April 24, 2010

Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Richard C. Butler Sr. was a lawyer, banker, real estate developer, and philanthropist. His most well-known case as a lawyer involved the 1957 Little Rock desegregation crisis. As a philanthropist, Butler helped create Arkansas’s United Methodist Foundation, and he supported, among other things, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the Little Rock Boys Club, Hendrix College, Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts, and the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS). In 1997, CALS named its Arkansas and genealogy department the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in his honor.