John Drake in Van Buren on June 6, 1880. Reeves ending up pulling a pistol and shooting Drake in the head, killing him. Though no accounts appear to chronicle Reeves’s trial for murder, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang on July 15, 1881. Reeves would later try to escape in hopes of being shot and said he “bet a thousand dollars he …

Reid, Charles Chester

Charles Chester Reid was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fourth District of Arkansas in the Fifty-Seventh Congress, but following redistricting, he represented Arkansas’s Fifth District in the Fifty-Eighth through the Sixty-First Congress. His overall tenure in the House ran from 1901 to 1911. Charles Chester Reid was born on June 15, 1868, in Clarksville (Johnson County) to Charles C. Reid and Sarah Robinson Reid. He received his early education in the local public schools before attending the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) for three years. There, Reid won the annual debate medal, besting a son of U.S. Senator James D. Walker. Reid graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in …

Reid, Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Reid was a physician and a colonel in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Reid not only fought during the war—and at one point escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp—he also served at times in a medical role. After the war, he practiced medicine in Arkansas. He moved to Illinois around 1880, where he lived the rest of his life. Thomas Jefferson Reid was born on January 6, 1838, in Caswell County, North Carolina. He was one of twelve children born to Thomas Jefferson Reid and Frances Lightfoot Edwards “Fannie” Reid. Thomas Sr. was a descendant of Major John Reid of Virginia, who had served in the American Revolution. Reid’s mother was well educated and from a slaveholding …

Remmel, Augustus Caleb (Gus)

Augustus Caleb (Gus) Remmel, nephew of businessman Harmon Remmel, became an insurance executive after moving to Little Rock (Pulaski County). His acquired wealth and familial stature propelled him to leadership of the Pulaski County Republicans and the “Lily White” faction of the state party. His firebrand actions later gave him the chance to supplant his uncle as the recognized leader of the state Republican Central Committee. Gus Remmel was born on June 8, 1882, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Augustus Caleb and Gertrude Remmel and raised in Fulton County, New York. After high school, he relocated to Little Rock to work as a cashier under his uncle, the noted Arkansas Republican Party boss Harmon L. Remmel, who operated as an …

Remmel, Harmon Liveright

Harmon Liveright Remmel succeeded Powell Clayton as leader of Arkansas’s Republican Party in 1913. His tenure was plagued by an ongoing dispute between Lily White and African-American Republicans. His role in the movement remains a topic of debate among historians. Harmon Remmel was born on January 15, 1852, in Stratford, New York, to German immigrants Gottlieb Remmel and Henrietta Bever. Gottlieb Remmel was a tanner and a staunch Republican. Harmon Remmel, who had four brothers and two sisters, attended Fairfield Seminary in Fairfield, New York. He taught school for a year, and in 1871, he and his brother Augustus Caleb (A. C.) Remmel entered the lumber business in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1874, he returned to New York, and in …

Remmel, Pratt

Pratt Cates Remmel was a longtime Republican activist who served as mayor of Little Rock (Pulaski County) for two terms in the 1950s. The first Republican to serve in that office since Reconstruction, he was also the Republican Party’s nominee for governor in 1954. Pratt C. Remmel was born on October 26, 1915, in Little Rock, one of five children of Augustus Caleb and Ellen Lucy Remmel. His father died when he was five, and his mother raised the children by herself. Remmel graduated from Little Rock High School in 1933 and then attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1937. Returning to Little Rock, Remmel became involved in local politics. …

Renaud, Brent Anthony

Brent Anthony Renaud was an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist who, along with his brother Craig Renaud, became well known for documentary films about the horrors of war and social strife around the world. In 2005, Brent and Craig Renaud released the ten-part documentary series Off to War: From Rural Arkansas to Iraq, which followed members of the Arkansas National Guard into war (Operation Iraqi Freedom). In 2007, the Renaud brothers co-directed the film Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later, which examined students in Little Rock (Pulaski County) fifty years after the Central High Desegregation Crisis of 1957. They were also co-founders of the Little Rock Film Festival. Renaud became internationally known after his death while covering Russia’s war of …

Renfrow, William Cary

William Cary Renfrow was an influential political figure during the early territorial years of Oklahoma. A North Carolina native who moved to Arkansas following the Civil War, Renfrow moved to the growing Oklahoma Territory in the late 1880s, where he would play an important role in Oklahoma’s journey toward statehood. William Cary Renfrow was born on March 15, 1845, in Smithville, North Carolina, to Perry Renfrow and Lucinda Atkinson Renfrow. He got his early schooling there but stopped attending school at the age of sixteen to enlist in the Confederate army. He initially joined Company C in the Fiftieth North Carolina Regiment in February 1862, where he advanced to sergeant. As the war progressed, he transferred to Company F of …

Reng, Carl Raymond

Carl Reng served as president of what is now Arkansas State University in Jonesboro (Craighead County) from 1951 to 1975. When he started, the school had an enrollment of only 863 students and faculty numbering eighty-one. By the time he retired in 1975, the school had evolved into a major educational institution with more than 7,300 students, taught by a faculty of 342. In addition, he oversaw the school’s transition from a college to full university status, becoming the second such university in the state. Carl Raymond Reng was born on May 13, 1910, to a farming family near Sioux Rapids, Iowa. His parents were John Gilbert Reng and Anna Marie Severson Reng, a Norwegian immigrant. Carl was the third …

Reported Lynching of July 1894

The July 24, 1894, issue of the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee, reported on “the hanging of two unknown negroes” near Lake Cormorant in northern Mississippi, not far south of Memphis. According to the rumors that reached the newspaper, the two men were from Arkansas and had been lynched by a mob consisting of Arkansans. The news came to the newspaper from Miles Maples, an African American man who lived at the Lake Cormorant place of Memphis resident William O. Mason. On Sunday, July 15, “two negroes were found hanging to a tree near Lake Cormorant, a few miles from the village of that name.” The bodies appeared to have been there for some time, being “badly decomposed, and birds …

Reported Smallpox Lynching of 1894

Early in May 1894, newspapers across the country began to publish sensational articles, based on a report to Little Rock (Pulaski County) from Ouachita County, on the lynching of a man with smallpox near Miles Switch. As is often the case with false lynching reports, the news continued to circulate even after the Arkansas Gazette published a clarification on May 7. Smallpox was common in the United States during the spring of 1894, with cases appearing in most states. Arkansas was one of the states affected; even though a vaccine had been developed in the late eighteenth century, the state did not require vaccination until 1897. According to an article published by the Gazette on May 2, 1894, twenty-nine smallpox …