Race and Ethnicity: Does not Apply

Antitrust Laws and Lawsuits (Progressive Era)

Antitrust laws and lawsuits against monopolistic corporations were major features of both state and national politics before World War I during the Progressive Era. Popular concern in Arkansas about corporate wrongdoing became part of third-party agrarian political agendas in the 1880s. The state’s Agricultural Wheel president, Lewis P. Featherstone, introduced an antitrust bill in the 1887 session of the Arkansas General Assembly aimed at the American Cotton Oil Trust. Antitrust measures in other states, especially in the Midwest, led the U.S. Congress to enact the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to catch up with state lawmaking. However, an effective antitrust law was not adopted in Arkansas until 1899, only after agrarian concerns became shared by urban, middle-class citizens. During the …

Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail

The Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail is a walking tour in Little Rock (Pulaski County) that commemorates people and places that have played important roles in the state’s journey toward equal rights for all. A part of the United States Civil Rights Trail, the Arkansas trail was created by University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity to recognize “the sacrifices and achievements made by those who fought for racial and ethnic justice in Arkansas.” The trail also serves to raise awareness both for tourists and Arkansas residents of the important place of the civil rights legacy in the state’s history, the full extent of which is often overlooked. The several-blocks-long trail begins just outside the …

Arkansas Historical Quarterly

The Arkansas Historical Quarterly is the official publication of the Arkansas Historical Association (AHA), offering original research on Arkansas history subjects as well as relevant secondary resources. It is housed in the AHA offices in the history department of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). The Arkansas Historical Association was organized in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on February 22, 1941. Its first project was “publication of a journal of state history.” David Yancey Thomas, one of the main proponents of creating the AHA, was its first editor. The first issue of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly was published in March 1942 and featured “a ‘Salutory,’ a ‘List of Charter Members,’ four leading articles, ten pages of ‘Documents,’ twelve …

Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark

The Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark (NHL) consists of nine battlefields, fortifications, and buildings that collectively embody a significant moment in American history. They were designated as NHLs on April 19, 1994—the first time an entire military campaign was so recognized. Following an expensive purchase of property to forestall private development of a portion of the Second Manassas battlefield in Virginia, U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers led an effort through which Congress created the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission in 1990 with a goal of identifying and assessing the conditions of 384 battlefields around the country. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program (AHPP) conducted the fieldwork in Arkansas, examining a total of seventeen battlefields, including five that were associated with the …

Cherry Pit, The

“Why have we come here to this water?” This question hangs over the protagonist, Clifford “Nub” Stone, throughout Donald Harington’s first novel, The Cherry Pit. Published in 1965 by Random House, PIT (as Harington liked to abbreviate it) tells the story of Clifford’s return to his hometown of Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he meets up with old friends, struggles to reconnect with his family, and, most of all, wonders what hold Arkansas’s capital might still exert over him even after he has made a successful life for himself in Boston as a curator of antiquities and an expert on what he refers to as the Vanished American Past. In Little Rock, Clifford reunites with three old friends who embody …

Chewaukla Mineral Springs Co.

The cold-water springs below the site of the bottling factory of Chewaukla Mineral Springs Co. (later the Sleepy Hollow Water Co.) outside Hot Springs (Garland County) became a national sensation, with backers from Chicago and an “expert” touting their “radioactive medicinal value.” Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians wrote a song dedicated to this “Sleepy Water of Hot Springs, Arkansas.” Radio programs and newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune disseminated testimonials of what the water could cure. The bottling factory was located on what is now Sleepy Valley Road off of Highway 7 South just north of Hot Springs proper and within Hot Springs National Park. In the twenty-first century, the remains of the facility are not marked by any …

Chicken War of 1962–1963

The Chicken War of 1962–1963 was a trade dispute between poultry producers in Arkansas and other states and the European Economic Community (EEC). In the late 1950s, Arkansas poultry producers began to market U.S. chicken in western Europe. In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, M. H. “Bill” Simmons of Plus Poultry in Siloam Springs (Benton County) and other business leaders helped post–World War II Europeans develop their own poultry industry. Noting that Arkansas’s Benton County produced more chicken than some European nations, Simmons assumed it would be decades before European producers could compete with their American mentors. “There is a considerable movement of poultry from Northwest Arkansas into the export channels almost weekly,” Simmons wrote to U.S. Senator …

City of Fort Smith v. Wade

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), one of the most significant governmental reform laws ever enacted by the Arkansas General Assembly, withstood many efforts in the state legislature and the courts to curtail the public’s right to know what state and local governments were doing. The efforts multiplied in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century. One such tactic that did succeed was a lawsuit, cited as City of Fort Smith v. Wade, in which the Arkansas Supreme Court altered the meaning of a public meeting so that private emails among city officials about an issue before the city board of directors did not violate the FOIA because the emails probably did not directly affect the city board’s …

Congressional Districts

The Arkansas delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives has been made up of four members since redistricting took place in the early 1960s. Since statehood in 1836, the total number of seats allotted to the state has fluctuated from one to seven. The boundaries of the districts continue to shift based on population growth or decline in certain portions of the state. The Arkansas Territory gained representation in the House in 1819 when delegate James Woodson Bates of Batesville (Independence County) took his seat in the Sixteenth Congress. Previously, what is now the state of Arkansas received representation from the delegates of the Louisiana Territory and later the Missouri Territory. With the Missouri Territory on schedule to enter the …

Couch-Marshall House

Located in Magnolia (Columbia County), the Couch-Marshall House is an example of what has become known as the Plain Traditional style of architecture, which in this instance took on characteristics of the Queen Anne Revival style. The “high style” of the Queen Anne Revival type of residence had become the preferred style of design and construction in Arkansas by 1880 and was to remain so until the beginning of the twentieth century. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1992. The house takes part of its name from Thomas G. Couch, who was born in Columbia County on February 28, 1852, not long after his parents had relocated from their ancestral home in …

Delta Civil Rights Legacy Trail

The Delta Civil Rights Legacy Trail is a website-centered project that shines a spotlight on the important role that Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) played in the civil rights movement in Arkansas. With most of the commonly remembered history centered in Little Rock (Pulaski County), especially the desegregation of Central High School in 1957, other important efforts have sometimes been overshadowed. The Delta Legacy Trail is an effort to address that oversight. The Delta Civil Rights Legacy Trail is prominently featured by Pine Bluff in civic and tourist materials, and it has received favorable coverage in some travel-focused media (although the headline in one complimentary article touted “Pine Bluff, Arizona”). The website asserts that, in its fight for equal rights for …

Des Arc Schools, Desegregation of

The 1966 desegregation of schools at Des Arc (Prairie County) was accomplished under the leadership of Arkansas native James (Jim) “Doc” H. Ford, who later went on to work with school districts across Arkansas and into northern Louisiana, implementing desegregation in those districts as well. James Ford was born on September 25, 1933, in Prairie County to Howard G. Ford, who was a store owner and later a soybean and rice farmer, and Mary Lodean Guess Ford. After graduating from Des Arc High School in 1951, he attended Arkansas A&M College in Monticello (now the University of Arkansas at Monticello), earning his BS in 1955, after which he taught science and biology, coached senior boys’ basketball, and drove a school …

DeWitt Commercial Historic District

Centered on Courthouse Square in DeWitt, the southern seat of Arkansas County, the DeWitt Commercial Historic District includes a variety of public and commercial buildings. Including both the 1931 courthouse and 1939 post office, the district preserves a historic Arkansas town square. Initially plotted in 1854 after Arkansas Post was deemed to be too far from the center of Arkansas County to serve as the county seat, DeWitt remained a small, isolated community until a rail line connected it with Stuttgart (Arkansas County) in 1891. Few businesses operated in the community until after the railroad was established, but the new transportation link increased the population of the town. The early buildings that stood in what is now the historic district …

Dr. E. P. McGehee Infirmary

Located in Lake Village (Chicot County), the Dr. E. P. McGehee Infirmary served as a healthcare facility for both white and African American residents of the surrounding area. After the facility’s service as a medical infirmary ended, the Museum of Chicot County operated there for a period. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 1, 2005. Born in Alabama in 1869, Edward Pelham (E. P.) McGehee studied at Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama, as well as Vanderbilt University and the University of Mobile. After opening a practice in Alabama, he moved to Lake Village in 1899 and set up an office in the John Tushek Building. He married Sue Gordon McMurray in 1904, and the …

Duckett (Howard County)

Duckett, in the Ouachita Mountains in northern Howard County, was never a population center so much as a community defined by geography, relationships, a post office, and a school. The Cossatot River separates it from the rest of Howard County. With its post office and school long closed, the community in the twenty-first century comes together for Duckett Cemetery’s Decoration Day. Duckett coalesced into a community in the late 1800s. It was named for Allen Turner Duckett (1846–1907), who left Washburn (Sebastian County) with his family in 1876. The post office was created in 1887, around when Duckett first appeared on maps. Most people arrived in Duckett Township after the Civil War; only ten people bought federal land before the …

Duckett Ford (Howard County)

aka: Duckett Crossing (Howard County)
Duckett Ford (a.k.a. Duckett Crossing) was one of nearly a dozen places to cross, or ford, the Cossatot River in northern Howard County. According to a 1913 map, there were eleven fords in the twenty-plus-mile length of the river that separated Duckett Township from the rest of Howard County. Duckett Ford, however, had the advantage of being a straight shot between Wickes (Polk County)—and the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) that created it in 1897—and Galena (Howard County). Families who controlled low water crossings, such as Allen Turner Duckett’s family, could benefit financially. After the automobile and good roads came to the Ouachita Mountains, fords like this one became relics, and the Cossatot River became a whitewater tourist attraction. Little is …

Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC)

The Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC) is an independent Catholic denomination, not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, with congregations in the United States and Europe. The denomination remains comparatively small, especially in Arkansas, where it is represented by only one church. However, the Arkansas congregation was one of the earliest developed in the denomination’s history. The ECC grew out of the independent St. Matthew’s Church, founded in Orange County, California, in 1985. This church was started by Peter Hickman, who had originally been ordained as a Baptist minister but later found himself drawn to Roman Catholic liturgical practices. He eventually was ordained a priest in the Old Catholic tradition, which split from the Roman church following the First Vatican …

Greenwood Tornado of 1968

On April 19, 1968, an F4 tornado touched down and caused immense damage to the city of Greenwood (Sebastian County) and the nearby area. Lasting only four minutes, the twister resulted in more than a dozen deaths, more than 250 people injured, and over a million dollars in storm damage. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used data from the 1968 Greenwood tornado to better understand the weather phenomenon. Greenwood, one of the two seats of Sebastian County, had a population between 1,500 and 2,000 in 1968. It boasted general merchandise stores, grocers, multiple hotels, and medical professionals. On April 19, around 3:15 p.m., heavy rain began to fall in the area. Shortly thereafter, a tornado was sighted as …

Homestead Act of 1862

The Homestead Act of 1862 was a federal statute that regulated most federal transfers of land to Arkansans after the Civil War. It required two things of homesteaders: settlement and cultivation. In other words, homesteaders had to live on and farm their land, and, in exchange, they received land at a very low cost. These land transfers comprised more than eight million Arkansas acres, nearly a quarter of the state’s land, for nearly 75,000 applicants. Just about half (4,037,291 acres of 8,133,791 acres) was transferred in the twentieth century. As the railroads made more of Arkansas accessible, more and more Arkansans homesteaded land. In contrast to the Southern Homestead Act—which was in force during the Reconstruction years only from 1866 …