Entries - Race and Ethnicity: Does not Apply - Starting with D

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, 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 (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 …