Entries - Race and Ethnicity: White - Starting with M

MacArthur, Douglas

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, one of the six men to attain that rank, was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). MacArthur Park and the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in Little Rock bear his name. Douglas MacArthur was born in the Tower Building of the Little Rock Barracks (previously the Little Rock Arsenal) on January 26, 1880, the third son of Captain Arthur MacArthur and his wife, Mary Pinkney Hardy. Arthur MacArthur had served in the Wisconsin Twenty-fourth Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War and was stationed at the Little Rock Barracks. The MacArthurs remained in Arkansas only six months before the captain was reassigned to New Mexico. Before departing Little Rock, Douglas MacArthur was baptized …

MacKrell, James “Uncle Mac”

James “Uncle Mac” MacKrell made a name for himself in Arkansas, first through radio and then through politics. Known as “Uncle Mac” to his adolescent radio audience and as a radio evangelical to others, he is perhaps most remembered for his two campaigns for governor of Arkansas, in 1948 and in 1970. James MacKrell was born in Houston, Texas, on August 8, 1902. He lived in Texas until 1929, and there he attended primary and secondary schools as well as Southern Methodist University in Dallas. After moving to Arkansas in 1929, MacKrell began his career in radio in Fayetteville (Washington County). In 1930, he moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) and accepted a job at KLRA. In 1934, MacKrell began …

Macon, Robert Bruce

Robert Bruce Macon was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the First District of Arkansas in the Fifty-Eighth through the Sixty-Second Congresses, serving from 1903 to 1913. Robert Macon was born on July 6, 1859, near Trenton (Phillips County) to Robert Bruce Macon and Mary Jane Macon. Orphaned at the age of nine, he received his early education in the local public schools and at home, and he first supported himself through a variety of agricultural activities. However, farming in the post-Reconstruction South was particularly difficult work, and Macon eventually turned to politics and the study of law. Before entering the legal profession, Macon served as a state lawmaker, occupying a seat in the Arkansas …

Madden, Ed

Ed Madden is a poet, activist, and educator who has written, co-written, and edited numerous books and anthologies. His poem “Sacrifice” was selected for the Best New Poets 2007 anthology. In 2015, he was named the first poet laureate of Columbia, South Carolina. Ed Madden was born on September 13, 1963. Originally from Newport (Jackson County), Madden grew up on a rice farm. His family was devoutly Christian. Madden studied English and French at Harding University in Searcy (White County) and graduated with a BA in 1985. He received a BS in biblical studies from the Institute for Christian Studies in Austin, Texas, in 1992; an MA from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin in 1989, and a PhD …

Madden, Owen Vincent

Owen Vincent “Owney” Madden was a gangster and underworld boss in New York City in the 1920s who retired to Hot Springs (Garland County) in the 1930s. Though his role in Arkansas politics and history will forever remain enigmatic, he was a powerful figure (from about 1935 until his death) during the heyday of illegal gambling in Hot Springs and an emblem of the bad old days of machine politics. Owney Madden was born on December 18, 1891, in Leeds, England, to Irish parents, Francis and Mary Madden. He spent his early childhood in Wigan and Liverpool, where Francis worked in textile mill sweatshops until his death in 1902. Mary then took her family, including Madden and perhaps two siblings, …

Maddox Seminary

In 1898, the Reverend Alvin Stewart Maddox established the Maddox Seminary for young women in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The school lasted less than a decade before closing, with Maddox relocating to Eureka Springs (Carroll County), where he opened Crescent College in 1908. In the summer of 1898, yellow fever was raging in Mississippi, where Maddox was serving as the president of the Union Female College of Oxford, a position he had held for four years. He was planning for the fall semester at the college, had hired faculty, had had a catalog printed, and was traveling the state promoting the college. Some students had already committed to enroll, but while he was away from Oxford, the town was quarantined, …

Maddox, Alvin S.

The Reverend Alvin Stewart Maddox established two female educational institutions in Arkansas: Maddox Seminary in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Crescent College in Eureka Springs (Carroll County). He was a noted educator and businessman. Alvin Stewart Maddox was born on August 17, 1868, to Thomas Frederick Maddox and Amanda Lee Nance Maddox in Rutherford County, Tennessee. He grew up in Rutherford County with his ten brothers and sisters, one of whom died young. His grandfather was a ruling elder of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and the family grew up with a strong religious background. By 1889, he and brother Finis Ewing Maddox were working for the Cumberland Presbytery and were accepted as candidates to study for the ministry at Cumberland …

Maddox, Finis Ewing

The Reverend Finis Ewing Maddox was vice president of Maddox Seminary in Little Rock (Pulaski County), having helped his brother, the Reverend Alvin S. Maddox, to establish the institution. He also served as the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Texarkana (Miller County) and founded the First Congregational Church of Texarkana. While he was at the First Presbyterian Church, he was charged with heresy. Finis Maddox was born on December 9, 1870, to Thomas Fredrick Maddox and Amanda Lee Nance Maddox in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He was the seventh of ten children and grew up with a strong religious background. His grandfather was an elder of the Presbyterian Church. Maddox decided to study for the ministry in college and …

Maddox, Ode Lee

Ode Lee Maddox was a long-serving and influential member of the Arkansas General Assembly as well as a dedicated career educator. By combining his passion for education with his well-developed political skills, he played a central role in the development of the Arkansas public education system. Ode Lee Maddox was born on October 2, 1912 in Oden (Montgomery County). He was the youngest of four children of Hugh Maddox and Alice Edwards Maddox. He received his early education at Caney Elementary, an experience he believed so central to his future accomplishments that he often said that his most important educational experience had been at the “University of Caney.” He graduated from Oden High School in 1932. On October 6, 1934, …

Maggio, Michael A.

Michael A. Maggio, a former Faulkner County circuit judge, was removed from office and later convicted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas for accepting a bribe to reduce a nursing-home-negligence verdict and sentenced to ten years in federal prison. He was released in 2021. Michael Maggio was born in 1961, the oldest of four children of Henry Anthony Maggio, who was a psychiatrist and medical officer in the U.S. Army, and Bobby Padgett Maggio. Born in southern Louisiana, he spent his early childhood there and in Texas before the family settled in southern Mississippi after his father opened a psychiatry practice in Gulfport, Mississippi. Maggio graduated from St. Stanislaus High School in Bay St. …

Magie, Futha Cone

Futha Cone Magie helped pioneer community journalism in Arkansas during a period when most newspapers were family owned. He also furthered the interest of tourism in the state through his service on the Arkansas Parks and Tourism Commission. Cone Magie was born on October 12, 1924, in England (Lonoke County) to Albert Hugh Magie and Rose Beauchamp Magie. His father was an army barber in World War I, and both his parents operated a grocery store on Main Street in England as well as farmed. He was the third of five sons. Magie’s newspaper career began at age eight as a carrier for the Arkansas Gazette. He also milked cows and delivered bread to earn money. Magie was editor of …

Mahony, Joseph Kirby “Jodie”

Joseph Kirby Mahony II, who was known by the nickname “Jodie,” was a lawyer and politician who spent nearly forty years in public life, all of them in the Arkansas General Assembly. He was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives at El Dorado (Union County) in 1970 and served twenty-eight years there and another eight in the Senate, rarely drawing an opponent in sixteen elections. When the state’s term-limit law barred him from running again in 2006, he returned to help House speakers and education interests. Seven governors, from Dale Bumpers to Mike Beebe, drew on Mahony’s talents, but he refused to be the floor leader for any of them, because it would restrict the range of his work. …

Mailer, Norris Church

aka: Barbara Jean Davis

Norris Church Mailer, born Barbara Jean Davis, became an artist, actress, and author after moving to New York City to be with renowned writer Norman Mailer following their brief chance meeting in Arkansas at an event in Russellville (Pope County). She published two semi-autobiographical novels, Windchill Summer and Cheap Diamonds, as well as a memoir, A Ticket to the Circus, which centers on her three-decade marriage to Mailer. Born on January 31, 1949, in Moses Lake, Washington, Norris Church Mailer began life as Barbara Jean Davis, being named for a little girl who lived next door. Her parents were homemaker Gaynell Phillips Davis and construction worker James Davis. They had briefly relocated from Arkansas to Washington state for her father’s …

Maledon, George

While much of his life is shrouded in legend, according to a number of sources, George Maledon was the most prolific executioner in the United States in the last third of the nineteenth century. Working as the hangman for the famed Judge Isaac Parker for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), he reportedly performed as many as eighty-one executions, although more recent historical accounts put the number at closer to fifty. George Maledon was born in Germany on June 10, 1830. He immigrated with his parents, about whom little is known, to the United States, settling in the Detroit, Michigan, area, where they joined the small German Catholic community that had …

Malham, Michael James (Mike)

Mike Malham was an all-star football player at Arkansas State University (ASU) in the 1970s. After a short career in professional football, he became a high school football coach. By the time of his retirement in 2019, he was the second-winningest coach in Arkansas high school football history. Michael James Malham was born to Michael Joseph Malham and Betty Ruth Atcley Malham on March 2, 1953, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). He has two sisters. Both of his parents were educators, with his father also pursuing a career as a coach. Malham graduated from Little Rock’s McClellan High School in 1971. Coached by his father, he played linebacker, receiver, and occasionally quarterback on his high school football team. Malham was …

Malpass, Charles (Lynching of)

On September 27, 1911, a white man named Charles Malpass Sr. was lynched in Desha County following a shootout in which his sons murdered two police officers. According to newspaper accounts, Charles Malpass was a descendent of early French settlers at Arkansas Post. In 1850, the Malpass family was living in nearby Red Fork Township. Farmer Rubin Malpass was living with his wife, Rebecca, and five children, including four-year-old Charles. The family was still in the area in 1860, but by this time there were eight children, among them sixteen-year-old Charles. According to the Arkansas Gazette, Charles began living with a “mulatto” woman named Bettie West in 1868. West had resources of her own, having inherited several thousand dollars when …

Mangrum, Jim Dandy

James Leslie “Jim Dandy” Mangrum is the flamboyant frontman for the southern rock group Black Oak Arkansas, which reached its height of fame in the 1970s, charting ten albums and a hit single. According to author Ron Hall, “Jim Mangrum claims to be the first long-haired rock ’n’ roller in Arkansas, and he may well have been.” His often raunchy onstage antics and froggy, raspy voice have been cited as an influence on rock stars such as David Lee Roth and Axl Rose. After health problems and many incarnations of the band, Mangrum continues to record and perform with a group called Jim Dandy’s Black Oak Arkansas. James Leslie Mangrum was born on March 30, 1948, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, …

Mankins, Peter “Old Pete”

Peter “Old Pete” Mankins Jr. was an early settler and county official in Washington County, as well as a Confederate guerrilla leader whose command operated in northwestern Arkansas during the Civil War. Peter Mankins Jr. was born in Floyd County, Kentucky, on August 1, 1813, the third of five children of Peter Mankins and Rachel Bracken Mankins. In 1833, he migrated to Sulphur City (Washington County), where his father owned property. A short, stocky man, Mankins (or “Uncle Pete” as his relatives and friends called him) developed a local reputation for considerable physical strength, which he displayed during threshing season by single-handedly lifting two-hundred-pound sacks of wheat. Mankins married Amanda Narcissus Mills in 1836, and they had ten children (one …

Mann, George Richard

George Richard Mann, an architect educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was hired to design the Arkansas Capitol in 1899. He moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) and developed a highly respected practice, taking on projects that included many of the largest and most significant buildings constructed in Arkansas in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. When he died in 1939, Mann was considered by some the “dean of Arkansas architects.” George Mann was born in Syracuse, Indiana, on July 2, 1856. He was the son of Richard F. and Elizabeth Defreese Mann. His father was in the milling business but was killed as a soldier in the Civil War. When not in school, Mann worked …

Mann, Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Mann Sr. served as the fifty-third mayor of Little Rock (Pulaski County) during a tumultuous two-year term that included the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. Woodrow Mann was born in Little Rock on November 13, 1916, to Fred Mann and Ruby Pritchard Mann. In 1934, he graduated from Little Rock High School. Growing up, he delivered ice for his father’s business and played baseball. He attended the University of Illinois on a music scholarship. While there, he played trombone in the First Regimental Band and was a member of business organizations. Also while in college, he met his future wife, Beverly Burnett, whom he married in 1938. They had two sons. Following graduation in 1938, …

Manning, Henry Grady

Henry Grady Manning was a leader in Arkansas’s hotel industry. The company he founded, Southwest Hotels Inc., continued his work after his death. Several incarnations of Manning’s legacy hotels still exist in the twenty-first century. Manning’s properties included the Albert Pike Hotel, Grady Manning Hotel, and Lafayette Hotel, all in Little Rock (Pulaski County), as well as the Arlington Hotel, Majestic Hotel, and Hot Springs Country Club, all in Hot Springs (Garland County). Manning made many charitable and civic contributions to Arkansas and was a member of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce and the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce. Grady Manning was born on March 14, 1892, in rural Scott County. His parents were Dr. Henry Manning and Virginia …

Mansfield, William Walker

William Walker Mansfield was a lawyer, legislator, circuit judge, and associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. The Sebastian County town of Mansfield is believed to be named in his honor. William Walker Mansfield was born on January 16, 1830, in Scottsville, Kentucky, the son of Colonel George Washington Mansfield and Frances Cockrill Mansfield. Mansfield received a “common-school” education before studying law under Judge William V. Loving in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1852. A short time later, Mansfield corresponded with fellow Kentucky native and noted Arkansas politician and attorney David Walker in Fayetteville (Washington County) about possible opportunities in the legal field within the state. Despite Walker’s encouragement to consider a practice in …

Manuel, Dean

Dean Manuel played piano for several noteworthy bands of the mid-twentieth century, on the West Coast and in Nashville, Tennessee. Most notably, he played with Jim Reeves and the Blue Boys. Manuel died in a plane crash with Jim Reeves after leaving Independence County, where he had been helping Reeves with a land purchase. Dockie Dean Manuel was born in Cleveland (Conway County), where his family was working, on January 1, 1934. His parents were Dockie Dickson “Doffie” Manuel, who was a noted fiddle player, and Josephine Clementine (Josie) Burks; he was the youngest of four children and grew up in Jamestown (Independence County). Dean Manuel learned piano on his own at an early age and devoted much of his …

Mapes, Doris Genevieve Williamson

Doris Genevieve Williamson Mapes became one of Arkansas’s leading mid-twentieth-century artists. Adept in a variety of paint media, she was best known as a watercolorist who used bold, bright colors with strong patterns and abstract designs. Mapes’s style was described as imaginative realism. Memphis’s Commercial Appeal art critic Guy Northrop wrote that Mapes had a loose and airy flair. “There is a freshness to her world,” Northrop said, “and an expression of joy.” Doris Williamson was born on June 25, 1920, in Russellville (Pope County), the only child of Floyd Henry Williamson, who was a farmer, and Ruby Harvill Williamson. Her interest in art began at an early age with her father’s regular purchase of the Denver Post at the local …

Maples, Cheryl Kathleen Smith

Cheryl Maples was a prominent attorney in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and throughout the state. An outspoken champion of equal rights for all, she was particularly well known for her work on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. Cheryl Kathleen Smith was born on March 2, 1950, in Santa Monica, California, to Harvey Smith and Patricia Ware Smith. She lived in Pacific Palisades until 1962, when her family moved to Arkansas, eventually settling in Fayetteville (Washington County). Smith graduated from Fayetteville High School in 1968 and married Richard Maples, a student at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville, that same day. The couple had two sons and three daughters. In 1980, at the age thirty, Cheryl Maples began college, studying …

Marinoni, Rosa Zagnoni

Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni was poet laureate of Arkansas from 1953 to 1970. A prolific poet herself, she worked to promote a greater appreciation of poetry, to establish an annual Poetry Day in Arkansas, and to encourage poets in her own time and place. Rosa Zagnoni was born in Bologna, Italy, on January 5, 1888, and came to the United States with her parents in 1898. They lived in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Antero Zagnoni, was a journalist and drama critic. Her mother, Maria Marzocchi, was a poet and artist, and her uncle, Federico Marzocchi, was also a poet. She married Antonio Marinoni in Brooklyn on July 30, 1908, and moved to Fayetteville (Washington County), where her husband was on …

Markle, John Lawrence

John Lawrence Markle was the perpetrator of a headline-grabbing crime in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in November 1987. The son of Academy Award–winning actress Mercedes McCambridge, Markle murdered his wife and two daughters before taking his own life on November 16, 1987. John Markle was born on December 25, 1941, in Hollywood, California, to Mercedes McCambridge and William Fifield. McCambridge was a radio actress who eventually moved into films, and Fifield was a writer. They divorced in 1946, and when McCambridge remarried in 1950, her second husband, film and television director Fletcher Markle, adopted the boy. John Markle was eight when his mother, who would become known to a later generation through her role as the voice of the demon …

Markwell, Lulu Alice Boyers

Lulu Markwell was the first Imperial Commander for the national Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) organization and president of the Arkansas chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Lulu Alice Boyers was born in Corydon, Indiana, on October 1, 1865. She was the only daughter of Benjamin Boyers, who was a carpenter, and his wife, Phoebe Mathes Boyers, who was a housekeeper. Boyers attended Corydon public schools before enrolling in Bryant & Stratton Business College in Louisville, Kentucky (now Sullivan University). The nationwide chain of colleges was prominent during the era, with alumni such as Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. After she graduated, Boyers’s professional career began in Little Rock (Pulaski County), including four years in …

Marmaduke, John Sappington

Missouri native John Sappington Marmaduke was a Confederate general who saw action in several Arkansas Civil War campaigns. While he was a capable cavalry leader, he is probably best known for killing fellow general Lucius M. Walker in an 1863 duel concerning disputes about Walker’s actions at the Battle of Helena and the Action at Bayou Meto in 1863. A Greene County town is named in his honor. John S. Marmaduke was born on March 14, 1833, approximately five miles west of Arrow Rock, Missouri. He was the fourth of ten children born to Lavinia Sappington Marmaduke and Miles Meridith Marmaduke. His father was a successful businessman and politician who held several county offices, was elected lieutenant governor of Missouri …

Marshall, Fred Calvin

Fred Calvin Marshall was a jazz musician, inventor, sculptor, and educator best known as the bassist in the Vince Guaraldi Trio, which recorded the soundtrack for the Charlie Brown Christmas television special. He began his musical career in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the 1950s, later moving to Kansas City, Missouri, and California, where he became active in the thriving San Francisco musical scene in the 1960s. Fred Marshall was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 4, 1938, to Calvin Abel Marshall and Helen Howard Marshall, although he was raised in Little Rock. His mother was an artist and an art teacher at Arkansas Polytechnic College (now Arkansas Tech University) in Russellville (Pope County). His mother’s artistic creativity was an inspiration for …

Martin, Mark Anthony

Mark Martin is the only driver from Arkansas competing in the top circuit of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). He ranks tenth on the all-time win list and sixth on the all-time pole position list. In 2017, he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Mark Anthony Martin was born on January 9, 1959, in Batesville (Independence County) to Julian Martin and Jackie Estes Martin. Martin’s father was a truck driver who started a successful Batesville-based trucking company, Julian Martin, Inc., in 1960. As a hobby, Julian also sponsored a race team that competed on the numerous small local race tracks. Martin’s father instilled a passion for driving in him when he was very young. Before …

Martin, Paula Marie

Paula Martin is a writer and educator best known for her work as the host and producer of the radio show Tales from the South. Paula Marie Martin was born on October 9, 1967, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Her family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) when she was twelve, and she has lived there periodically throughout her life. She graduated from Little Rock’s Parkview High School. In the late 1980s, Martin and schoolmate Jason Morell, who had begun dating after graduation, sold all their belongings and moved to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where they began working in a restaurant. The couple married and had three children. As they pursued their dream of opening a restaurant, they traveled and …

Martineau, John Ellis

John Ellis Martineau, governor of Arkansas from 1927 to 1928, reflected the emergence of a new style of political leadership in the state. Nominally a Democrat, his administration continued the progressive positions of his predecessors, beginning with George W. Donaghey’s election in 1909. He helped to launch the Arkansas highway system with an innovative change in the source of funding, and he successfully led the relief effort following the disastrous Flood of 1927. His career also advanced a new and more conciliatory position on race relations with his role in the Elaine Massacre and his stance on the 1927 lynching of John Carter in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Overall, his actions as a politician and judge earned him the reputation …

Mason, Simpson

Simpson Mason, who was a Union scout and militia commander during the Civil War, served as an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau in northern Arkansas immediately after the conflict. He was killed on September 19, 1868, by Ku Klux Klan members in Fulton County. Little is known of Mason’s life before the Civil War. He appears in the 1860 federal census, living with his sister and her family in Union Township, Fulton County. Listed in the census as a bootmaker, Simpson was about thirty-nine at the time and owned about $720 of real estate and more than $530 of personal items. Born in South Carolina and raised in Georgia, he was unmarried and did not have any children. It is …

Massey, Mary Elizabeth

Mary Elizabeth Massey was a history professor noted for her early studies of women in the Civil War, years before women’s history courses became common in university history departments. Her books have continued to be important decades after their publication. Mary Elizabeth Massey (she used her full name throughout her life) was born on December 25, 1915, in Morrilton (Conway County) to Mary McClung Massey and Charles Leonidas Massey. After graduation from Morrilton High School, she attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). For multiple years, Massey was president of her sorority (in an era when Hendrix had fraternities and sororities), and she served on the Interfraternity Council, the dormitory council, and the Student Senate, in addition to serving one-year …

Massey, Mary Elizabeth Smith

Mary Elizabeth Smith Massey—businesswoman, public official, and civic and political leader—was a woman with an average, middle-class, mountain background, meaning her family neither depended upon subsistence farming, sharecropping, or seasonal labor in the Arkansas River bottoms, nor did they have a big store in the county seat or hundreds of acres let to sharecroppers. She became an early Arkansas female success story in the period from 1920 to 1930, when Arkansas women were just beginning to assume prominence in state and national life. In the 1950s, she reaped the results of her early endeavors by serving as Worthy Grand Matron of the Arkansas Order of the Eastern Star and by being admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court. …

Matthews, Jess Walton

Jess Matthews had a forty-four-year career in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with the Little Rock School District as teacher, coach, and administrator. For nearly two decades, he was principal of Little Rock High School, which was renamed Little Rock Central High School in 1953. He guided that school through the troubled years of desegregation, including the mob protest and military intervention in 1957 and the 1958–59 school closure. Jess Walton Matthews was born on June 7, 1900, in Blue Mound, Kansas, to Jesse W. Matthews and Lutie Woods Matthews. He graduated from high school in La Harpe, Kansas, and was in the U.S. Army during World War I. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State Teachers College of Pittsburg …

Matthews, Justin, Sr.

Justin Matthews Sr. was a prominent Arkansas businessman, real estate developer, and community leader best known for his role in the development of the North Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Sherwood (Pulaski County) areas. Justin Matthews was born on a farm near Monticello (Drew County) to Samuel James Matthews and Anna Wilson Matthews on December 23, 1875. The Matthewses were a very wealthy family in Drew County, as Samuel Matthews owned a law firm, a large nursery, and a fruit business. Samuel Matthews also served as Drew County judge and encouraged his son to study law, but Justin Matthews decided to pursue a career as a pharmacist. Matthews married Mary Agnes Somers in 1901; they had three children. Around that …

Matthews, Wilson D.

Wilson Matthews was a legendary Arkansas high school and university football coach and administrator. In his eleven years as head coach at Little Rock High School (later renamed Little Rock Central High School) in Little Rock (Pulaski County), his teams won ten state championships. He later joined the staff of coach Frank Broyles at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). As assistant coach there, he participated in the successful Razorback football program and later moved to administrative duties in the athletic department. He served at UA for over forty years, retiring as associate athletic director. Wilson David Matthews was born on July 18, 1921, in Atkins (Pope County) to Andy O. Matthews and Ester Sproles Matthews. In …

Maury, Dabney Herndon

Dabney Herndon Maury served in Arkansas as Confederate general Earl Van Dorn’s chief of staff at the Battle of Pea Ridge. Maury later led Arkansas troops in northern Mississippi during the Civil War. Dabney Herndon Maury was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on May 21, 1822, to Captain John Minor Maury and Elizabeth Maury. He had one brother. Maury’s father was a career officer in the U.S. Navy who died on active duty. Maury’s uncle, Matthew Fontaine Maury, became his guardian after his father’s death. Maury attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1842 to 1846, graduating thirty-seventh out of fifty-nine cadets in what some called one of the best classes ever to attend the academy. Maury served in …

Maxwell, Paul E.

Paul E. Maxwell was a modern artist and sculptor who developed a technique for using stencils to create thickly textured and layered surfaces, as well as objects he patented as “stencil casting” but that later became known as “Maxwell Pochoir.” He was also known for creating the “Max Wall” in the West Atrium of the Dallas Apparel Mart; though demolished in 2006, it can be seen as a backdrop in the science-fiction movie Logan’s Run. His work is highly abstract and often consists of some kind of grid—a form that is non-hierarchical and illustrates a major theme of his work. Paul Maxwell was born in Frost Prairie (Ashley County) on September 17, 1925, to the farm family of Willie F. …

May, Ralphie

Ralphie D. May was a stand-up comedian famous for his topical humor combined with hip-hop slang and Southern comedy, as well as his numerous appearances on reality and talk shows. May appeared in such films as For da Love of Money and was the only white standup comedian featured on The Big Black Comedy Show, Vol. 4 DVD in 2005. Ralphie May was born on February 1, 1972, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was raised in Clarksville (Johnson County). He grew up listening to veteran comedians Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Sam Kinison. May had wanted to be a comedian since age nine when he first saw Johnny Carson hosting The Tonight Show and thought that Carson was truly bombing his …

Mayer, Maximilian F. (Max)

Maximilian F. Mayer was a Texas-born architect and painter who practiced in Arkansas for much of his career and designed significant houses in several Little Rock (Pulaski County) neighborhoods. Max Mayer was born on January 5, 1887, in San Antonio, Texas, the eldest of seven children of Maximilian Barnhart Mayer and Helena Marie Wullf Mayer. He attended high school at St. Mary’s College and then graduated from Texas A&M in 1906 with a degree in architectural engineering. Mayer worked for an architectural firm in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving to Paris to study for two years at the École des Beaux-Arts and, after winning the Prix de Rome scholarship, in Italy. Mayer returned to the United States in 1910 and worked …

Mayer, Mercer

Mercer Mayer is the author and illustrator of more than 300 children’s books, as well as a contributor to a variety of other media, including video, audio, and workbooks. Mercer Mayer was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on December 30, 1943. He attended elementary school in Camden (Ouachita County). A military family, the Mayers moved frequently until settling in Honolulu, Hawaii, when he was a teenager. The young Mayer enjoyed reading and drawing. After high school, he attended the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Art Students League in New York City. In 1966, he began a career as a book illustrator in New York City. In 1967, Mayer’s first book, A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog, was …

Mayfield, Mary Victor (M. V.)

Mary Victor (M. V.) Mayfield came to Mena (Polk County) in 1918 and practiced medicine with the identity of a man for seven or eight years. A small, kind, and peaceful citizen, Mayfield soon became “the cancer doctor.” Mayfield put Mena in the national news for the events of January 23, 1926, when it was revealed by the news media that Mayfield had the biological characteristics of a female. Little is known about M. V. Mayfield’s early life. Mayfield later claimed that the male identity had begun in England—Mayfield’s parents needed a son, not a daughter, to “protect property rights,” so they dressed Mayfield as a boy. Mayfield carried this on into adulthood, also doing things society expected of men, …

McAllister, James Thomas (Tom)

James Thomas (Tom) McAllister Sr., a longtime resident of Gurdon (Clark County), was an early twentieth-century southern Arkansas lumberman. In addition to selling lumber, he was a Knight Templar, a 33rd Degree Mason, a Shriner, a member of the Gurdon Chamber of Commerce, president of two Rotary Clubs, and the 1951 winner of the District Scouter Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Tom McAllister was born on May 28, 1899, near Diehlstadt, Missouri, to Alexander Jackson McAllister and Addie Caroline Reynolds McAllister. His mother died shortly after his birth, so he was raised by his grandparents, who were tenant farmers in southeastern Missouri. McAllister attended school through the tenth grade. His first job was working in Arkansas for the …

McAlmont, John Josephus

John Josephus McAlmont was one of the eight founders of the Arkansas Industrial University Medical Department, now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). John McAlmont was born on December 22, 1821, in Hornellsville, New York, the son of Daniel and Samantha Donham McAlmont and the youngest of seven siblings. McAlmont left home at age seventeen, earning money by teaching school. At twenty-one, he entered Geneva Medical College in New York for its one-semester course in medicine; there, he completed a course of lectures in medicine in April 1843. (A course of lectures was all that was required to practice medicine at the time.) McAlmont established his practice in April 1844 in Kendall Creek, Pennsylvania. The community was a …

McBeth, William Francis

William Francis McBeth was a world-renowned composer and conductor. He was the Trustees’ Distinguished University Professor and resident composer at Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) in Arkadelphia (Clark County), where he served as chairman of the Department of Music Theory and Composition. The governor appointed him composer laureate of Arkansas in 1975. McBeth’s compositions include works for all media, but was influential in the development of the literature for wind symphony. Francis McBeth was born on March 9, 1933, in Ropesville, Texas, to Joseph Phinis McBeth, a Baptist minister, and Lillie May Carpenter McBeth. He spent his youth in western Texas, where he began his musical training at an early age, studying piano with his mother and taking up the trumpet in …

McBrien, Dean Depew (D. D.)

Dean Depew (D. D.) McBrien was a college professor and academic administrator at Henderson State Teachers College (HSTC)—now Henderson State University (HSU)—in Arkadelphia (Clark County) for eighteen years. D. D. McBrien was born on November 14, 1892, in Tecumseh, Nebraska, to Jasper Leonidas McBrien and Eva Forbes McBrien. The oldest of five children, McBrien graduated from high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1909 and entered the University of Nebraska. McBrien first worked at the high school level, serving as principal of the high school in Phillips, Nebraska, in the 1912–13 school year. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1914 and obtained a position at Arkansas State Teachers College (ASTC)—now the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) in Conway (Faulkner …

McBroom, Alexander (Execution of)

Alexander D. McBroom was a young Union infantryman who was executed by a firing squad at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on April 21, 1865, for desertion and larceny. Alexander D. McBroom, thirty-four, a native of Cannon County, Tennessee, enlisted in Company B, First Arkansas Infantry Regiment (US) at Fayetteville (Washington County) on February 4, 1863. He was reported to be five feet eight inches tall and had dark hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. A farmer, he had a wife and two children. He was listed as absent without leave on February 25, 1863, and deemed a deserter that summer. Confederate service records indicate that he joined Company B of Crawford’s Cavalry Battalion on March 2, 1863. He returned …