Days in AR History - Starting with J

Robert Crittenden, the first secretary and acting governor of the Arkansas Territory, was born in Woodford County, Kentucky. Known as the “Cardinal Wolsey of Arkansas” for the control he exerted over Arkansas politics behind the scenes, Crittenden was a force to be reckoned with in the early years of the territory.

The Freed Negro Act of 1859 went into effect. It required all free black Arkansans to leave or be sold into slavery. Slave owners and those who did their bidding in the state legislature were the brokers behind this law, which was designed to eliminate from the state a population that defied the traditional class boundaries. Especially hurt by this law was a thriving free black population in Marion County.

Richard Butler Sr. was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). A lawyer, banker, real estate investor, philanthropist, and horticulturalist, Butler is best remembered for his wide variety of business developments and community activities. His most famous work was his role in defending the Little Rock School Board in a suit filed by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a case that eventually went to the Supreme Court as Cooper v. Aaron. The Central Arkansas Library System’s Butler Center for Arkansas Studies today bears his name in recognition of his endowment of the center for the purpose of promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of Arkansas history, literature, art, and culture.

The first ammunition was tested at the Southwestern Proving Ground near Hope (Hempstead County). An army ordnance plant had been built on 50,000 acres of farmland just north of Hope. Four dozen army officers directed the activities and were assisted by an Army Air Corps detachment of about 150 men. Civilian employees—more than 750 daily—were transported by bus from Hope and surrounding areas.

The new Delta city of Helena-West Helena replaced its two predecessors (Helena and West Helena), and a new era began for the communities. By the 1970s, the chronic economic distress had forced a few leaders to suggest that the two cities might better address their common problems by governmental consolidation. Opponents to the merger, who feared losing influence, quickly killed the proposal. However, the proponents of the merger gained ground as the two communities continued to decline. Finally, after several false starts and lawsuits, the citizens of Helena and West Helena in 2005 voted to consolidate.

The name Ola was first used for a township in Yell County that was formerly known as Petit Jean. The name Ola was officially adopted in 1880. One post–Civil War entrepreneur in Ola was James Matthias (J. M.) Harkey, who came from Texas in 1851. He served as a Confederate army captain, and, on returning to his farm in 1865, he erected a sawmill, a flour and grist mill, and a cotton gin. He opened a mercantile store in 1870. He was such a prominent citizen that in 1880 his proposal to rename the town after his first child, Ola, was readily accepted.

Jacob Trieber of Helena (Phillips County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County), the first Jew to serve as a federal judge in the United States, married Ida Schradski of Peoria, Illinois. Trieber issued nationally important rulings on controversies that included antitrust cases, railroad litigation, prohibition cases, and mail fraud; some of his rulings, such as those regarding civil rights and wildlife conservation, have implications today. His broad interpretation of the constitutional guarantees of the Thirteenth Amendment, originally overturned by the post-Reconstruction U.S. Supreme Court, was validated sixty-five years later in a landmark 1968 equal opportunity case.

Junius Marion Futrell became Arkansas’s thirtieth governor. His response to being in charge of a state on the verge of financial ruin was to reduce the size of state government and put the state government on a “pay-as-you-go basis” until state debts was paid. This latter policy later became codified in the nineteenth and twentieth amendments to the Arkansas Constitution.

Rock and roll singer and bandleader Ronnie Hawkins was born in Huntsville (Madison County). Best known for starting the group the Hawks, which later became the Band, Hawkins had only two hit records in America but fared much better in Canada, where he earned the 1982 Juno Award, equivalent to an American Grammy, as Best Male Country Vocalist. In 1996, he was presented with the Walt Grealis Special Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the most esteemed honors in the Canadian music industry. He was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in 2008. He died in 2022.

Fire gutted the Franklin County Courthouse in Ozark. The roof and second story were destroyed; however, the shell of the first floor remained. The Franklin County Courthouse for the Northern District, located at 211 West Commercial in Ozark (Franklin County), was constructed as a two-story structure fashioned in Classical Moderne style with Italian Renaissance design influences. This building is the fourth courthouse in this county seat.

The Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, located on 8.5 acres on Center Street in the historic Quapaw District of downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County), opened. No formal ceremony marked the opening of the mansion. Instead, the public was invited to tour the new structure. During the week-long public open house, more than 180,000 visitors toured the new home. Governor Sidney S. McMath and his wife, Ann, began moving into the mansion on February 3, 1950. The mansion had been established by an act of the state legislature in 1947. Previously, Arkansas did not have an official residence for the governor of the state.

Winthrop Rockefeller was inaugurated as Arkansas’s thirty-seventh governor. Arkansas’s first Republican governor since 1872, Rockefeller is primarily remembered for his achievements in civil rights, such as the integration of draft boards; too, he was the only Southern governor to eulogize Martin Luther King Jr., an action that likely staved off riots in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Rockefeller was a “transitional leader” in the sense that he helped discredit the “Old Guard” domination of the Orval Faubus years and, in so doing, made Arkansans more receptive to political and social change.

After two days of fighting, Union forces destroyed the Confederate fort at Arkansas Post (Arkansas County). The defeat at Arkansas Post cost Confederate Arkansas fully one-fourth of its armed forces in the largest surrender of Rebel troops west of the Mississippi River prior to the final capitulation of the Confederates in 1865. While the victory there did not have a major impact on the Union’s drive to take Vicksburg, it did ease the movement of Union shipping on the Mississippi and raise the morale of the Yankee troops after their rough handling at Chickasaw Bluffs.

Colonel William Phillips established his unit’s headquarters at Camp Walker in Maysville (Benton County). Phillips’s brigade consisted of the First, Second, and Third Indian Home Guard, a battalion of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry, and a four-gun battery. The unit was tasked with providing protection to nearby loyalists in both Arkansas and Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

The case of Moore v. Dempsey was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. This case constituted an appeal to convictions for murder against six of twelve black men accused of having planned an insurrection in Phillips County, part of a series of events now known as the Elaine Massacre.

Betty (Flanagan) Bumpers was born in Grand Prairie (Franklin County). The family moved to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) during World War II, and later to Iowa before returning to Franklin County. Betty Bumpers, wife of former Arkansas governor and U.S. senator Dale Bumpers, is known for her far-reaching efforts to promote childhood immunizations and world peace. In 1982, Bumpers and other congressional wives founded Peace Links on the idea that ordinary American women could develop lasting relationships with women in the Soviet Union based upon a shared concern for the well-being of children and families. Peace Links gave a voice to those who were not inclined to protest in the streets yet still wanted to express their desire for peace.

House Concurrent Resolution No. 2 of 1939 was introduced to designate the pine tree as Arkansas’s official state tree. The resolution, introduced by State Representative Boyd Tackett of Pike County, cited the state’s timber as one of its greatest sources of wealth and, notably, “one of the few renewable resources of the state.” The measure met no opposition and won final approval on January 20. The resolution did not specify a particular native pine species, but reference is often made to either the southern shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) or the loblolly pine (Pinus taeda).

Sidney Sanders McMath was inaugurated Arkansas’s thirty-fourth governor. McMath promoted a relatively progressive program during his four years as governor, emphasizing economic development, health care, construction and improvement of highways, and improvement of the state’s educational system, along with tackling labor and race issues.

Frank Barbour Coffin was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Coffin, an African-American pharmacist, moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) in his early twenties and established one of Little Rock’s earliest drug stores that served the black community. He was also one of the country’s unnoted black poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, barely remembered today for his two volumes of poetry and other works printed in various publications.

After heavy rains caused large pieces of ceiling plaster to fall in the Senate chamber in the State House (today the Old State House Museum), Senate Concurrent Resolution 3 was introduced, calling for the construction of a new seat of government. However, the building of a new state capitol building took over fifteen years and was marred by scandal and bitter infighting among leaders in the state government.

Thomas Montague Gunter died. Gunter was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. From 1874 to 1883, he represented first the Third District of Arkansas and then later, due to redistricting, the Fourth District. His service began in the Forty-Third Congress and extended through the Forty-Seventh Congress.

Bass Reeves, who was possibly the first African-American deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River, died. One of 200 deputy U.S. marshals hired by Judge Isaac C. Parker in 1875 to track down criminals in western Arkansas and Indian Territory, he arrested more than 3,000 men and women during his career and was honored posthumously as a “Great Westerner” by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Two workers in Harrison (Boone County) striking over a pay cut in February 1921 by Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad were arrested for burning a bridge. On the same day, the editor of the Marshall Mountain Wave published an editorial calling for the lynching of strikers. Three days later, approximately 1,000 armed men, many of them prominent citizens, gathered at Harrison to search for explosives and to interrogate strikers. On January 16, a group of masked men kidnapped a man who had been jailed after a confrontation with vigilantes at his home and hanged him from a railroad bridge just outside the city.

Ceremonies were held for the grand opening of a new 534-bed facility that is now called Baptist Medical Center, including a dedication speech by then U.S. vice president Gerald Ford. In July 1970, the Arkansas Baptist Medical Center System had acquired a 213-acre tract of land now in western Little Rock (Pulaski County) for expansion, and groundbreaking ceremonies were held there in June 1971. The Baptist Medical Center is part of what is now known as Baptist Health, Arkansas’s largest healthcare system, which has hospital campuses in Little Rock, North Little Rock (Pulaski County), Arkadelphia (Clark County), and Heber Springs (Cleburne County).

At the 1868 constitutional convention, William Henry Grey rose in response to a Conservative measure that would have reinstated the Constitution of 1864, thus depriving African Americans of the right to vote. He proclaimed that Black Arkansans had earned citizenship by “right-of-purchase on the numerous battle-fields of our country.” The convention voted 53-10 against the Conservative measure. Grey also spoke against measures forbidding interracial marriage and in favor of issues beneficial to the freedmen.

Thomas James Churchill was inaugurated Arkansas’s thirteenth governor. Though his tenure as governor was peppered with controversy, including the revelation of discrepancies in the treasurer’s account during his three terms as state treasurer, Churchill did pass the resolution standardizing the way “Arkansas” was to be pronounced and led advances in health and education while in office, including the establishment of the Medical Department of Arkansas Industrial University (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences) in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

A charter was issued to operate the Carlisle Rice Mill in Carlisle (Lonoke County), which was leased to the Arkansas State Rice Milling Company in 1916 and purchased by that company in 1917. In 1965, the name became Riviana Foods. The facility processes about two million hundredweight of rice annually and also makes the crisped rice for the Nestlé Crunch candy bar, among other confections.

Carrie Nation, the temperance advocate famous for being so vehemently against alcohol that she would use a hatchet to smash any place that sold it, made her last temperance speech, at Eureka Springs (Carroll County). Nation, who had spent most of her life in Kentucky, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, moved to Eureka Springs because it reminded her of Scotland, which she had recently visited. After stopping her speech and gasping, “I have done what I could,” she fell into a coma and spent her last days in a hospital in Kansas.

Confederate colonel Robert Glenn Shaver died at Foreman (Little River County). Shaver organized and was colonel to the Seventh Arkansas Regiment, which became known as “Shaver’s Regiment” during the Civil War. After the war, his activities with the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan (KKK) led to charges of murder, arson, treason, and robbery being issued against him and leading him to flee the country for a few years.

Mysterious fires ravaged buildings and equipment at the Prairie Creek and Ozark diamond-mining sites, permanently terminating the field operations of prospectors Austin and Howard Millar of the Kimberlite Company. Testing had produced averages of about eleven carats per 100 loads from the mines—figures high enough to suggest commercial potential and appeal to investors. Still, the Kimberlite Company soon lost investor support and sank into debt. After the speculative heyday had faded by 1909, diamond-mining companies continued probing their properties for about two years; but in the end, the remarkable burst of activity had produced very little except crushed expectations and growing skepticism.

Colonel William H. Brooks led a Confederate force of 1,500 men to the Arkansas River to assess the strength of Union garrisons along the river. The same day, a detachment of 276 Union men occupied the earthworks at Dardanelle. The Confederate forces led the Action at Dardanelle (and three days later the Action at Ivey’s Ford) to test the strength of Union outposts scattered along the river in final attempts to challenge Union dominance of the river valley. Though both sides continued to make periodic scouts and raids into enemy territory, no other serious combat operations occurred in Arkansas during the remainder of the Civil War.

Samuel Dellinger was born in Iron Station (later Lincolntown), North Carolina. Dellinger was the curator of the University of Arkansas Museum in Fayetteville (Washington County) and chair of the Department of Zoology for over thirty years. As curator, he built the museum’s archaeology collection into one of the best in the nation. He was very protective of Arkansas’s rich archaeological heritage and often denounced what he viewed as the pillaging of Arkansas by out-of-state museums.

Joseph William Bocage died. Bocage was born on the island of St. Lucia in the French West Indies. His father, William Coit Bocage, owned a large sugar and coffee plantation, a mercantile, and a shipping business. He died at the age of twenty-one, when Bocage was an infant. Bocage moved to the United States with his widowed mother when he was three years old. Bocage set out to make his fortune at age sixteen, settling in Arkansas–primarily Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). He served as attorney for the Second Judicial District from 1844 to 1849 and as judge of the county court. He was a successful planter, lumberman, inventor, manufacturer, and building contractor. He is buried in Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff.

The USS Arkansas (BB-33) was launched. The battleship was the third ship of the U.S. Navy to bear the state’s name—the prior vessels being a wooden-hulled steamer during the American Civil War and an 1890s single-turret monitor that was renamed Ozark in 1909 and used as an instruction ship. The battleship Arkansas participated in both world wars and received four battle stars for service in World War II.

Joseph Taylor Robinson resigned his position in the U.S. Congress to be inaugurated the twenty-third governor of Arkansas two days later. On January 28, he was elected to the U.S. Senate by the state legislature (the last in the nation to be so elected), thus granting him the distinction of being a congressman, governor, and senator-elect, all within a two-week period. He became Senate majority leader during the Great Depression, after his nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for vice president—the first Southern officeholder on a major ticket after the Civil War.

Governor Thomas McRae signed indefinite furloughs for the Moore defendants, six of the twelve African-American men convicted of murder and sentenced to die for their supposed role in what is known today as the Elaine Massacre. Though not pardons, these furloughs did free the men, who had been imprisoned since 1919. The Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States.

Fred High was born in High (Carroll County). High, who lived his entire life in Carroll County, was one of Ozark folk culture’s most notable characters. His contributions to Ozark heritage are evident in the many recordings of his folk song performances. The John Quincy Wolf Folksong Collection at Lyon College consists of a dozen recordings of High, and Missouri State University’s Max Hunter Collection contains thirty-one additional High recordings. A 1953 Arkansas Gazette feature captured his near legendary status in the Ozarks: “Everybody in north Arkansas knows Fred High for he seldom misses a fair, festival, picnic, public sale, apple peeling, corn husking, or other public gathering.”

The widower William P. Dortch married Nettie Steele, a daughter of Thomas William Steele, a North Carolinian who had become the largest land holder in Pulaski County. As a wedding present, Steele presented the couple with an 1,800-acre plantation adjoining the Dortch property in Lonoke County. Shortly after their marriage, the couple moved to their newly acquired property. Their success in subsequent years made possible the construction of Marlsgate (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979), and their sons and grandsons operated the farm throughout the twentieth century.

The grand opening of Jonesboro’s 400-seat Opera House was held, marked by a traveling troupe’s Swedish dialect comedy, Ole Olsen. In November 1895, Will Malone, manager of the Jonesboro Opera House, closed it and opened the 800-seat Malone Theater in a remodeled building in October 1896. Audiences were treated to productions of Hamlet, King Lear, and Spartacus, as well as pieces like Old Farmer Hopkins. Malone’s motto was “First rate entertainment or none.” Unfortunately, that policy did not ensure financial success, and, though the building stood into the 1960s, it was used in the twentieth century only for local events like graduations plus a few touring shows.

Vince Foster was born in Hope (Craighead County). Foster was a prominent Little Rock (Pulaski County) lawyer and close friend and associate of Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although he had a distinguished legal career in Arkansas, he became a historically important figure for the last six months of his life, when he was deputy counsel for the White House in the administration of President Clinton. Despondent over the political turmoil in which he became involved, Foster committed suicide in a suburban Virginia park, triggering a series of investigations that were part of the Whitewater scandal.

Hazel Walker became the only woman among the first five inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Recognized as the greatest amateur women’s basketball player of the 1930s and 1940s, the eleven-time Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) All-American was the only woman ever to own, manage, and star in her own professional basketball team. In 2000, CNN/Sports Illustrated named her sixteenth, the highest-ranking woman, on its list of Arkansas’s Top Fifty Athletic Figures of the Twentieth Century. On June 9, 2001, she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The Aesthetic Club, one of the oldest women’s clubs west of the Mississippi River, began when a group of young women wishing to start a reading club organized in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Aesthetic Club founders immediately expanded their objectives “to present programs of a literary, artistic, musical, and timely trend” in order to “assist in educational uplift, and to bring its members together for social enjoyment.” The name of the club was borrowed from the Aesthetic Movement, which was “emulous of cultivating ‘the beautiful’ in all things.” Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s comments on art and beauty (“Aesthetics…are the science of the beautiful”), the club adopted Wilde’s favorite flower, the Easter lily, as its club flower.

Major league baseball player Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean was born in Lucas (Logan County). He played his first major league baseball game in 1930 and was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953. Dean and his younger brother, Paul, pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals during the team’s “Gas House Gang” era of the 1930s. Along with the aging Babe Ruth, “Dizzy” Dean was considered baseball’s major drawing card during the Depression years of the 1930s.

The town of Nimmons (Clay County) was incorporated. It is near the St. Francis River, which forms the border between northeastern Arkansas and the bootheel of Missouri. Nimmons was created as a rail crossing and lumber town early in the twentieth century. The railroad ceased service with the exhaustion of the timber supply. Country roads lead to Nimmons, but no highways pass near the town.

A group of men in black masks kidnapped Ed C. Gregor from his jail cell in Harrison (Boone County) and hanged him from a railway bridge just outside Harrison. Gregor was among strikers protesting a wage cut two years before by management of the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad. He had fired his shotgun to disperse a group of vigilantes gathered around his home. Gregor’s shot had not injured anybody, but a retaliatory shot from the group wounded one of the group’s own members, and Gregor was blamed and jailed for the offense.

Harvey Parnell, the twenty-ninth governor of Arkansas, died at St. Vincent’s Infirmary in Little Rock (Pulaski County) after suffering two heart attacks. Parnell came into office with a reform agenda, but the advent of the Great Depression meant that much of the government spending went toward relief, thus scuttling his attempts to reorganize state government.

The town of Bauxite (Saline County), along with West Bauxite, incorporated. The story of Bauxite is largely the story of the bauxite mining industry. Bauxite, the ore from which the town derives its name, and which is a key component in the production of aluminum, was discovered in great abundance in this area of central Arkansas in 1887. Alcoa, which mined the ore, not only provided plants and mills but also provided a community for its workers to live in. The town was able to exceed all expectations and produce enough ore to supply the U.S. military during two world wars. With the end of World War II, however, the company found it more profitable to mine bauxite ore overseas, and the town nearly disappeared.

The Huntsville Post Office in Madison County was officially named. Explorers from Alabama had come to what is now Huntsville in 1827. Madison County was established in 1836, and it was clear that Huntsville would be the county seat. In 1837, the first courthouse was built, and the town was surveyed. John Buchanan, the only postmaster in the region, moved his post office to the town at that time, along with his home. He attempted to change the name of the town to Sevierville, in recognition of Ambrose Sevier, but was not successful.

The Action at Ivey’s Ford, part of the last serious Confederate attempt to challenge Union control of the Arkansas River, took place when Union ships holding troops and supplies were fired upon and captured by Confederate troops. Confederate reports put Union casualties at eighty-two captured and twenty-seven killed and wounded, and their own casualties at one killed and fifteen wounded. Though both sides continued to make periodic scouts and raids into enemy territory, no other serious combat operations occurred in Arkansas during the remainder of the Civil War.

Alexander Corbin (A. C.) Pickett died in Augusta (Woodruff County). Pickett was a lawyer in Jacksonport (Jackson County) and later Augusta, organizer of the Jackson Guards (CS) in the Civil War, and later a colonel in the Tenth Missouri Infantry (CS). Following the war, Pickett was head of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Woodruff County during Reconstruction. Pickett was also active in Democratic politics, the Masons, and as a layman in the Episcopal Church. He served as a special judge on the Jackson County Circuit Court in the 1870s.