Days in AR History

Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) native Admiral John Thach died in Coronado, California. Thatch was awarded the Navy Cross and Distinguished Service Medal for developing the Thach Weave, one of the most significant tactical advances in the history of aerial combat.

Famed Hot Springs (Garland County) madam Maxine Temple Jones died in Warren (Bradley County); she is buried in Palestine Cemetery. One of her former business locations, the Central Avenue Hotel, was renovated in 1989 and reopened in 1991 as Maxine’s Coffee House and Puzzle Bar. Jones was a Hot Springs businesswoman during the period from 1945 to the early 1970s. A well-known madam with numerous political connections, she managed a lucrative brothel operation that catered to politicians, businessmen, and mobsters. She documented her life in an autobiography published in 1983 titled Maxine “Call Me Madam”: The Life and Times of a Hot Springs Madam.

Sam Houston resigned his office as governor of Tennessee after his marriage to eighteen-year-old Eliza Allen fell apart under mysterious circumstances. Three weeks later, he traveled in disguise on the steam packet Red Rover, by flatboat, and by steamship into Arkansas Territory on his way to live in the “wigwam” of the chief of the Cherokee in Arkansas, John Jolly. (Jolly’s “wigwam” was in fact a plantation house.) Six months later, Houston received citizenship in the Cherokee Nation and served as Jolly’s representative between tribes. Ultimately, he decided not to settle permanently in Arkansas because of the many factions and the poor prospects for prosperity.

Confederate brigadier general William L. Cabell’s cavalry, with about 900 men, left Ozark (Franklin County) with a mission to attack the Federal command at Fayetteville (Washington County). The Union army had occupied Fayetteville as a place to take care of its wounded soldiers following the bloody Battle of Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862. Although ensuing skirmishes were indecisive and the Confederates failed to achieve their goal, the Federal troops withdrew only a few days after the action, feeling that the area was exposed to attack and should be abandoned.

Governor Elisha Baxter signed the act creating Lonoke County from the parent counties Prairie and Pulaski. Lonoke received its name from a “lone oak” tree standing on the site of the present county seat (also called Lonoke). George P. C. Rumbough used the tree as a landmark while surveying for the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad. The county and its seat of government having the same name distinguishes Lonoke County from the other counties in the state.

Central Arkansas’s first flight took place. Pilot Joseph J. Pendergrass flew Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) banker William Henry Langford’s Curtiss biplane at Rob Roy (Jefferson County). Aviation history in Arkansas includes one pioneer inventor, a few attempts at commercial airplane production, a regional commuter airline, a now-national air freight company, and varying degrees of impact on the state’s communities. By the 1970s, aviation had become essential both for business use and for personal travel.

William Fadjo Cravens died in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Cravens was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fourth District of Arkansas in the Seventy-Sixth through the Eightieth Congresses, serving from 1939 to 1949. During his tenure in Congress, Cravens served on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, the Committee on Mines and Mining, and the Committee on Territories.

Paul Kazuo Kuroda died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kuroda, who was born in Japan, was a professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) from 1952 to 1987. Kuroda brought international attention to scientific research in Arkansas by correctly predicting the presence of naturally occurring nuclear reactors nearly twenty years before the first discovery of a reactor of this kind in the Oklo Mines in the Republic of Gabon in west-central Africa.

British-sympathizing Native Americans and British nationals carried out an attack upon the Spanish garrison based at Arkansas Post on the Arkansas River. This attack, known as the Colbert Raid, was considered the only battle of the American Revolution to be fought in what is now Arkansas. The Colbert Raid is interpreted by the National Park Service at Arkansas Post National Memorial near Gillett (Arkansas County).

Scotsman James Colbert led a joint force of Britons and Chickasaw in an unsuccessful attack on Spanish-controlled Arkansas Post (in modern-day Arkansas County) in the only Revolutionary War engagement to take place in Arkansas. The impetus behind the attack was Spain’s decision to ally itself with the revolutionaries.

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a Little Rock (Pulaski County) businessman, politician, and the first elected African-American municipal judge in the United States, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eldest of four children. In California, Gibbs founded the first black newspaper west of the Mississippi River, The Mirror of the Times (1855). He settled in Little Rock in 1871. Gibbs died in 1915 at his home in Little Rock; he is buried in the Fraternal Cemetery on Barber Street. A school in Little Rock, which was once a school for African Americans and later an elementary school, then the first international studies/foreign languages magnet school in Arkansas, is named for Gibbs.

The initial incident in the Civil War battle known as the Action at Fayetteville (Washington County) took place near West Fork before the actual battle, when Lieutenant James A. Ferguson and his men from Carroll’s Arkansas Cavalry discovered a party in a farmhouse and quickly captured nine Union bluecoats who were in attendance. Indecisive action in the encounter at Fayetteville on April 18 symbolized the Civil War in Arkansas as well as any other event in the state. Although Confederate forces failed to achieve their goal of driving Union troops from northwest Arkansas, Federal troops withdrew a few days later with losses about even on each side.

The Skirmish at Limestone Valley took place. A small skirmish between Arkansas Federals and Confederate-leaning guerrillas in the rugged Ozark Mountains, this engagement was part of an effort to keep Confederate forces both from attacking Union units and from terrorizing the local population.

Irene Castle was born in New Rochelle, New York. Castle was a famous ballroom dancer in the 1910s to the 1930s who appeared in several silent movies and many Broadway shows. She lived in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) for a time and worked for animal rights. In her autobiography, she wrote that she wanted to be remembered more for her work to prevent animal cruelty than for her dance career.

Campbell Station (Jackson County) was incorporated. The community is located in Jackson County along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and U.S. Highway 367.

Confederate colonel Robert Glenn Shaver was born in Sullivan County, Tennessee, exactly on the line between Virginia and Tennessee. Robert Shaver organized and was colonel to the Seventh Arkansas Regiment that became known as “Shaver’s Regiment.” After the war, Shaver emerged as a prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan and had to flee to British Honduras (now Belize) after his Klan activities got him in trouble with the state government.

The home built in 1853 by Judge Jonas Tebbetts, a staunch Union supporter who fled Fayetteville (Washington County) with his family after learning of a plot on his life, was severely damaged during the Civil War Action at Fayetteville. It served as headquarters for both Union and Confederate armies when each was in command of the area. The house is one of the best examples of Greek Revival architecture remaining in the state. Carefully restored by each of the several families who owned it after Tebbetts’s departure, the building is now known as the Headquarters House Museum and serves as headquarters of the Washington County Historical Society.

Sid Benton, born in Buckner (Lafayette County), pitched in his only game for the St. Louis Cardinals. Benton walked the only two batters he faced and never returned to the mound for a major league team. Another short career was that of Joe Brown, born in Little Rock (Pulaski County), who pitched to three batters for the Chicago White Sox on May 17, 1927. Brown walked one batter and gave up two hits; all three players scored for the opposition. Brown also never had another chance to pitch for a major league team.

Federal agents arrested two men in Arkansas for transporting an unregistered sawed-off shotgun from Claremore, Oklahoma, to Siloam Springs (Benton County). Frank Layton and Jack Miller had been watched by federal agents who suspected them of being moonshiners and bank robbers. Their defense was weakened when their attorney quit because they were unable to pay him. The judge’s opinion was: “In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”

William (Willie) Roaf was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Roaf became one of the greatest football players in Arkansas sports history and one of the best offensive linemen ever in the National Football League (NFL), amassing eleven Pro Bowl selections. In 2012, Roaf was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Roaf has also been inducted into the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame, the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and the College Football Hall of Fame.

The members of the musical group Point of Grace were inducted into the “Arkansas Walk of Fame” in Hot Springs (Garland County). Point of Grace, which originated in Arkadelphia (Clark County) in 1990, is a female vocal quartet that performs Christian music. The group has had five gold albums and two platinum. As of 2006, they have had twenty-four number-one hit singles. The members of the group live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Murfreesboro (Pike County) was incorporated. It is the county seat of Pike County, which lies in the southwest corner of Arkansas and is an area of tremendous geological diversity. In addition to diamonds, other gems and minerals such as amethyst, quartz, garnet, jasper, calcite, barite, lamproite, and banded agate are found in the area. The discovery of diamonds is celebrated every June with the Diamond Festival. The Crater of Diamonds State Park sponsors a gem and mineral show and John Huddleston Day, honoring the man who discovered the first diamonds in the area.

A nine-acre campus, located north of Arkadelphia (Clark County), was purchased from Harriet Barkman. The new campus was separated from Ouachita Baptist College by two ravines and several blocks. Architect Thomas Harding was contracted to build a structure to house the college. Founded as Arkadelphia Methodist College, the school would eventually be called Henderson-Brown College (HBC). One hundred and ten students arrived to start the first term at HBC, a private, co-educational Methodist college, on September 3, 1890. In 1929, the Little Rock Conference of the Methodist Church decided to consolidate Henderson-Brown with Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). The campus was turned over to the state, which ran the school as Henderson State Teachers College, which became Henderson State University in 1975.

John Thach was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Thach was one of the most influential naval aviators of the mid-twentieth century and is credited with the creation of the Thach Weave, one of the most significant tactical advances in the history of aerial combat. He was awarded the Navy Cross and Distinguished Service Medal for developing this tactical maneuver, which remains a standard of military aviation.

After Van Buren (Crawford County) native Jim Miller—who earned the reputation of a professional assassin and manipulated the court system to avoid prison—killed former Oklahoma deputy U.S. marshal A. A. “Gus” Bobbitt near Ada, Oklahoma, a mob overpowered the jailers at the Ada jail where Miller and three of his associates were held; took Miller, Joe Allen, Jesse West, and Berry Burrell to a nearby stable; and lynched them. A photographer was called in, and his photograph of the four men hanging has become an icon in the lore of the Old West.

Commonwealth College moved to its permanent home thirteen miles west of Mena (Polk County). Commonwealth College was Arkansas’s most famous attempt at radical labor education. It had been established in 1923 at Newllano Cooperative Colony near Leesville, Louisiana, by Kate Richards O’Hare, her husband Frank, and William E. Zeuch, all socialists and lifelong adherents of the principles established by Eugene V. Debs.

Andrew Jackson (A. J.) Walls was born in Pleasant Hills in northern Lonoke County. Walls was a Lonoke County pioneer, planter, and elected public official in the early days of the county. He was a state representative, chairman of the State Democratic Committee, and father and grandfather of several prominent Lonoke County lawyers and politicians.

The Skirmishes at Okolona began, during which Confederate cavalry under Joseph O. Shelby harassed the rear of Major General Frederick Steele’s Union army as it moved into southwest Arkansas during the Camden Expedition of 1864, marking the first serious resistance to Steele’s advance. In his postwar account of Shelby’s exploits during the war, Shelby and his Men, or The War in the West, John Newman Edwards, Shelby’s adjutant, offered an expanded account of the skirmish that occurred on April 3, in which he claims that a Federal artillery shell upset several beehives. Edwards claims that the enraged bees attacked the Confederate lines, leading Shelby to abandon the field to both insects and Federals. This account is almost certainly an embellishment.

The Skirmish at Hickory Station took place. This brief engagement was fought on the Little Rock and DeValls Bluff section of the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad and was one of the final Civil War engagements in Arkansas. The Federals reported no casualties, but they estimated Confederate casualties as one wounded soldier and one horse possibly wounded.

The Arkansas General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which bestowed American citizenship upon African Americans. In response to this and other political developments, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) soon surfaced in Arkansas and began terrorizing the state’s freedmen and their supporters, as it had in other Southern states.

The organizational meeting that formed the General Council of the Assemblies of God was held at the Grand Opera House in Hot Springs (Garland County). This meeting was attended by more than 300 men and women (some ministers and some interested laity) from across the United States. The Assemblies of God is an evangelical, Pentecostal organization that was founded in Arkansas in 1914. It has grown to be the largest Pentecostal organization in Arkansas and around the world. Assemblies of God adherents in Arkansas number approximately 83,000, while the worldwide count has grown to more than 57 million.

Elsijane Trimble Roy was born in Lonoke (Lonoke County), one of five children of Judge Thomas Clark Trimble III and Elsie Walls Trimble. Her father and grandfather were both attorneys in a law practice with Senator Joseph T. Robinson, and her father later became a federal judge. She completed undergraduate studies and law school at the University of Arkansas in five years and was the only woman to graduate from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1939. She was Arkansas’s first woman to become a circuit judge, the first woman on the Arkansas Supreme Court, the first woman appointed to an Arkansas federal judgeship, the first woman to be federal judge in the Eighth Circuit, and the first Arkansas woman to follow her father as a federal judge.

Buddy Jewell was born in Lepanto (Poinsett County). Jewell is a country musician best known for having won the top prize in the first season of the reality television show Nashville Star, which landed him a recording contract with Columbia Records. His first major-label album reached gold-record status after being released in July 2003. In 2015, Jewell was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame.

The Capitol-Main Historic District in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The commercial core of the city in the early to mid-twentieth century, the district encompasses the 500 block of Main Street, the 100–200 blocks of West Capitol Avenue, the 500 block of Center Street, and the 100–200 blocks of West 6th Street. Following its decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, it has been the focus of revitalization projects to resuscitate the once thriving district. The district’s architecture is dominantly twentieth-century commercial with Art Deco, Italianate, and Sullivanesque details. The buildings represent the work of prominent Arkansas architects, including Frank Ginocchio, George Mann, Theodore Sanders, and Charles Thompson.

In the beginnings of what became known as the Brooks-Baxter War, more than 1,000 supporters of Elisha Baxter, who occupied the governor’s office following a hotly contested race, appeared ready to do battle to protect Baxter’s position, in spite of Pulaski County circuit judge John Whytock’s writ issued in support of Joseph Brooks’s governorship. Faced by an equal number of armed citizens in support of Brooks, Colonel Thomas E. Rose deployed members of the 16th Infantry Division to quiet the confrontation. The following day, shots were fired and several people were killed. The result of the “war” (in which more than 200 people died)—recognition of Baxter as governor—brought a practical end to Republican rule in Arkansas and thus ended the era of Reconstruction.

The Arkansas Federation of Women’s Clubs held its first annual meeting in Hot Springs (Garland County), where members began working as a group for libraries. The federation changed its name to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Arkansas (GFWC) in 1987, and among its many accomplishments, the GFWC has established libraries across Arkansas and aided in the preservation of the Old State House in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

The levee system protecting Clarendon (Monroe County) failed; soon, the town stood in twenty feet of water. The Flood of 1927 along the White River soon covered most settlements in the lower section of Monroe County.

George Takei, who became internationally famous as Lieutenant Sulu in the original Star Trek television series and six movies, was born in Los Angeles, California. In 1942, Takei was moved with his parents and younger brother and sister to the Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County, Arkansas. In 2003, Takei returned to the Rohwer site to assist in preserving the history of the state’s relocation camps. He also returned to the state in September 2004 to participate in the symposium on Japanese American experiences in Arkansas during World War II that was part of the four-day event, “Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in World War II Arkansas.”

The train voyage of Arthur Mitchell, an African-American congressman from Illinois, began; when the train crossed into Arkansas, he was asked to move to the section of the train designated for African-American passengers, in accordance with the Arkansas Separate Coach Law of 1891. A lawsuit ensued, eventually becoming the Supreme Court case Mitchell v. United States et al. The Supreme Court had held in earlier cases that it was adequate under the Fourteenth Amendment for separate privileges to be supplied to differing groups of people as long as they were treated similarly well.

Calvin Leavy was born in Scott (Pulaski County), the youngest son of fifteen children born to a musical family. Leavy, a vocalist and guitarist, recorded “Cummins Prison Farm,” a blues song that debuted on Billboard’s rhythm and blues chart on May 2, 1970, and stayed for five weeks, reaching No. 40. It was also the No. 1 song on the Memphis, Tennessee, station WDIA. Leavy was the first person charged under a 1989 Arkansas “drug kingpin law” targeting crime rings. His last performance before his incarceration was with the gospel group the Zion Five. Leavy died on June 6, 2010, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County); he had been due to be eligible for parole in 2011. He was survived by sixteen children of his eighteen children.

The Arkansas division of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America was admitted into the National Society, after having been organized in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in January. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) was founded in 1891 and is dedicated to furthering an appreciation of the national heritage through patriotic service, historic preservation, and educational projects. Members must be direct descendants of an ancestor who resided in an American colony prior to 1750 and who served his or her country in some official capacity during that period and before July 5, 1776. In Arkansas, in addition to sponsoring essay contests and educational projects and providing scholarships, the group helps support the Brownlee House in the Historic Arkansas Museum.

A flood of the Arkansas River swept away about half of the Baring Cross Bridge built by the Cairo and Fulton Railroad. It had served for fifty-four years before the flood. The sixteen coal cars that had been placed on the bridge to help stabilize the structure were also lost. The new Baring Cross Bridge, built at a cost of $1.6 million, was opened as a double-track lift span on February 2, 1929.

The levee at Pendleton (Desha County) broke, allowing the Arkansas River to pour into Desha and Arkansas counties. Floodwaters covered the eastern third of Arkansas, leaving only some Indian mounds, telephone poles, housetops, and trees above the muddy water. The Flood of 1927 left thousands homeless and caused major losses in industry and agriculture.

Scholar and linguist Ben Drew Kimpel died at his home in Fayetteville (Washington County). Kimpel wrote the definitive biography of the eighteenth-century novelist Samuel Richardson with University of Arkansas (UA) colleague Duncan Eaves. He taught a wide variety of courses at UA, from Anglo-Saxon and Beowulf to contemporary novel. Although many students at first found his vast knowledge intimidating, many came to regard him as a wise and sympathetic counselor who would help with an array of problems, not all academic. He enjoyed and often hosted graduate student parties and always loved dancing (he was well known for the Charleston and jitterbug) in spite of his great weight, which at times approached 300 pounds.

After a three-day standoff, more than 300 law enforcement officers from federal, state, and local agencies surrounded Zarephath-Horeb, the compound of a military-style white supremacist organization known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) near Bull Shoals in Marion County, and seized weapons, ammunition, explosives, gold, and thirty gallons of potassium cyanide, which was intended to be used to poison the water supply of several large cities in order to expedite the coming of the second Messiah. The raid essentially ended the organization.

Marlin Conover Hawkins was born near Center Ridge (Conway County). Hawkins served Conway County as an elected official for thirty-eight years. His ability to deliver votes to statewide and national candidates gave Hawkins a profile in state politics that was rare for a county official. His political machine is an important part of Arkansas’s political lore, and the results of his political contacts are still evident in Conway County.

Steve Stephens, famous radio and television personality, was born in Newport (Jackson County). A well-known television and communications pioneer, as well as a proponent of the new music style called rock and roll, Stephens was most famous for hosting Steve’s Show, a popular television dance program in the 1960s. Stephens was the top television personality in Arkansas from 1957 to 1961 and remained a communications specialist well into his retirement. In recognition of his pioneering achievements in broadcasting, he was inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in October 2003, and on April 3, 2004, his name was added to the Arkansas Walk of Fame in Hot Springs (Garland County).

Grammy winner Glen Campbell, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005, was born about six miles southwest of Delight (Pike County) in Billstown to Wes and Carrie Campbell. Some of his most popular songs were “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” “Galveston,” and “Rhinestone Cowboy.” In 1996, Campbell became a first-year inductee into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame. He died in 2017.

Glen Campbell was born in the Billstown community, near Delight (Pike County). Campbell was a commercially successful and critically acclaimed entertainer whose career has lasted more than fifty years. As a guitarist, Campbell appeared on recordings by a diverse range of artists, including Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. As a singer and solo artist, Campbell sold millions of recordings and earned many awards. He also starred in films and hosted his own television programs. He died in 2017.

Silas Hunt died at the Veteran’s Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, from tuberculosis, a possible complication from his World War II injuries. Hunt was the first African-American student admitted to the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) since Reconstruction. He became the first black student to be admitted for graduate or professional studies at any all-white Southern university when he was admitted to the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1948.