Race and Ethnicity: White - Starting with H

Huckaby, Elizabeth Paisley

Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby, who served as an instructor of English for thirty-nine years, was vice principal for girls at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) during the desegregation of Central High School. The author of Crisis at Central High: Little Rock 1957–58, Huckaby documented events within the school as the first black students, the Little Rock Nine, were admitted. Charged with protecting the six female members of the Little Rock Nine, she earned hostility and anger from segregationists within the school and in the community. She wrote her brother in October of that first year, “Things go on peacefully at school, if enforced peace is meant. The force isn’t needed for most of the children… but for the …

Huddleston, John Wesley

John Wesley Huddleston is best known as a struggling farmer who found two diamonds on the surface of his field near Murfreesboro (Pike County) in August 1906 and made himself and his state famous. Soon after the discovery, he was recognized as the first person outside South Africa to find diamonds at an original volcanic source. In the process, he also became the controversial subject of numerous folk tales. A native of Pike County, John Huddleston was born in 1862 to David Fielding Huddleston and America White Huddleston. He had seven siblings before his mother’s death in the early 1870s and gained three step-sisters after his father’s remarriage to Francis Carey. In 1886, Huddleston wed Sarah A. Keys, the mother …

Hudgins, Mary Dengler

Mary Dengler Hudgins was a prolific writer of regional history in Arkansas. Her research and writing led her to amass an exceptional collection of publications and historical materials that document the history of Garland County, its county seat of Hot Springs, and the state of Arkansas. Mary Hudgins was born in Hot Springs on November 24, 1901. She was the only child of Jackson Wharton and Ida Dengler Hudgins. Her father worked in the real estate business, and her mother was a teacher. She attended public schools in Hot Springs and then attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington Couny), where she majored in English and served as a reporter for the Arkansas Traveler, UA’s student newspaper. After graduating with …

Hudson, Dianne Elizabeth Ferguson

Dianne Hudson served as a state representative from Sherwood (Pulaski County) in the 81st Arkansas General Assembly from 1997 to 1998. Dianne Elizabeth Ferguson was born in 1939 in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Ralph James Ferguson, who was a civilian employee at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, and Josephine Margurite Uekman Ferguson, a homemaker. She grew up in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), graduating from St. Patrick’s Catholic School in 1953 and Mount St. Mary Academy in 1957, and worked as a cashier at the Rialto Theatre. She later audited classes at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She married Freddie D. Hudson in September 1958, and they had three daughters: Donna, Chris, and Connie. She was a homemaker …

Hudson, Joel Carrington

Joel Carrington Hudson was a career diplomat at the U.S. Department of State who served in various posts around the world, including being stationed in Germany on the cusp of World War II. Joel Hudson was born in Ravenden (Lawrence County) on September 4, 1899. Hudson’s father was William R. Hudson, who is referred to at times as “Reverend” and at other times as “Doctor.” His mother was Ida Tanner Hudson, who died before 1910. His parents lived in Lonoke (Lonoke County) with the seven-month-old Hudson at the time of the 1900 census. In 1910, Hudson and his father were each enumerated as “roomer” in Houston, Texas, where Hudson’s father was the founding minister of the Third Baptist Church. Little …

Hudson, John Gardner

John G. Hudson was a Union officer during the Civil War who won distinction for his actions during the July 4, 1863, Battle of Helena and later was appointed as colonel of the Sixtieth U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment, which saw all of its service in Arkansas. John Gardner Hudson was born on May 22, 1832, in East Palmyra, New York, the youngest of six sons of Samuel E. Hudson and Sally Hudson. Hudson attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and was a farmer and carpenter. He married Mary Sprague in 1854; the couple had a son and a daughter. Hudson moved to Missouri and, at age thirty, mustered in as captain of Company B, Thirty-Third Missouri Infantry Regiment (US) on …

Huey, Cal (Execution of)

Cal Huey was one of two men hanged for the 1879 murder of a Crittenden County man, though he denied being involved in the crime. On October 26, 1879, four masked men rode up to the home of John Broadway, age fifty-five, about ten miles north of Marion (Crittenden County). One of them was John Potter, who worked for Broadway and believed that Broadway had $300 in his home. When Broadway tried to defend himself, another robber, Hiram Jeffries, shot him down. The four men fled, having netted only eight dollars. Potter, Jeffries, L. L. Ford, and Cal Huey were arrested and charged with Broadway’s murder. Huey got a change of venue for the trial to Mississippi County, but Jeffries …

Hughes, David Terry

David Terry Hughes Sr. was a longtime journalist, photographer, and newspaperman from Benton (Saline County). Hughes’s newspaper career began with freelance photography for the Benton Courier at age fourteen. In addition to newspapers in Arkansas, Hughes worked for papers in Texas, Virginia, Florida, Illinois, Saipan, and Guam. He was the grandson of noted Arkansas poet and columnist Anna Nash Yarbrough. David Terry Hughes was born on February 8, 1948, in the Panama Canal Zone to Frank Hughes and Jessie Shaver Hughes. His father served in the U.S. Army; when he was stationed in Panama in 1949, he was killed while crossing the street when Hughes was only a year old. Hughes’s mother remarried but soon separated. His three half brothers …

Hughes, Green B.

Green B. Hughes was an influential figure in early Arkansas. He served as the first postmaster at what is now Benton in Saline County in 1836. Later, Hughes served as county clerk and county judge before being elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives. He also served as a railroad commissioner and chairman of the Saline County Democratic Party. Hughes died in the summer of 1858, reportedly leaving behind an estate worth a considerable amount. Green B. Hughes was born in Tyrrell County, North Carolina, in 1800 to parents of Welsh descent. He moved to Hot Springs (Garland County) in 1818, when Arkansas was still a territory. He married Louisa West, the sister of Claiborne West, one of the signers …

Hughes, Simon Pollard

Simon Pollard Hughes typifies the ex-Confederate, personally prosperous, conservative post-Reconstruction Democratic governors of Arkansas as well as several other Southern states. As attorney general and as a two-term governor, he stressed the need for the state to have a good credit rating. Though his political career began in the 1850s, his longest public service was as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court for sixteen years. Simon P. Hughes was born on April 14, 1830, near Carthage, Smith County, Tennessee, the third son of Simon P. Hughes and Mary Hubbard. When Hughes’s mother died in 1842, the family moved to Bowie County, Texas, but his father died in 1844, leaving the fourteen-year-old Hughes an orphan. (There is no concrete …

Huie, Janice Riggle

Janice Riggle Huie was the first woman to serve as United Methodist bishop in Arkansas and the second female bishop in the eight-state South Central Jurisdiction, which includes Arkansas. Janice Kay Riggle was born on December 15, 1946, in Beeville, Texas, to Frankie Rosalie Luthringer Riggle and James Riggle. She is the eldest of three sisters, all of whom were raised on the family’s farm and ranch. Huie attended First United Methodist Church in Beeville with her family. After graduating cum laude from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English in 1969, Huie enrolled in the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, despite having never encountered a female clergy member. She …

Hull, Alexander C.

Marion County native Alexander C. Hull was a respected businessman and leader in northwestern Arkansas newspaper circles, as both owner and editor, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a Democrat, he held minor appointed political positions until he was elected to two terms as the state’s sixteenth secretary of state. Alexander C. Hull was born to John E. Hull and Matilda A. Killough Hull on April 20, 1858, in Marion County, Arkansas. His father served in the Arkansas House of Representatives and was a captain in the Confederate army. He was killed in action when Alexander was seven years old. After the war, his mother moved Hull and his brothers to Flippin Barrens in Marion County, where …

Humbard, Alpha Rex Emmanuel

Alpha Rex Emmanuel Humbard was a traveling evangelist from Arkansas who became a well-known gospel singer, pastor, and pioneer in Christian television. Born on August 13, 1919, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), Rex Humbard was one of six children of Pentecostal evangelists Alpha and Martha (Childers) Humbard. In the summer of 1932, young Humbard watched a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus tent fill with crowds in Hot Springs (Garland County). Although he would not attend such “worldly” diversions, he decided that he wanted to attract crowds like that to share the gospel. At age thirteen, he began broadcasting on KTHS radio in Hot Springs by singing gospel songs and inviting listeners to come hear his father preach at …

Humphrey, F. Nolan

F. Nolan Humphrey was a longtime Arkansas government employee, serving the state for over four decades, spanning the tenures of ten governors. Working primarily in the Department of Revenue (which was later renamed the Department of Finance and Administration), he also served as state auditor. F. Nolan Humphrey was born on August 29, 1918, in Horatio (Sevier County) to J. Oscar Humphrey and Esther Carmel Friday Humphrey. He graduated from Little Rock Senior High School, before going on to Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) and then the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Humphrey served in the U.S. Army for four years during …

Humphreys, Thomas Hadden

Thomas Hadden Humphreys, son of a Confederate army officer, spent some thirty-nine years on the judicial bench, the last twenty-six as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, and held elective political offices for forty-four years without ever having had an opponent. Governor Jeff Davis, the populist orator who later became a U.S. senator, appointed Humphreys, a Fayetteville (Washington County) lawyer, to a new chancery judgeship in the Eleventh District in 1903, and Governor George Washington Hays named him to a vacancy on the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1916 when Justice William F. Kirby was elected to the U.S. Senate. Humphreys’s father, John T. Humphreys, was a lawyer in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) who joined the First Arkansas Light Artillery …

Hunnicutt, Arthur Lee

Personifying the rustic but savvy characterizations of his home state, Arthur Hunnicutt became one of the most sought-after character actors in Hollywood, being nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in 1952’s The Big Sky. Arthur Hunnicutt was born on February 17, 1910, in Gravelly (Yell County) and attended school in the Yell County area. He attended Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway (Faulkner County), now the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). The Depression forced him to drop out of college when he ran out of funds. Even so, Hunnicutt was already perfecting the ability to project his Arkansas drawl and persona into a character he played in many plays and movies. He began his motion picture career …

Hunt, Frances Rowena Mathews Jones

Frances Hunt was a representative from Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in the Forty-third, Forty-fourth, and Forty-fifth Arkansas General Assemblies, serving from 1922 to 1926. She was the first woman to serve in the Arkansas General Assembly.  Frances Rowena Mathews was born on June 6, 1874, in Des Arc (Prairie County) to Julia Ann Wair Mathews and Allen C. Mathews, a Confederate veteran and editor of the Des Arc Citizen. Her friends and family called her “Fannie Dear.” She was educated in the Des Arc schools and learned the printing trade in her father’s newspaper office.   Her father died in 1891, shortly after purchasing the Prairie County Democrat and founding the Des Arc Guidon. Her mother moved with her family to live on the plantation of her brother, Samuel T. Wair, in Redfield (Jefferson County). Wair was active in politics, representing Barraque Township on the Jefferson County Democratic Central Committee and serving as a delegate to the Democratic State Convention. Another …

Hunt, Johnnie Bryan “J. B.”

One of the most successful entrepreneurs in Arkansas history, Johnnie Bryan “J. B.” Hunt rose from humble beginnings to found one of America’s largest trucking firms, J. B. Hunt Transport Services. Today, his company is one of the largest employers in the state, with nearly 15,000 employees and a fleet of 9,688 trucks. The firm is consistently listed among Forbes magazine’s largest corporations. The son of sharecroppers, J. B. Hunt was born on February 28, 1927, in rural Cleburne County. He left school after the seventh grade to work at his uncle’s sawmill and eventually found other work picking cotton and selling lumber. In 1952, he married Johnelle DeBusk, and the couple went on to have two children. A year after their marriage, …

Hunter, Andrew

Andrew Hunter, one of the earliest and longest-surviving itinerant preachers in Arkansas, was an influential, popular, and highly respected leader in the development of Methodism in Arkansas. He served in almost every capacity in the Methodist organization and was involved in most of the historic events in the Methodist Church during his fifty-five years of active ministry and subsequent services after retirement in 1889. Andrew Hunter was born on December 26, 1813, in Ballymoney County, Antrim, Ireland. His mother converted from Catholicism to Presbyterianism before the family migrated to Pennsylvania, while he was still very young. The attentive ministrations of a Methodist preacher during the illness and subsequent death of Andrew’s father led to the family’s conversion to Methodism. Hunter converted on …

Hunter, Carl Glenn

Conservationist Carl Glenn Hunter achieved prominence in two branches of the Arkansas outdoors—its fauna and its flora. Activities with wildflowers of the state made him a household name in Arkansas and beyond after his retirement as a wildlife biologist. Carl Hunter was born on August 30, 1923, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). He graduated from Little Rock High School (now Central High School) in 1941 and received a bachelor of science in agriculture degree from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1945. In college, Hunter worked part time for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC); he became a full-time employee in July 1945. He was one of the first hires of the agency after it …

Hunter, Joseph Boone

Joseph Boone Hunter was Director of Human Services at the World War II–era Japanese American Relocation Center in Rohwer (Desha County) and the founding minister of Pulaski Heights Christian Church; in addition, he served on the faculty of Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock), taught continuing education courses for teachers for the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), and became the first administrator of the Arkansas Council of Churches. He was also an interim minister in twenty-seven churches, mostly in Arkansas. Joe Hunter was born on December 27, 1886, to John W. Hunter and Mary Frances Compton Hunter on a farm near Allen, Texas. He was the ninth of fifteen children and …