Photos of the Day - Starting with D

Baptisms at local streams have been part of the religious history of the state from its earliest days. Large, eager crowds of believing followers would make the trip to a local stream to witness the baptism of a friend or loved one. Shown here is a 1920s service conducted by the Star City (Lincoln County) Pleasant Springs Baptist Church at the local “Black Gnat Hole.”

As a long jumper at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County), Al Joyner was a three-time NCAA indoor and outdoor champion and four-time Southland Conference Champion. Representing the United States in the 1984 Olympic Games, he became the first African American to win the event and the first American to win it in eight decades. He was married to track legend Florence “Flo Jo” Griffith, who died in 1998. Joyner’s sister, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, also became a track star, and the two siblings became the first brother-sister American teammates to win medals at the same games.

On October 7, 2002, Governor Mike Huckabee announced that the design submitted for the new state quarter by Dortha Scott, who is shown here on the left, of Mount Ida (Montgomery County) was the winner of the statewide contest that had received 9,320 entries. Scott, who was awarded $1,000 for her design, was present when the quarter, the twenty-fifth in the series, was officially released at a ceremony in Murfreesboro (Pike County) on October 28, 2003. A total of 457,800,000 quarters were minted and released by the U.S. Mint.

Eleithet B. Coleman founded Coleman Dairy in Pulaski County in 1862. As of 2012, it is the oldest continuously operating dairy west of the Mississippi River run by the same family. In 2001, the company was listed by Family Business magazine as the seventy-fifth-oldest family business in the United States.

After much discussion, citizens of Woodruff County agreed in 1902 to build a new brick courthouse in Augusta. The Romanesque Revival building was designed by noted architect Charles L. Thompson. Unlike most county courthouses, it is located in a residential area. The building has a four-story clock tower, ceramic tile floors, and tile murals. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

On December 22, 1956, Arkansas hosted the Aluminum Bowl, the only college football bowl game ever played in the state. The first national championship game of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics drew a disappointing crowd of 5,000 who braved horrible weather to watch a scoreless tie between Montana State College and St. Joseph’s College of Indiana. In 1957, the championship game, renamed the Holiday Bowl, was moved to St. Petersburg, Florida.

This photo of a store in Altheimer (Jefferson County) in 1938 shows many items advertised for sale. The beverages offered are Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, and, notably, beer. Prohibition, outlawing the sale of alcohol, had been repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment a few years before this photo was taken.

John Harold Johnson rose above abject poverty and racial discrimination to build a publishing empire that helped forever change the perception of African Americans in the United States. Johnson Publishing Company became the largest African-American-owned and -operated publishing company in the world and launched Ebony and Jet, two very successful magazines that gave a voice to millions of black Americans. Shown here is the Arkansas City (Desha County) house in which Johnson was born on January 19, 1918.

Pulaski County businessman and politician Will Faucette was instrumental in the separation of Argenta, the Eighth Ward of Little Rock (Pulaski County), from that city and its re-incorporation into the newly created city of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). In 1901, Faucette and his supporters incorporated the town of North Little Rock, which subsequently removed Argenta from Little Rock control by annexation. After Faucette’s election as mayor, the larger city was renamed Argenta for a while. Reelected twice, he oversaw the creation of a city board of health, a water and electric plant, and the installation of gas lines. He died in 1914.

This house at 1600 Chester in Little Rock (Pulaski County) became the second location of the Lena Jordan Hospital in 1942. The hospital was a twenty-bed facility for African Americans in need of surgery, general medical care, and obstetrical care. The hospital services were available to all black patients, regardless of ability to pay. Both black and white staff physicians provided their services without pay for charity patients.

When Eureka Springs was designated as the Carroll County Western District county seat in 1883, Carroll County joined a small number of Arkansas counties with two seats of government. The split was partly due to the difficulty in travel when a nearby river flooded. However, it was not until 1908 that this three-story, limestone, Gothic-style building was occupied by government officials.

The Arkansas State Tuberculosis Sanatorium was established in 1909 about three miles south of Booneville (Logan County). Once fully established, the sanatorium was the relocation center for all white Arkansans with tuberculosis. By the time the facility was closed in 1973, it had treated more than 70,000 patients. Shown here is an interior view of one of the wards at the sanatorium.

The antebellum house west of Magnolia (Columbia County) known as “Frog Level” is believed to be the oldest building in the county. The home was built in 1852 by plantation owner William Frazier from timber cut on site. The timber was milled at a local sawmill and hand dressed by slave labor. It is believed that all of the glass was brought up the river from New Orleans. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and the distinctive name is believed to have been derived from the noise of the numerous frogs that inhabit the swampy area.

The Federal-style Ten Mile House, located on Highway 5 in Little Rock (Pulaski County), is a rare example of a largely intact rural home of the early nineteenth century. It was commandeered by Union troops during the Civil War and accommodated travelers on the Southwest Trail stagecoach line, earning it the alternative name “Stagecoach House.” The property is probably best known as the place where Confederate spy David O. Dodd was held overnight in 1863 prior to his transfer to Little Rock for trial and execution.

Napoleon Bonaparte Houser was a prominent African-American physician and businessman in the early 1900s. As one of the few black doctors in Helena (Phillips County), Houser prospered and was owner of the well-known Black Diamond Drug Store. In 1919, the area was rocked by racial discord, which resulted in the deaths of an undetermined number of African Americans (some estimates are in the hundreds). The event, now known as the Elaine Massacre, was troubling enough to Houser to motivate him to leave Arkansas and return to his native state of North Carolina, where he died in 1939.

Donald Pendleton was a pulp fiction, action, science fiction, and mystery writer best known for the Executioner series books, which centered on the character Mack Bolan, who waged a one-man war against the Mafia. Pendleton is generally credited with creating the action-adventure genre in the 1970s. The Little Rock (Pulaski County) native died of a heart attack in Sedona, Arizona, on October 23, 1995, at the age of sixty-seven.

Of the seventy-five counties of the state of Arkansas, ten have been named in honor of presidents of the United States. On October 7, 1828, the territorial legislature named the newest county then to be created in honor of the nation’s first chief executive, George Washington.

Well into the twentieth century, large numbers of Arkansas citizens were dependent upon the family cow for their daily intake of milk. With developments in technology in preservation and the movement of many people to more populated areas such as Little Rock (Pulaski County), many began to make use of a milk delivery service. Shown here is the horse-drawn J. M. Moore delivery wagon making a delivery in Little Rock in the early 1900s.

Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park, which opened in 1980 near Scott (Pulaski County), preserves one of the most significant pre-European archaeological sites in the state. Among the many sites at the park is the tallest mound that exists in Arkansas. The forty-nine-foot mound, along with the rest of the park, has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

William Bunch, known as “Peetie Wheatstraw,” was raised in Cotton Plant (Woodruff County) and became one of the most popular and widely imitated bluesmen of the 1930s and 1940s. He was an incredibly successful pianist, recording more than 160 songs between 1930 and 1941. He died on his thirty-ninth birthday, December 21, 1941, when the car he was riding in failed to make a curve and struck a standing freight train.

By the turn of the twentieth century, former slave Scott Bond was one of the wealthiest residents of Arkansas. By 1915, Bond owned five cotton gins, a sawmill, and twenty-one farms totaling approximately 5,000 acres, acreage that would more than double before his death in 1933. The farm, shown here, on which the Bond family resided near Madison (St. Francis County) was called “The Cedars.” In 1903, Bond hosted Booker T. Washington at his family farm.

Businessman William Thomas Dillard was born on September 2, 1914, in Mineral Springs (Howard County). From a single store in Nashville (Howard County), he created Dillard’s, Inc., one of the nation’s largest fashion apparel and home-furnishings retailers, with more than 300 stores in twenty-nine states. He died in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 2002.

A number of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties are named in honor of war veterans. Perry County, which was formed on December 18, 1840, was named in honor of War of 1812 naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry. Perry, shown here in this painting by William H. Powell, won fame for his leadership in the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie. He remained in the military after the war, continuing to serve until his death in 1819 from yellow fever.

Benton County native Lloyd “Arkansas Slim” Andrews was best known for film roles as a sidekick to western stars in the 1940s through the early 1950s and, after that, as a host of children’s television programs. Before his move to Hollywood, he had been a comedian and musician in tent shows traveling throughout the mid-South. In his later years, he was a featured guest at film festivals.

Shorter College in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), originally called Bethel University, provided an early opportunity for African Americans in Arkansas to obtain a formal education. The oldest building on the campus was the impressive Tyree Hall, named in honor of Bishop Evans Tyree. At the time of the building’s construction, Tyree was the bishop of the Twelfth Episcopal District. The building, shown in this early 1900s view, was demolished in 1957.

Eleithet B. Coleman founded Coleman Dairy in Pulaski County in 1862. In 2001, the company was listed by Family Business magazine as the seventy-fifth-oldest family business in the United States. By 2010, it was the oldest continuously operating dairy run by the same family west of the Mississippi River; five generations of Colemans have operated the business since its founding. Shown here is one of the fleet of refrigerated trucks used to deliver dairy products across Arkansas and the South in the 1960s.

Sharecropping, whereby a non-landowner farms a piece of land for a landowner and receives a share of the harvest in return, became a major factor in Arkansas agriculture after the Civil War. The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a rapid increase in the system, reflecting a national trend. In the late 1800s, twenty-five percent of American farmers operated as tenants. By the late 1930s, forty percent farmed as tenants. Today, almost all Arkansas farmers rent some of the land they cultivate. Shown here is a typical Washington County sharecropping family in the mid-1930s.

By the beginning of World War II, there were fifteen one-room and two-room schoolhouses, providing education for children in the Parkin (Cross County) area. One that was established for African-American children through the eighth grade was the Northern Ohio School, constructed by two local companies in 1910. The restored school building, which today is part of Parkin Archeological State Park, is the only one of the World War II-era schools that still stands.

Built originally as a hospital, this building located at the corner of 14th and Izard streets in Little Rock (Pulaski County) was purchased by Mr. H. L. Johnson in 1949. Remodeled and christened the Hotel Charmaine, it quickly became one of the South’s leading African-American hotels during the days of segregation. Such celebrities as Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Fats Domino, and Sam Cooke stayed at the hotel. In 1961, the structure was razed to make way for new construction at Philander Smith College.

In 1899, Noah Simpson and the Reverend W. F. Dallas organized the Arkansas Holiness College, known originally as the Holiness Academy, at Vilonia (Faulkner County). It operated until 1931, when it consolidated with the Nazarene College in Bethany, Oklahoma, where it was also relocated. The school then began operating there as Southern Nazarene University.

The Arkansas Business Hall of Fame was created by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1999, partly to honor business leaders who have brought lasting fame to Arkansas. No more than four new members are inducted each year. The permanent hall of fame, where the inductee plaques are displayed, is located on the UA campus in the atrium of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development.

The Delta Cultural Center, a museum of the Arkansas Department of Heritage located in downtown Helena-West Helena (Phillips County), opened in 1990. The center features two museum locations: the Visitor Center, shown here, and the restored 1912 Union Pacific Railroad Depot. Among the features of the museum is a permanent exhibit tracing the history of blues music and the individuals from the area who have contributed to the development of the blues.

The Desha County town of McGehee was devastated by the Flood of 1927. The flood waters, documented by this photograph, began to cover the area in April, with the water not receding until early summer. Many people evacuated the area, while others survived by moving their belongings to the upper floors of office buildings. There were reports that, in some areas, the depth of the water peaked at approximately thirty feet before it finally began to drop.

The Atkins Pickle Company, the major industry in the town of Atkins (Pope County) for more than fifty years, began operation on July 17, 1946. Due to the success of the company, Atkins became known as the “Pickle Capital of the World.” The original facility contained fifty-seven wooden tanks, some shown here, with storage capacity of 1,000 bushels each. The company changed hands over the years but ceased operation in 2002. The company’s legacy continued to survive in the annual Picklefest.

Critically acclaimed artist Les Christensen serves as the director of the Bradbury Gallery, located in the Fowler Center at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County). Christensen uses everyday objects in the creation of her works of art. The use of such objects is shown here in a 2000 piece titled Why Should I Walk When I Have Wings to Fly? The work consists of wood and numerous women’s shoes.

Wear Kibler Schoonover won many academic and athletic awards while attending the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). While he was part of the 1929 All-American football team, he went to Hollywood to play a part in the film Maybe It’s Love. Schoonover later served in the U.S. Navy and worked for the government in the Legal Services Department of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1959, he was one of the first five charter inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Schoonover died on May 15, 1982.

This group of workers is shown engaged in backbreaking work delivering supplies to the oil fields near Smackover (Union County) in the 1920s. These men are apparently delivering pipe to be used in the derrick shown in the distance in the middle of the swamp.

Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1975, encompasses approximately 65,000 acres at the confluence of the Ouachita and Saline rivers, spreading across the borders of three counties—Union, Bradley, and Ashley—in southeastern Arkansas near the Louisiana Border. It contains the world’s largest green tree reservoir. The refuge takes its name from the nearby town of Felsenthal (Union County).

Approximately two years before the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) verdict, which made segregation legal in the United States, was handed down, official segregation was practiced in the Washington County town of Brentwood. This 1894 photograph shows a man and boy standing in the doorway of the local train depot in front of a sign reading, “Waiting Room for White Passengers.” Such signs were still posted well into the 1960s.

Graysonia (Clark County) was one of numerous mill towns that emerged in southern Arkansas during the twentieth century as a result of Arkansas’s growing timber industry. At its peak in the 1920s, Graysonia had one of the largest mills in the South and a thriving community. A part of that community shown in this photograph is the home and guesthouse of principal stockholder William Grayson, the commissary hotel, and the railroad. Few visible remainders of the town exist in the present day.

The Basin Park Hotel is still one of the most popular places to stay on Spring Street in the resort town of Eureka Springs (Carroll County). The impressive structure was built of limestone from a local quarry opened on the site of the Perry Hotel, which had earlier been destroyed by fire. The Basin Park Hotel, shown here early in its construction, observed its centennial in 2005.

The southern cavefish (Typhlichthys subterraneus) is one of two species of blind cave fishes found in Arkansas. They are found mostly in flowing waters and seem to be attracted to point sources of water resurgence. Southern cavefish tend to rest motionless on the bottom for long periods of time. Estimations of population sizes based on sightings at a single cave yield very low numbers: usually fewer than 150 individuals.

The planet is home to approximately 15,000 butterfly species. During a typical year, 134 species are usually seen in Arkansas. One of the most common of the beautiful butterflies found in Arkansas is the Pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor), shown here as photographed atop Mount Magazine in 2006.

This two-story brick Neoclassical Revival house was built in 1918 by David E. Watson at a cost of $11,000. Located in Hamburg (Ashley County), the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Today, known as the Watson House, it serves as the home of the Ashley County Museum.

On August 30, 2005, the John and Cathy Deering sculpture of the Little Rock Nine, titled Testament, was unveiled in ceremonies attended by all nine of the former Central High School students. The sculpture, located on the Arkansas State Capitol grounds, is within sight of the office that had been occupied by Governor Orval Faubus where, in 1957, he called out the National Guard to prevent the students from entering school. Testament depicts the students as they walk with books in hand entering the school.

The Southern Club, an illegal gambling establishment founded in 1893 and located at 250 Central Avenue in Hot Springs (Garland County), developed a reputation in the 1930s as a hangout for vacationing gangsters. Those same gangsters played games of chance using poker chips such as the one shown here. When illegal gambling ended in the 1960s, the Southern Club remained open for a short time as a supper club. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

In 1871, the Baptist-affiliated Judson University held its first classes in the building shown here located in Prospect Bluff (White County), present-day Judsonia. Founded by Professor Martin R. Forey, the school was named in honor of America’s first Baptist missionary, Adoniram Judson. Financing was always a concern for the ambitious project, and the school property was foreclosed in 1883, ending its approximately twelve years of operation.

The Oxford American, which was founded in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1992, began as a monthly journal of southern culture and literature. The journal was moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 2003, but after only four issues, it became affiliated with the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) in Conway (Faulkner County). Billing itself as “The Southern Magazine of Good Writing,” the now-quarterly magazine publishes short fiction, poetry, and articles in a glossy format in the vein of Harper’s or the Atlantic Monthly and is best known for its music issue, which focuses on often-overlooked southern musicians.

In 1921, the first major all African-American musical comedy premiered on Broadway. The show, which would run for 504 performances, was a breakthrough for the African-American musical, proving to financial backers that an audience would support such performances. The show’s music was performed by Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along Orchestra, which included (identified with arrow) Arkansas’s own William Grant Still, before his great fame.

The Poll Tax Amendment passed in 1892 required the payment of one dollar for the privilege of voting in Arkansas elections, both state and federal. The law, which required voters to show proof of tax payment by presenting a receipt, like the one shown here from Van Buren County, was mainly an attempt to deny suffrage to African-American citizens. The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed in 1964, removed the requirement for federal elections. Arkansas voided the tax that same year with Amendment 51 to the state constitution.