Days in AR History - Starting with S

The Action at Devil’s Backbone during the Civil War was fought in Greenwood (Sebastian County) between Union and Confederate forces. The conflict lasted three hours before Union forces prevailed and Confederate soldiers retreated, leaving their dead behind. Union troops moved on to Fort Smith to take control of the fort there. The battlefield is now one of several historical attractions of Greenwood, which has boomed in recent years, more than doubling in size between 1990 and 2010.

Voters decided by an eight-to-one margin not to pay millions of dollars worth of state bonds. Formally known as the Fishback Amendment, it was the first amendment to the state constitution since its adoption in 1874. This vote ended a political debate that had raged for years within the Democratic Party. One strong faction, the “repudiationists,” had argued that the bonds were unconstitutional because they had been passed in a climate of bribery and fraud. William M. Fishback went on to lead the fight for the constitutional amendment that bore his name. The legislation failed in 1880 because of a legal technicality, but it passed in 1884, wiping out in one stroke three-fourths of the state’s debt.

Clinton Briggs, a twenty-six-year-old soldier who had just returned to Star City (Lincoln County) after serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, was lynched after allegedly insulting a young white woman. While walking down a sidewalk in early September 1919, Briggs reportedly stepped aside to allow a white couple to pass. Apparently, the white woman brushed into Briggs, scolding him for not getting off the sidewalk entirely. When Briggs replied, “This is a free man’s country,” the woman’s escort seized him until others came with an automobile and carried Briggs outside of town, where they murdered him.

Jim Skillern Porter Jr. was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Porter became the leader in integrating music venues in Little Rock in the early 1960s. He produced Little Rock’s first integrated-seating concert and became the foremost booking agent in Arkansas for performers, promoting many of the country’s leading jazz artists, such as Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Harry James, and many others. He also operated Little Rock’s first integrated country club and was influential in removing barriers to election of Jewish women to the Junior League.

Conway Twitty, a Country Music Hall of Fame member, was born Harold Lloyd Jenkins in Friars Point, Mississippi. His family moved to Helena (Phillips County) when he was about ten years old, and he formed his first band shortly afterward. He traded his birth name, which came from the famous actor Harold Lloyd, for the stage name Conway Twitty while living in Memphis, Tennessee, and recording for Sun Records. Twitty was successful as a rock and roll performer but preferred country music; he sold more than fifty million records. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame six years after his death.

The city of Jacksonville (Pulaski County) marked the official end of the Vertac site’s cleanup, which cost more than $150 million. The Vertac site in Jacksonville is one of the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites and Arkansas’s most publicized Superfund site. Cleanup of the area after its abandonment by its corporate owner took more than a decade, and the name “Vertac” soon became synonymous in Arkansas with the fear of industrial pollution.

Six weeks after the Union army under General Frederick Steele captured Little Rock (Pulaski County), Union soldiers moved south, building Fort Bussy in north Benton (Saline County) and earthworks in the western part of the city. Four regiments occupied the city until Christmas, commandeering the James Henry Shoppach and the William Ayers Crawford houses for headquarters. Six Confederate regiments had been raised in Benton. Important Benton officers were James Fagan, William A. Crawford, Mazarine Jerome Henderson, George M. Holt, and Jabez Smith. Boy martyr David O. Dodd lived in Benton at the outbreak of the war, and his mother and sisters lived there until 1863.

The Arkansas State Gazette suspended operation when Union forces captured Little Rock (Pulaski County). Paper shortages during the war hurt the Gazette, as they did most other Southern newspapers. Christopher Columbus Danley and William Holtzman revived the Gazette on May 1, 1865. Danley editorialized in favor of resumed allegiance to the Union. The Gazette became the first state newspaper to subscribe to new telegraphic services that gave it access to news from places such as St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Arkansas Gazette newspaper was forced to suspend publication after Union forces captured Little Rock (Pulaski County). Typically, when Union troops captured communities, they would shut down the newspapers and start new ones supporting the Union. The National Union published one issue from the Gazette offices, but apparently its tone was too conciliatory for one of the Union generals in Little Rock; it lasted only one edition. A second Unionist paper, the National Democrat, began publishing soon afterward. It continued to publish until May 1865.

Lizzie Dorman Fyler, a suffragette lawyer from Massachusetts who made her home in Eureka Springs (Carroll County), reported to the Woman’s Journal that the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association had been organized. Although agitation for political and economic rights for women had been advocated since shortly after the Civil War, Arkansas legislators had failed to enact proposals that would have granted equal privileges and rights to any citizen of at least twenty-one years of age who could read and write the English language.

A liberal arts college, then known as Southern Baptist College, was opened in Pocahontas (Lawrence County) by the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. The college opened as a two-year institution whose students mostly became ministers or public school teachers. The school, renamed Williams Baptist College, later moved to Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County) and began offering baccalaureate programs in 1980. It was formally adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1968. The school, now called Williams Baptist University, enrolls over 500 students, the majority of whom are from Arkansas.

Five African-American students entered Fayetteville High School. A few days later, two more black students entered the school, bringing the total to seven. The only male black student to enroll in classes on September 10, Preston Lackey, entered with the support of white students who had heard rumors of planned violence. Similarly, an Associated Press reporter came prepared to report on violent protests. The only opposition was a lone white woman with a placard. Bringing black students into the high school proved to be the easiest part of integration in Fayetteville (Washington County). Sporadic complaints came from black students, however, about racial slurs and having to acclimate to a predominately white environment.

A group of 120 to 150 settlers, mostly Arkansans, was attacked by Mormons and Native Americans on Mountain Meadows plateau in southern Utah. The settlers had started a journey from Harrison (Boone County) toward California. All died except for seventeen children, who were taken into Mormon homes. The Mormon Church tried to cover up the crime, mostly by blaming the Indians. The U.S. Army found remains of the victims exhumed by animals, and this, in addition to pressure from victims’ relatives in Arkansas, forced the government to act. No one was prosecuted for almost twenty years, when the leader of the massacre, John D. Lee, was put on trial. He was convicted for his role in September 1876 and executed on March 23, 1877. Controversy still surrounds the event.

Jamie Vogel was born in Texas. Vogel taught art to Japanese-American children and adults at Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County during World War II. Her commitment to her work and respect for her students (unusual in the United States, and particularly in Arkansas, at that time) won her the friendship of many of the internees and led her to a commitment to preservation of their art work, much of which has been given to prestigious art institutions.

Former policeman Robert R. McDonald of Argenta (now North Little Rock in Pulaski County) killed an African-American musician, Wiley Shelby, in a barroom fight. This incident was one catalyst for the Argenta Race Riot in October 1906, which left three dead and a number of buildings burned in Argenta.

Lois Lenski, who visited northeast Arkansas after an invitation from schoolchildren who had heard her read one of her books on the radio, died at her home in Tarpon Springs, Florida, at the age of eighty. Lenski was certified as a teacher but spent most of her early career illustrating other people’s books until a publisher encouraged her to write her own stories. She visited Mississippi County in 1947 after the invitation from children in an elementary classroom in Yarbo (Mississippi County), and she inscribed her first book about sharecroppers, Cotton in My Sack, “for my beloved Arkansas cotton children.” She wrote two other books, Houseboat Girl, and We Live by the River about life in that area.

The Arkansas National Guard Museum opened at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock (Pulaski County). The museum’s primary mission is to collect information and artifacts relating to the Arkansas National Guard and its militia predecessor and make that information and those artifacts available to the public and to posterity. The museum, which also tells the story of Camp Pike/Camp Robinson, is located in Lloyd England Hall, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Dual State Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Also known as the Donaghey Monument, it was built in 1931 on the Arkansas-Louisiana state line to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the establishment of the boundary between the two states. It is also a memorial to the birthplace of George Washington Donaghey, governor of Arkansas between 1909 and 1913, who had the memorial constructed and was born about one mile south of the border.

Colonel James Fleming Fagan was promoted to brigadier general. A former Little Rock (Pulaski County) politician and U.S. marshal, he raised a company of volunteers for the First Arkansas Infantry Regiment and later transferred to the Army of the Mississippi. The Arkansas Regiment had previously participated in the Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run) and the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee where it suffered a forty-five-percent casualty rate. Fagan was promoted to major general before he left the service at the end of the Civil War.

The Skirmish at Dardanelle took place. A small conflict occurring after the Action at Devil’s Backbone, this skirmish was part of an effort between Union forces in northwestern Arkansas to link up with their comrades moving toward Little Rock (Pulaski County) from Helena (Phillips County).

The town of Oak Grove (Carroll County) was incorporated. The town is one of twelve communities in Arkansas identified as Oak Grove, and the only one to be incorporated. In 1983, historians wrote that “Oak Grove continues to support a small population with a few stores and a post office. The quiet living in the community finds its focus around the churches of the community and the softball activities of the summer months.” The town has since grown further, supporting a city hall, a fire station, a convenience store, shops, and churches.

The Carmelite Monastery of St. Teresa of Jesus, an autonomous community of Roman Catholic women devoted to service to the Church through prayer, was formally established in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with several applicants who joined after the arrival of five members of the order selected from the founding community in Loretto, Pennsylvania. The order, known as “discalced,” which literally means “barefoot,” is devoted to service to the Church through prayer. In 2007, the group consisted of fourteen members who occupy acreage on 32nd Street in southwest Little Rock. In addition to their service through prayer, they bake communion bread for use by various churches.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the immediate integration of Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and Governor Orval Faubus closed all four high schools in the city, interrupting the education of nearly 4,000 students and disrupting as many households and families. Faubus’s action not only locked students from their classrooms but also locked 177 teachers and administrators in the schools, where they had to fulfill their contractual obligations and appear for work, despite the empty classes. Most were soon used as substitutes in junior high and elementary schools.

Magician J. B. Bobo died in Texarkana (Miller County). At the peak of his career, he and his wife performed 400 to 450 school magic shows a year; this decreased to 300 a year in later years. It is estimated that they gave more than 14,000 school shows in more than fifty years. In 1947, Bobo put many of his magic ideas in a book titled Watch This One! But it was his classic book, Modern Coin Magic (1952), that earned him a worldwide reputation. The book has been reprinted several times and is still available.

The Old Independence Regional Museum at 380 S. 9th Street in Batesville (Independence County), which had been established in the early 1990s, held its grand opening after seven years of work. Its mission is to serve the twelve-county region that once held Independence County in northeast Arkansas. Detailed maps describe the region’s historic sites and museums, leading visitors to continue their journey into the other counties in the region, which include all or part of Baxter, Cleburne, Fulton, Izard, Jackson, Marion, Poinsett, Sharp, Stone, White, and Woodruff counties.

Samuel West Peel was born in Independence County. Peel was four years old when his mother died. His father left him with his grandparents and moved to Carrollton (Carroll County), making a home on Crooked Creek and remarrying. Peel’s diversified career in Arkansas included roles as a businessman, politician, county clerk, Confederate soldier, lawyer, prosecuting attorney, congressman, Indian agent, and banker. In Benton County and Arkansas, he is best remembered as the first native-born Arkansan to be elected to the U.S. Congress.

James Sevier Conway, Arkansas’s first governor, was inaugurated. During his tenure, the population of Arkansas expanded greatly, bringing in a revenue surplus from all the tax collections, though his revision of the tax code plunged the state into economic turmoil. Further controversy ensued with regard to the establishment of a state bank and his dealings with the state militia; this and ill health led Conway not to seek a second term.

The Arkansas state government began operating almost three months after the creation of the state by Congress. The state constitution was much like those of other recently formed Southern states, implementing suffrage for free, white men and providing ironclad support for slavery.

Samuel Mitchell Taylor died suddenly while representing Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives. Taylor had represented the Sixth District of Arkansas starting in 1913 after winning a special election to fill the seat vacated by Joseph T. Robinson when Robinson became governor. Following his death, his son Chester Taylor won the special election to fill the seat.

Peter McGehee died in Canada. The gay Arkansas-born novelist was praised by reviewers for his outrageous comedies of Southern manners. Major stories or episodes in his novels are set at the IQ Zoo in Hot Springs (Garland County), at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock (Pulaski County), in a rural black church, and in a family cemetery. Such Little Rock locations as Robinson Auditorium, Central High School, the Quapaw Quarter, Little Rock Country Club, Graffiti’s restaurant, and Discovery discotheque anchor his novels.

Determined never to become an invalid, Richard Colburn Butler Sr. committed suicide. Butler’s most famous work as an attorney began in 1956 when he was one of several lawyers retained by the Little Rock School Board to defend the district against a suit filed by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Butler was also a lawyer, banker, real estate investor, philanthropist, and horticulturist.

Wilton Robert “Witt” Stephens was born in Prattsville (Grant County). Founder of Stephens Inc. and prominent businessman, Stephens played a major role in the economic development of the state through his post–World War II work with the natural gas industry. He established several gas companies within Arkansas and eventually became president and chairman of the board of Arkansas Louisiana Gas (Arkla).

George Hays was elected as the twenty-fourth governor of Arkansas in an overwhelming victory. His tenure as governor saw a number of progressive reforms being undertaken, including a “blue sky law” to protect investors from stock and bond fraud and a law giving women the right to enter into contracts and to own property.

Troops that had been called out to secure the town of Jonesboro (Craighead County) following a series of riots and brawls between competing factions at First Baptist Church withdrew after fourteen days. Governor Harvey Parnell had authorized the use of troops stationed at Arkansas State College (now Arkansas State University) during what would later be called the Jonesboro Church Wars, a veritable civil war between parts of Jonesboro’s Baptist community.

Johnny Franklin Sain, with teammate and future Hall of Fame member Warren Spahn, became enshrined in a popular rhyme originally published in the Boston Post: “First we’ll use Spahn / then we’ll use Sain / Then an off day / followed by rain / Back will come Spahn / followed by Sain / And followed / we hope / by two days of rain.” This later became shortened to, “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.” Sain was an Arkansas-born star major league pitcher and is widely considered to have been the best pitching coach in major league baseball history. As a pitcher, he won 139 games, the third-highest total for an Arkansas native; only Dizzy Dean, with 150 victories, and Lon Warneke, with 192, won more.

Arkansas conservationist Harold Edward Alexander died. Although diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Alexander had continued to work on conservation issues. Alexander was inducted posthumously into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame in 1993. Alexander’s words hang in the Tyler Bend Visitor Center at the Buffalo National River: “A stream is a living thing. It moves, dances and shimmers in the sun. It furnishes opportunities for enjoyment and its beauty moves men’s souls.”

Arch McKennon, also known as Archibald Smith McKennon, married Virginia Arkansas Berry, a sister of James H. Berry, a U.S. senator and Arkansas’s fourteenth governor. McKennon was a Confederate military officer, storekeeper, lawyer, temperance advocate, and political activist in Arkansas during the latter part of the nineteenth century and served on the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, known as the Dawes Commission, which negotiated land allotments to individual Native Americans in order to lessen tribal claims. It also served eventually to open the Oklahoma Territory to white settlements and facilitate statehood for the territory.

Garfield in Benton County was incorporated. The town is named after James Garfield, the twentieth president of the United States. The community got its start as a railroad depot used for shipping water and fruit. After years of decline following the Depression, the town revitalized in the late twentieth century with the growing population of the county.

Gold-mining operations officially kicked off at the Kruse Gold Mine, with a procession of workers to the mine led by the Rogers Cornet Band playing “Silver Threads among the Gold” and “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” William Kruse’s hunt for the precious metal on his father’s eighty-acre farm in Rogers (Benton County) was triggered neither by scientific nor geological verification but rather inspired by psychic revelations he combined with automatic writings pointing him to a precise site where he believed wholeheartedly that he would find enough gold to end world misery. To this end, he established the Kruse Gold Mine and spent the remainder of his life trying to fulfill the renderings of his visualizations. The mine, however, was a complete failure.

Red Cross refugee camps housing victims of the Flood of 1927 closed. After surviving the flood, many Arkansans—black and white—stayed in the refugee camps before returning to their devastated land to try to survive the winter and start over with virtually nothing. The Flood of 1927 took place when the rest of the country was enjoying the peak of Roaring Twenties prosperity. In Washington DC, the federal response under President Calvin Coolidge to the misery in the flooded South was simple: not one dollar of federal money went in direct aid to the flood victims.

Neil Ernest Compton, a physician of obstetrics by profession and a conservationist by avocation who is widely recognized as the founder of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River (today known as the Ozark Society, Inc.), married sweetheart and lifelong hiking and canoeing partner Laurene Putman of Bentonville (Benton County).

Mary Celestia Parler died, less than a year after her husband, noted Ozark folklore collector Vance Randolph, died. Parler was responsible for developing and implementing the most extensive folklore research project in Arkansas history. She was a professor of English and folklore at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). Through her vast knowledge and appreciation of Arkansas culture, she enabled future generations to glimpse Arkansas’s cultural history, much of which remains only in the stories, songs, and images she collected with the help of her students and assistants. The work of Parler was revisited in 2005 when the University Libraries’ Special Collections department hosted a two-day conference, “A Collector in Her Own Right: Reassessing Mary Celestia Parler’s Contribution to Ozark Folklore.”

Artist Louis Freund was born in Clinton, Missouri. Freund was a muralist who became famous for his depiction of life in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas during the 1930s. He and his wife, Elsie Bates Freund, founded the Summer Art School in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) and helped shape the resort town into a year-round community for artists and writers.

A brick train station costing $25,000 was opened at Brinkley (Monroe County) to serve the four railroad lines that criss-crossed the state. Commerce from this favorable position enabled Brinkley to become a regional hub for shipment of lumber and cotton and a transfer point for passenger travel during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After a decline in railway usage, the station was in danger of being razed, but the property was deeded to the city, restored, and made into the Central Delta Depot Museum. The museum opened in May 2003 for the preservation of regional history, which includes all of Monroe County and parts of Woodruff, Lee, and Arkansas counties.

Ozell Sutton, an African American man, along with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attorneys, filed a class-action suit against the Capitol Club in the U.S. District Court. Sutton attempted to eat a meal in the Arkansas State Capitol cafeteria in the basement of the building. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required the desegregation of public accommodations, had become national law just two weeks earlier. However, Sutton was refused service.

Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock’s second tour in Vietnam abruptly ended when he was riding in an assault vehicle that struck a 500-pound mine near the South Vietnamese village of Que-Son. Despite being covered with flaming gasoline that burned him almost beyond recognition, he returned to the vehicle and rescued seven marines. He refused a recommendation for a Medal of Honor for this heroic act but was awarded a belated Silver Star in 1996. After recovering from the burns, he served for another ten years, training U.S. Marine Corps snipers until his forced medical retirement in 1979. Hathcock is believed to have attained the highest number of recorded kills in the history of the Marine Corps.

Marlin Conover Hawkins, who had served Conway County as an elected official for thirty-eight years, died. One of Hawkins’s longest-running political feuds was with Gene Wirges, editor of the Morrilton Democrat. Wirges wrote several scathing stories about Hawkins on topics ranging from election irregularities, comparatively high patrol car expenses, a speed trap on Highway 64, and mishandling of fines collected. As these stories ran in the early 1960s, Hawkins enjoyed a contradictory set of headlines, which announced some positive gains for Conway County. When Hawkins retired from public office in 1978, Hawkins’s friend George Fisher, a popular political cartoonist, placed Hawkins with contemporaries such as Orval Faubus in a fictional rest home for Arkansas politicians, the popular “Old Guard Rest Home.”

The Right Reverend Larry Maze, who became the twelfth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas in 1994, attracted controversy for his support for gay and lesbian members of the Church when he conducted its first blessing of a same-sex relationship. The union of Ted Holder and Joe van den Duevel was blessed at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Approval of such relationships was controversial, with many churches dividing over the matter, and Bishop Maze resigned his position the following November.

In the catalyst for what became known as the Tucker-Parnell Feud (or Parnell-Tucker Feud), William Puckett of Texarkana (Miller County), who had arranged to marry Jessie Stevenson, arrived in El Dorado (Union County) to meet her. Stevenson worked for local photographer Bob Mullens, who became enraged when Puckett arrived at his studio trying to find her. The ensuing feud between families allied with people involved in the dispute was a series of assaults and shootings in the Union County area between 1902 and 1905, starting with a shootout in downtown El Dorado that left three dead in October 1902. The repercussions of the downtown shootings led to an estimated thirty to forty deaths in Union County over the three-year period.

The USS Arkansas (BB-33) was commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Measuring 562 feet by 93 feet, the Arkansas was designed for a crew of 1,594. It was armed with twelve twelve-inch guns with a 16,000-yard range. The top speed was twenty-one knots. In December 1912, the USS Arkansas transported President Howard Taft to the Panama Canal Zone and then departed for crew training, later joining the U.S. Atlantic fleet. In April 1914, the Arkansas was ordered to Veracruz, Mexico, by President Woodrow Wilson. The Arkansas put ashore 330 men in four companies who participated in street-to-street fighting following the ascension to power of the Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta.