Days in AR History - Starting with F

Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine, moved to New York and lived with Drs. Kenneth B. and Mamie Clark after being suspended and then expelled in 1958 for retaliating against the daily torment she experienced at Central High School. The Clarks were African-American psychologists whose social science research formed the basis for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argument in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas cases, which held that segregation harmed the self-esteem of African-American children.

The Marion Hotel and the adjacent Manning Hotel in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) were imploded to make way for the Excelsior and the city’s new convention center. The Marion Hotel (also known as the Hotel Marion) was one of the most well-known businesses in Arkansas for much of the twentieth century.

Sonora Smart was born in Jenny Lind (Sebastian County), the daughter of William Jackson Smart, a farmer and Civil War veteran, and Ellen Victoria Cheek Smart. Sonora Louise Smart Dodd is known as the “Mother of Father’s Day.” In 1909, Dodd heard a church sermon about Mother’s Day, which had recently become a recognized holiday, and she wondered why there was no Father’s Day. On June 6, 1910, Dodd suggested establishing such a holiday to the Spokane Ministerial Association and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane on June 19, 1910, fourteen days after Dodd’s father’s birthday.

Glenco Bays was burned at the stake near Crossett (Ashley County) for having allegedly murdered J. D. Stephens, a prominent local farmer. Stephens was one of the most prosperous and admired farmers in the county. According to the Arkansas Gazette, the spectacle of Bays being burned to death “was sickening, yet not one of the witnesses appeared to doubt that the terrible punishment meted out was merited….While the more conservative deplore the method of disposing of the murderer, indignation ran so high among both the white and black races that conservatism received no consideration.”

Marion Harland Crank was born in the community of Bearden (Ouachita County). Crank was a member of the Arkansas General Assembly for eighteen years, becoming influential in the dominant rural faction of legislators when he entered the state House of Representatives in 1951. He was the speaker of the House in 1963–64 and often managed legislative programs for Governor Orval E. Faubus during Faubus’s twelve years in office.

Helen Gurley Brown was born in Green Forest (Carroll County). She was the author of Sex and the Single Girl (1962), which had sold 150,000 hardcover copies by April 1963, and became editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine in 1965. Soon after she signed on as editor, circulation of the magazine rose to three million.

The Community Theatre in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), which was started as a community share-owner business, was bought by Victor Elbert Bonner and his son Charles, who had managed the theater for a number of years. The theater is notable because it is one of the oldest single-screen, nickelodeon-type theaters in Arkansas. It closed as a business in 1963, but the building was used as one of the locations for the Pine Bluff Film Festival.

Three high-school students at Mena (Polk County)—Virginia Crain, Peggy Strickland, and Jo Wall—confessed to spiking the punch at an extracurricular function with twenty-four ounces of a flavored malt liquor beverage. Wood v. Strickland is the title of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that grew out of a local dispute over this teenage prank. This case has attained an importance far beyond its origins, helping to define the constitutional rights of public school students and the parameters under which public officials may be sued in federal court for monetary damages.

A groundbreaking was held for the construction of an addition to the Jim G. Ferguson Searcy County Library, named after Jim Ferguson, a Searcy County native who made contributions to several hospitals and schools throughout the state before raising and donating money for the public library in Marshall (Searcy County) that bears his name.

David Walker was born near Elkton, Kentucky, to Jacob Wythe Walker and Nancy Hawkins Walker. The Walkers were a politically prominent family in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Virginia. A spoiled child, Walker was known as “Devil Dave.” His father, “an indulgent master and poor farmer” with six daughters and two sons, once lost heavily at cards, and financial embarrassment clouded Walker’s childhood. Walker, who became a lawyer, a jurist, and an early settler of Fayetteville (Washington County), was the leading Whig in the state’s “great northwest” region for nearly fifty years. He began his career as a member of the convention that wrote the state’s first constitution in 1836. He chaired the 1861 convention, and he remained active in politics and law until shortly before his death.

The Scout from Pine Bluff to DeValls Bluff ended. This scout was typical of many such operations carried out by the Union army during the duration of the war. Facing minor organized resistance, the Federal troopers easily defeated the small guerrilla bands opposing them. Skirmishes such as this were typical in the last days of the Civil War in Arkansas. With little organized and effective resistance in areas north of the Arkansas River, Union scouting parties like this one continued to disrupt Confederate operations.

Thomas Hart Benton married Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant and former student who managed all his business affairs so that he could focus on art. Benton—painter, muralist, and writer from Missouri—developed, along with artists Grant Wood and John Stewart Curry, a style of painting in the 1920s that became known as regionalism. Benton was influenced early in his career by a sketching trip he took through northwest Arkansas in 1926.

Orville Henry was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The best-known newspaper sportswriter in Arkansas history, Henry worked for the state’s two largest newspapers, the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat (later the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette). Although he covered other sports, Henry is most identified with writing about Arkansas Razorbacks football at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County).

Edsel Ford, a native of Alabama who spent most of his life in the Ozark hills, died following exploratory surgery that revealed a large brain tumor. Ford’s family had a chicken farm in Avoca (Benton County). He was educated in public schools in Rogers (Washington County) and at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Washington County), where he won the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas award. After military service and a period of working for a petroleum company, Ford tried making a living from poetry but found it difficult and returned to his family’s farm. He edited a poetry column and published some of his own works. At the time of his death, he was beginning to earn national literary attention.

Barry Seal, who had been accused of smuggling the drug methaqualone in 1985 and had moved his fleet of airplanes from Louisiana to Mena (Polk County), was murdered by three Colombians in the parking lot of a Salvation Army halfway house in Baton Rouge, where he was serving a probation sentence. After his drug conviction, he had cooperated with authorities by photographing members of the Medillin Cartel loading cocaine onto his plane. His cover was blown by an article in the Washington Times, most likely leading to his death. His cargo plane, The Fat Lady, which was serviced in Mena, had been shot down in Nicaragua while delivering ammunition and supplies to the Contras for Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had known Seal.

Leachville (Mississippi County) was officially incorporated, although it had been founded in 1896. Leachville’s founding fathers were James Wiseman Honnoll, Joshua Gilbert Leach, and Sam McNamee of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Leach and Honnoll incorporated the Leach-McNamee Land Development Company on March 15, 1898. Honnoll named the town in honor of Leach. Leachville was once known as “The Cleanest Town on Buffalo Island, Where Agriculture and Industry Meet.”

The new Baring Cross Bridge opened in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to a huge community celebration. In April 1927, rains had soaked the Arkansas River Valley and caused the Arkansas River to flood. As the floodwaters reached Little Rock, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company placed coal cars on the old bridge for ballast, but the bridge washed away on April 21. The original bridge was a single-track bridge with a swing navigation span, and it was built with iron and wood. The new Baring Cross Bridge, acquired by Union Pacific in 1997, is a modern steel double-track bridge with a lift navigation span. It remains one of the busiest railroad bridges in the country.

Win “Skinny” Whipple died at his home in Arkadelphia (Clark County) almost a year after having a leg amputated. Today, this former high school and college track and field star is remembered for his 1933 record-setting jump of twenty-four feet. This record, which held for fifty-one years, gained Whipple a posthumous induction into the Arkansas Track & Field Hall of Fame for the overall Arkansas high school long jump record.

Forty-nine boxcars that had been shipped to the United States aboard the merchant ship Magellan arrived in New York Harbor. This Merci Train, which was filled with gifts collected throughout France, was in response to food and supply shipments sent by people from the United States to post–World War II western Europe. Each state received one boxcar containing between 500 and 600 gifts, and one was shared by the District of Columbia and the territory of Hawaii. The one designated for Arkansas arrived in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) on February 13, 1949, and the items were displayed initially at the Rock Island freight depot; later they were displayed at the State Capitol.

Pennsylvania priest Father George Tribou, whose name became synonymous in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with rigorous academics and strict discipline, died. Tribou had served as principal of the Catholic High School for Boys (CHS) from 1966 to 2000. Every year, more than ninety-five percent of CHS graduating students continue their education at universities in Arkansas and across the United States, including such prestigious schools as Yale, Boston University, Stanford, and military academies. With the help of loyal alumni, CHS keeps tuition costs low and provides scholarships for students in need. Approximately seventy-five percent of the school’s students are Catholic, with the remainder coming from other religious traditions. In 2017, CHS had an enrollment of more than 700 students.

John William Conger was born in Jackson, Tennessee. He went on to become president of five colleges, three of which were in Arkansas. While serving as the first president of Ouachita College (now Ouachita Baptist University), he oversaw rapid growth of the school. He held the position for twenty-one years.

The town of Perry (Perry County) was incorporated. Few settlers came to the northwestern side of Perry Mountain before the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad was built in 1898. The depot built at this location was known first as North Perryville, but by the time the post office was established in 1899, the name had been shortened to Perry.

After a turbulent fall semester during the 1957 desegregation of Central High School and the departure of one of the Little Rock Nine, the Little Rock school board petitioned for the beginning date of integration to be postponed. The board later amended its petition to set the postponement date at January 1961, arguing that its plan for integration could not be implemented because of public opposition. The opposition moved to dismiss, arguing that the eight remaining African-American students had become vested in finishing their high school education at Central High.

James Ronald Rodgers Sr., who was the nation’s first African American to be appointed manager of a major commercial airport, the first black head of a major independent city agency in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and the state’s first black commercial loan officer, married Claudia Dennis of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). The couple had two children. Rodgers died in 1993 from complications from a heart attack, and, on August 18, 1994, Southwest Hospital dedicated its magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit to the memory of Rodgers, its former vice chairman of the board. On October 27, 1994, Rodgers was posthumously inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame.

Newsweek reported that inmates at the Tucker State Prison Farm (now the Tucker Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction) in Jefferson County were punished with beatings, whippings, torture with pliers, and needles put under their fingernails, in addition to the use of the Tucker Telephone (a torture device invented in Arkansas that sent electric shock through victims). Much of the abuse was carried out by guards and the prison trusties who reported to them. The 1980 movie Brubaker, loosely inspired by events within the Arkansas prison system, depicts an inmate named Abraham being tortured with the Tucker Telephone.

Artist Natalie Smith Henry died in Malvern (Hot Spring County) and is buried in Oak Ridge/Shadowlawn Cemetery in Malvern. Henry’s works are in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, and in numerous private collections. Like many American artists who received their training during the Depression era, Henry worked in the realist style, emphasizing firm contour lines, clearly described volumes, and recognizable narrative imagery. Over the course of her sixty-year career, she treated a wide range of themes using figural scenes, portraits, landscapes, and still life.

During the Mexican War, the Arkansas regiment was ordered to remove supplies from Agua Nueva ahead of Santa Anna’s approaching army. As the Mexican forces arrived in the area, the Arkansans burned the remaining supplies and fell back to Taylor’s position at Buena Vista to await battle. The Mexican War had been triggered by American expansionism and President James K. Polk’s desire to annex the Republic of Texas as a state. As a frontier state, Arkansas had been called upon early to supply troops after war against Mexico had been declared. By war’s end, about 1,500 Arkansans had served, and Senator Ambrose Sevier of Arkansas had helped settle the peace.

One of the worst fires in Little Rock (Pulaski County) history ravaged several of the most significant structures in the business section of the city. Among the losses were the William B. Wait Building, which housed several firms and newspaper offices. This disaster persuaded Little Rock citizens to organize the Defiance Hook and Ladder Company, a volunteer group of firefighters that served the community for many years.

Historian Dallas Tabor Herndon, despondent over his continued ill health, committed suicide at his home near Mount Vernon (Faulkner County). Herndon wrote many works on Arkansas history and was the first director of the Arkansas History Commission.

Ralph Harold Snyder, who is widely credited with bringing the poultry industry to the Arkansas River Valley, died in his sleep from a heart attack. Snyder, who was born in Kansas, moved to Green Forest (Carroll County) with his family when he was young. He became a top student and student leader in high school, attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) on a scholarship, and later moved to Dardanelle (Yell County), where he established his home. He became a business and civic leader, and his Arkansas Valley Enterprises became the first wholly integrated poultry business to offer its stock for public sale.

The Robinson Center Music Hall, originally known as the Joseph Taylor Robinson Memorial Auditorium, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Opened in 1940, the building underwent extensive renovation in 1973, with underground parking added in the place of the lower performance hall. An attached hotel was erected to the east. At this time, the name was formally changed to the Robinson Center Music Hall. Famous acts continue to appear at the Robinson Center, including traveling Broadway shows such as Les Miserables, Riverdance, and Wicked. Since its renovation, the auditorium seats 2,609.

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry died. Terry inspired audiences in a jazz career that spanned more than seventy years and included work with some of the biggest names in American music. Terry was one of the most recorded musicians in the history of jazz and performed for eight U.S. presidents and served as a jazz ambassador for State Department tours in the Middle East and Africa. Terry moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in 2006 and was active in musical activities associated with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), along with mentoring music students from around the world.

Jonathan Hubble and his wife, Elizabeth Riley of Yell County, became the first Arkansas converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church) when they were baptized by immersion, as is the custom among Latter-day Saints. From that modest 1835 beginning, Latter-day Saints in Arkansas today approach 24,000 members.

Willa Saunders Jones was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Jones grew up in Little Rock during the first decades of the twentieth century before moving to Chicago, Illinois, where she became a prominent religious and cultural leader. Her crowning achievement was a passion play (a dramatization of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection), which she wrote in the 1920s and produced for more than five decades in churches and eventually prestigious civic theaters.

In response to a publicized announcement by David Yancey Thomas, a group of about 100 people from all over Arkansas met in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to organize a permanent Arkansas Historical Association (AHA) and accompanying journal. An earlier association with the same aims had started and disbanded in the early 1900s, when it was in some respects replaced by the Arkansas History Commission, which proved to be underfunded. The objective of the AHA was to “promote interest in the history of Arkansas, to locate, collect, and preserve historical material, and to publish scarce and important source material, and also historical articles, news, and notes.” This was the last time the group met until November 8, 1945, due to the United States’ involvement in World War II.

The first two victims of what became known as the Texarkana Moonlight Murders were attacked. An unidentified assailant often known as the Texarkana Phantom Killer committed a number of murders and assaults in Texarkana (Miller County, Arkansas, and Bowie County, Texas) through the spring of 1946. Five people were killed, and three were wounded. While there was one major suspect, he was never convicted of these crimes. The attacks served partially as the basis for a motion picture, The Town that Dreaded Sundown.

Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock died. Born in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1942, he is believed to have attained the highest number of recorded kills in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. Known to his fellow soldiers as “Gunny,” Hathcock had ninety-three confirmed kills as a sniper during the Vietnam War. Others have had more confirmed kills, but his recorded total is estimated to be more than 300. He was also instrumental in establishing the Marine Corps Scout/Sniper School at Quantico, Virginia, and helped plan its syllabus. He is buried in Woodlawn Memorial Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia.

At age twenty-five, Meriwether Lewis Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, was appointed by President Jackson to be the secretary of the Arkansas Territory, replacing William S. Fulton. Despite his strong connections with many influential families in Virginia, as well as intimate friendships with numerous U.S. presidents, he chose to settle on the Arkansas frontier. He obtained thousands of acres of land in Clark County with the intent of establishing a plantation and making his residence there. His education, family, and social ties offered great promise to the new state, but his contributions were cut short by an early death.

Ground for the Mount Holly Cemetery was deeded by Chester Ashley and Roswell Beebe to the City of Little Rock (Pulaski County). This burial site, located on a four-square block between 11th and 13th Streets from Broadway to Gaines Street, took the place of private family cemeteries and a public burial ground that was located on the grounds of the present-day Federal Building.

The Skirmish at Mrs. Voche’s took place. This skirmish was not a decisive battle resulting in any major loss on either side, but it does represent the irregular warfare that was common in Jefferson County during the Civil War.

Folklorist Vance Randolph was born in Pittsburg, Kansas. Soon after earning his MA in psychology at Clark University, he moved to the hills of Arkansas and spent most of his life writing and studying the folklore of the Ozarks. In March 1962, Randolph married his second wife, Mary Celestia Parler, a folklore researcher and English professor at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He later published a collection of Ozark jokes and jests, Hot Springs and Hell (1965), and Ozark Folklore: A Bibliography (1972). Pissing in the Snow (1976), a collection of bawdy folk tales, became far and away his most popular book.

John “Barnie” Barnhill was born in Savannah, Tennessee. Barnhill was a successful head football coach both at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville but left the most lasting imprint as UA’s athletic director. Barnhill was elected to the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and was among the eight inductees, including Frank Broyles and Clyde “Smackover” Scott, of the first class of the UA Sports Hall of Honor founded in 1988.

Ralph Waldo Armstrong III was born in North Little Rock (Pulaski County). Armstrong photographed the African-American community of Little Rock (Pulaski County) for more than fifty years. Between 1951 and 2006, a period of dramatic social change, he accumulated an invaluable archive of thousands of photographs of Little Rock’s black citizenry, as well as their houses, churches, schools, and professional and civic organizations.

The town of Harrisburg in Poinsett County was officially incorporated after having served as the county seat since 1856. Named for the pioneer family of Benjamin Harris, who came to the area from Alabama by 1830, the town is supported primarily by agricultural interests—wheat, cotton, and soybeans being the main crops. It is the home of the Modern News, the oldest established weekly newspaper in Arkansas. Lake Poinsett State Park is three miles from the city limits, and the Parker Pioneer Homestead, five miles south of town, has a popular collection of buildings and artifacts from pioneer days.

The Hot Springs Airship Company was formed by Joel Troutt Rice and John A. Riggs. “Joe” Rice worked with airships for more than ten years and had two flying-machine patents to his name by 1901. His first creation was The Arkansas Traveler. Riggs, the airship company’s treasurer, convinced Rice to move to New York, where Rice created an improved model, the American Eagle. It, however, never flew, and the legal battle that erupted between Rice and Riggs brought all work to a halt.

Benton County native Field Kindley was promoted to captain. Kindley was the recipient of the British Distinguished Flying Cross and an Oak Leaf Cluster for the American Distinguished Service Cross, and he ranked third in number of aircraft downed for the United States Army Air Service in World War I.

A gas explosion in the tunnels of coal mines near Jenny Lind (eleven miles southeast of Fort Smith in Sebastian County) killed thirteen coal miners. Rescuers tried to reach the miners after the explosion but were hindered by gas fumes. One hundred and twenty-five men had been working in the mine at the time of the explosion; the survivors escaped through the entrance or through another mine.

The South Sebastian County Historical Society (SSCHS) was organized. The society aims to preserve and mark southern Sebastian County landmarks, compile and preserve records of local historical events, maintain a museum to house artifacts, and publish an annual periodical. By 2010, the society had 250 members.

Victoria (Mississippi County) was incorporated. The town was founded in the late nineteenth century by Robert E. Lee Wilson as part of his plantation empire, which also included the Mississippi County communities of Marie, Wilson, and Armorel.

Paul Heerwagen was born in Bavaria, Germany. Heerwagen was an interior decorator who worked out of his Arkansas studios from 1891 to 1931. His work includes hotels, office and government buildings, churches, Masonic temples, and theaters throughout the South and Southwest. Some of his noteworthy projects include the Donaghey and Lafayette buildings and the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock (Pulaski County); the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee; and the Strand Theatre in Shreveport, Louisiana. During World War I, the federal government closely scrutinized Americans of German descent, including Heerwagen. To show his support for the U.S. war effort, he developed a type of paint for use on airplanes to help shed water and ice. He received a letter of commendation for this contribution.