Photos of the Day - Starting with J

Osceola (Mississippi County) native Ben F. Butler was a well-known civic and political leader, on local and state levels, who served as mayor of Osceola during four different decades (1937-1967). Butler is credited as the driving force in transforming Osceola from a small farm town to an industrialized small city. During his lifetime, he received many honors, including being named mayor emeritus of Arkansas by the Arkansas Municipal League, a title bestowed on fewer than a dozen Arkansans. Butler can be seen here standing to the right of Governor Orval Faubus.

Subiaco Abbey and Academy, a Benedictine monastery and college-preparatory boarding school located in Logan County, began as St. Benedict’s Colony in 1877. The academy opened as a high school for boys in 1902. The school, which admits students from grades eight through twelve, has a student population of 150 to 200 students. While most students board at the school, a small number of day students attend.

Roscoe Jennings moved to Washington County not long before the outbreak of the Civil War. After serving as a surgeon in the Twelfth Arkansas Infantry, he moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) and established a private practice. In 1879, he joined seven colleagues in founding the Medical Department of Arkansas Industrial University, now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).

John Lucas was a prominent African-American lawyer who was elected to the state House of Representatives from Jefferson County in 1890. Shortly after his election, he garnered considerable attention by leading the fight against the Separate Coach Law of 1891. Though fighting for a losing cause, he was described in the local press as “a fluent debater” and the “ablest and most brilliant representative of his race in the state.” By 1893, Lucas had left the now more deeply segregated state, establishing a successful law practice in Chicago, Illinois.

As a first-term governor in 1979, Bill Clinton proposed modest reforms in education and commercial regulation, particularly to control pollution, but his biggest initiative, a highway program, was expensive fiscally and politically. In his reelection campaign in 1980, his opponent Republican Frank White used this issue and the unpopular placement of Cuban refugees at Fort Chaffee by the federal government as major points in his campaign. White received almost fifty-two percent of the vote in defeating Clinton. The portrait shown here is Clinton’s official first-term gubernatorial portrait.

In the 1980s, the Sam Walton family donated a gift toward the construction of a performance space for the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). At about the same time, the City of Fayetteville was considering a similar facility. Negotiations led to the formation of the Walton Arts Council, the goal of which was the construction of an arts center. Over $7 million was raised from private donors, and ground was broken on May 19, 1992, as seen in this photograph. The center has hosted many national touring shows and is considered a showplace of northwest Arkansas.

In 1932, Ray Yarnell purchased the Grisham Ice Cream Company and founded Yarnell’s Ice Cream Company in Searcy (White County). Yarnell’s had sales in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and was the only remaining ice cream company in Arkansas until the company ceased operations for a time in 2011. In November 2011, Schulze and Burch Biscuit Company of Chicago, Illinois, acquired the Yarnell’s plant and most of the recipes at auction for a reported sum of $1.3 million. The company relaunched the Yarnell’s brand in April 2012, with a new mascot, “Scoop,” and a fifty-six-ounce “sqround” box (square with rounded edges).

In 1891, the fourth building to house Fulton County’s government was erected in the town of Salem. The two-story brick building, which still houses the county offices, was remodeled in 1974, greatly altering the nineteenth-century appearance of the building.

On November 18, 2004, the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center and Park, located on the banks of the Arkansas River in Little Rock (Pulaski County), was officially dedicated. The dedication took place in the presence of an overflow audience, and the event was bombarded by heavy rains. Guests included many foreign dignitaries, President George W. Bush, former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, and Bono and the Edge from the rock group U2.

Train wrecks were common in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Arkansas. Poorly constructed or maintained tracks often resulted in de-railings that destroyed rolling stock, cargo, and human lives. One such wreck from the early 1900s is shown hereon the Cotton Belt line near Stephens (Ouachita County).

Jefferson County native Leroy Eldridge Cleaver became world famous in the 1960s as a member of the militant activist group, the Black Panthers. Cleaver became the spokesperson for the Panthers in 1967 when he was chosen as the organization’s minister of information. While serving a stint in prison, he wrote a series of autobiographical essays that were published in 1968 as Soul on Ice. That same year, he ran for president of the United States as the candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party. In the early 1980s, he joined the Republican Party, supporting Ronald Reagan for president in 1984.

When a community observes some milestone in its development, it often publishes a town history or holds a festival. Sometimes, those observances involve an interesting or unusual commemoration, such as this large train-shaped cake made by Klappenbach’s Bakery in recognition of the Fordyce (Dallas County) centennial in 1984.

In 1974, the Little Rock (Pulaski County) chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) was organized to advocate women’s rights. Additional chapters were soon formed throughout the state. Under the organization’s leadership in the 1970s, Little Rock’s first Rape Crisis, Inc., was founded. In the 1980s, the group worked diligently for the passage of the doomed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). NOW continues to promote equal rights, reproductive freedom, and economic security for women. Shown here is group of members in the 1980s.

In 1871, the federal district court for the Western District of Arkansas was moved from Van Buren (Crawford County) to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). This old barracks building served as the site of the federal court for approximately twenty-four of the next twenty-five years. For twenty years, starting in 1875, the famous Judge Isaac Parker handed down 160 death sentences from this courtroom. Seventy-nine of those executed were hanged on a gallows just a few yards from the building. The court’s jurisdiction ended in 1896, and today the building is part of the Fort Smith National Historic Site.

The artistry of stone carver Nick Miller is found in cemeteries throughout northwest Arkansas. The tombstones he made, which remain crisp and legible well over a century later, employ the mourning symbols of his time: clasping hands, weeping willows, lambs, and doves. Yet Miller’s bas-relief motifs and deeply incised lettering exhibit a level of skill and detail not generally found among contemporary carvers.

Rick Monday of Batesville (Independence County) was twenty years old when he broke into the major leagues as a rookie in 1966. One of the most noteworthy events of his successful career was an incident that took place while he was playing center field for the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium on April 25, 1976. During the middle of the game, two protesters jumped onto the field and attempted to burn an American flag. Monday quickly ran toward the two and grabbed the flag. The crowd began to cheer and sing “God Bless America.” Some years later, the National Baseball Hall of Fame designated Monday’s actions as one of the 100 Classic Moments in the History of the Game.

Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher “Dizzy” Dean was born in Logan County in 1910. A professional career that began in 1929 with a Texas semi-professional team soon led to great fame with the St. Louis Cardinals. In the 1934 season, he and his brother, Paul, combined to win forty-nine games, and in the World Series that same year, they won two games each, leading the Cardinals to the championship. After a nagging arm injury led to his retirement in 1941, Dean became a radio sports broadcaster.

An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 species of insects live in Arkansas, including approximately 10,000 species of beetles. One such beetle is the Japanese beetle, which arrived in the state in the 1990s and is now well established in the northwestern and central areas of the state. It is the most economically damaging pest of landscape and turf plantings in the eastern United States.

In this Jonesboro (Craighead County) house located on Mathews Street on land adjacent to the convent, the Benedictine sisters of Holy Angels Convent established what is known today as St. Bernards Medical Center. Six rooms of the house were scrubbed and transformed into patient rooms, each with a cot, chair, and makeshift washstand. The hospital opened its doors on July 5, 1900.

When the Cleveland County courthouse located in Toledo was destroyed by fire in 1889, several towns actively campaigned for the county seat to be relocated to their town. In 1891, after two contested elections and a state Supreme Court decision, the seat was relocated to Rison. In 1911 the large brick courthouse shown here was constructed to house the county government. The building, which is still in use today, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

One of the many attractions at the Sharp County real estate development known as Cherokee Village is the recreation-orientated Cherokee Village Community Center, pictured here. Cherokee Village was founded as a summer resort in 1954 by land developer John Cooper. Starting as a 2,400-acre tract, the area began to attract large numbers of retirees by the early 1960s. The resort was soon transformed into a haven for Northern retirees and, by the 1980s, encompassed almost 14,000 acres. The success of Cherokee Village helped transform Arkansas into one of the most popular retirement destinations in the United States.

On April 25, 1864, present-day Cleveland County was witness to Civil War combat during the Action at Marks’ Mills. In 1939, the historic site was marked by the Arkansas Centennial Commission with one of 143 cast-iron markers purchased by the commission with funds from a $10,000 federal grant.

On March 7, 1862, Colonel Eugene Asa Carr led a cavalry brigade in the Battle of Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas. For his conduct under fire, he was awarded the nation’s highest military honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor. The official citation stated that Carr had “directed the deployment of his command and held his ground, under a brisk fire of shot and shell in which he was several times wounded.” By war’s end, Carr had reached the rank of major general.

Established in 1836, Marion County was named in honor of Revolutionary War hero and South Carolina native Francis Marion. Marion, who earned the nickname the “Swamp Fox” for his elusive tactics, is considered to be one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare. Before war’s end, Marion had risen to the rank of brigadier general of the South Carolina Militia. He died in 1795.

Small-town newspapers were an important part of business and communication for local citizens. In 1875, the Carroll County Advocate became the first paper to be published in Berryville (Carroll County). It was soon followed by others, including the Carroll County Progress in 1879. Editor J. D. Hailey (right) is shown here working in his office over the Carroll County Bank in Berryville in 1898.

When the waters of the Mississippi River and its tributaries left their banks in 1927, more than thirty-six of the seventy-five counties of Arkansas were covered with water, some by as much as thirty feet. One of the counties that lay under this watery cover was Chicot County. At the same time that the floodwaters surrounded the Grocery and Comm. Co., pictured here, in Dermott (Chicot County), the movie Let It Rain was showing at the local theater.

In 1966, Little Rock Central High School biology teacher Susan Epperson became the center of controversy as the plaintiff in the case Epperson v. Arkansas. Epperson contended that the Arkansas 1928 anti-evolution law, which outlawed the teaching of evolution in the public schools, violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Though it was upheld by the Arkansas Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law in 1967, thus settling the issue. Epperson is shown here in 2006.

A visitor to many of the small towns of Arkansas will discover that one of the oldest buildings in the community is often the railroad depot, such as the depot shown here in Cherry Valley (Cross County). In the days of passenger trains, any town of modest size on a railroad route was usually home to such a structure. Over the years, as passenger service declined, many of the buildings were closed and left to decay. Fortunately, a number of them have survived. Some have been restored and house museums, city offices, or private businesses.

Benstonite is one of thirteen minerals first discovered in Arkansas. The mineral was named in honor of University of Illinois ore dressing metallurgist Orlando J. Benston. Shown here is a specimen from Chamberlain Creek Valley near Magnet Cove (Hot Spring County).

The founding fathers of Leachville (Mississippi County) were James Wiseman Honnoll, Joshua Gilbert Leach, and Sam McNamee. Leach and Honnoll incorporated the Leach-McNamee Land Development Company on March 15, 1898, with Honnell naming the town in honor of his business partner. Though founded in the 1890s, the town was not incorporated until 1916. Shown here is modern-day Main Street.

In the more than thirty years since the end of the war in Vietnam, many Arkansas communities have erected monuments to honor those who died in that conflict. One of those many monuments is this red granite marker dedicated to the memory of the B-52 crew members who were stationed at Blytheville Air Force Base as part of the Ninety-seventh Bombardment Wing. The plane was shot down over Vietnam in a December 1972 bombing mission. The marker is located in the Mississippi County town of Gosnell.

Before the advent of the mechanical cotton picker in the early twentieth century, all cotton was picked by hand—perhaps the most labor-intensive job on a plantation or farm. By the early 1900s, a laborer picking cotton would commonly drag a long cotton sack, in which bolls would be placed, along the cotton rows. In earlier times, large wicker baskets, as shown in this Desha County image, were also used to collect the cotton.

Virginia native William Lewis “Old Tiger” Cabell was promoted to a Confederate brigadier general in 1862. He established his headquarters at Jacksonport (Jackson County), where he commanded troops along the White River. Much of Cabell’s service was in Arkansas, with his most notable being in the 1864 Red River Campaign. He was captured near the end of the war and imprisoned. He briefly lived in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) after the war and, after moving to Texas, was elected mayor of Dallas.

In 2005, Latinos became the largest minority in the United States, with numbers in Arkansas rising rapidly. Until recently, the segment of the immigrant population that did not speak English could obtain local news only by spoken word. At least four Latino-focused newspapers are produced in Arkansas. One Spanish-language publication printed in the capital city of Little Rock (Pulaski County) is El Latino, published by the Arkansas Times.

Adrian Brewer, a native of Minnesota, is known in Arkansas primarily for his portraits of prominent citizens, but his artistic genius lay in pastoral landscape paintings of the Southwest and rural scenes of Arkansas. Brewer’s work was influenced by the American Impressionists and reflected the restlessness of modern artists. He died on June 23, 1956.

A common feature of many Arkansas towns at the turn of the twentieth century was the all-important general store. The town of Beaver (Carroll County) was no exception. Located at the westernmost tip of modern-day Table Rock Lake, where the White River meets the lake, and named after early settler Wilson Beaver, Beaver sports, in this 1930s photograph, a two-story native stone building constructed in 1901 that, at the time, was home to Geo. F. Wilson Genl. Merchandise store, as well as the local post office. The building still stands as of 2006.

The Museum of Black Arkansans and Performing Arts Center, originally known as Ernie’s Museum on Black Arkansans (EMOBA), is housed in the old First Baptist Church located adjacent to the historic Quapaw Quarter of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Founded in 1993, the museum is the first in Arkansas dedicated exclusively to preserving the history and culture of black Arkansans.

During the Civil War, each of the Confederate states issued bonds and printed its own paper money to finance the war. So much currency was printed during the war that, by 1865, inflation was so out of control that the currency—though a sought after collector’s item today—was virtually worthless. Shown here is an early ten-dollar Arkansas Treasury Warrant.

In 1968, Virginia Johnson became the first woman in the history of the state to run for the office of governor. Running as a conservative Democrat, she finished second in the primary before losing to Marion Crank in a runoff election. Johnson, who never ran for another office, is shown here with her more famous arch-conservative husband, “Justice Jim” Johnson.

Once cotton was harvested from the field, it went through the process of removal of the seeds from the boll, known as ginning. Most Arkansas towns of any size were home to at least one cotton gin. Area cotton farmers are shown here delivering their crop to the Sheeks-Stephens Cotton Gin at Corning (Clay County) in 1902.

In 1862, twenty-year-old Tennessee native Howell “Doc” Rayburn convinced a group of young friends to form a company of Confederate guerillas near the White River town of Des Arc (White County). For the next few years, his unit operated in present-day Lonoke, Prairie, and White counties. A rather small, blond, feminine-looking man, Rayburn once dressed as a woman and entered Union-held DeValls Bluff (Prairie County) to gather information. Joining General Sterling Price on his famous 1864 Missouri raid, he was captured. He died shortly after his release from prison in 1865.

The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, running through Oklahoma and Arkansas, was authorized by Congress for construction in 1946 but was not fully operational until 1970. Navigation on the river is made possible by a series of eighteen locks and dams along the extensive waterway system. Shown here is Lock and Dam No. 5 located near White Hall (Jefferson County).

In 1885, young Claude Albert Fuller moved with his family from Illinois to the busy town of Eureka Springs (Carroll County). He went on to become a prominent lawyer, city clerk, state legislator, prosecuting attorney, mayor, and congressman. As a U.S. congressman from 1929 to 1939, Fuller played an important role in the establishment of Social Security and the construction of the lakes in northwest Arkansas.

Citizens of Stamps (Lafayette County) show their support in this 1918 Liberty Loan parade. Liberty Bonds were sold by the U.S. government in an attempt to finance the costs of World War I. Four nationwide drives were conducted during the war, ultimately raising approximately $17 billion. These parade participants are likely marching in support of the third or fourth drive, both carried out in 1918.

Arkansas’s most well-known white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), did not appear in the state until April 1868, a few months after African Americans voted in their first elections. KKK activity quickly spread throughout the state. Over the years, the Klan garnered less attention, but the organization experienced a resurgence of interest in the 1980s. The group is shown here in 1994 rallying on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

The baitfish industry did not appear in Arkansas until the mid-1940s, following World War II. The industry quickly grew and today is a major economic force in Lonoke, Prairie, Monroe, and Greene counties, where most of the state’s baitfish are raised. As of 2006, there are over sixty baitfish farms producing over six million bait minnows a year and doing in excess of $20 million in business each year. Seen here is a baitfish farm operation located in Lonoke County.

In 1992, Thomas Green was appointed as the director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey. The survey was created by the state legislature in 1967 and was the first statewide coordinated archaeological research and public service organization in the nation. From the office at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), the director oversees the state’s network of eleven research stations.

During the Flood of 1937, floodwaters inundated 1,037,500 acres of agricultural land and 756,800 acres of other land, affecting 40,916 families and their livestock. To shelter the evacuees, the Arkansas Red Cross established seventy-five camps (tent cities) and concentration centers (existing structures) equipped with special livestock corrals. Shown here is one of those camps, located at Forrest City (St. Francis County).

The boyhood home of Bob Burns located in Van Buren (Crawford County) is shown in this mid-twentieth-century postcard. Burns was a comedian who, in the 1930s and 1940s, was one of America’s most popular radio and movie stars. Many of his comedy routines revolved around his Arkansas home and fictional characters. Many remember Burns for his homemade musical instrument, the bazooka. The name was later associated with a World War II weapon.

The tarantula, which appeared in Arkansas about 8,000 years ago, is the largest spider known to inhabit the state. The spiders are found in most areas of the state, with the exception of the Delta. Females are known to live as long as twenty years. Most of what is known about the tarantula in Arkansas is due to the work of Dr. William Baerg, who taught for thirty-one years at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.