Days in AR History - Starting with S

Paul E. Maxwell, an artist and sculptor, was born into a farm family in Frost Prairie (Ashley County). Maxwell developed a stencil technique to create thickly textured and layered surfaces and objects of “stencil casting” that came to be known as “Maxwell Pochoir.” Maxwell’s family moved when he was nine years old to Bastrop, Louisiana, but he began at an early age to consider himself an artist and felt that the soil and environment around Frost Prairie may have influenced the kind of art he later developed. Maxwell has lectured, taught, and exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. One of his sculptures, “Regimenta,” is in the permanent collection of the Arkansas Arts Center.

Virginia Lillian Morris Johnson turned down an offer to serve on the state Democratic Committee on Revision of Party Rules because of the committee’s intention to force local Democrats to give support to national Democratic candidates. Johnson had been the first woman to run for the office of governor in Arkansas. Running as a conservative Democrat, Johnson had campaigned against six other Democrats, all male, vying to be the candidate to run against the Republican incumbent, Winthrop Rockefeller, in the gubernatorial race of 1968. She did not win the Democratic nomination, and Rockefeller was reelected.

Wesley Clark announced his first bid into politics from Little Rock (Pulaski County), running for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was successful in raising money, mostly via the Internet, but time for planning a run was limited. A centrist candidate who supported the pro-choice and affirmative action initiatives, Clark called for the repeal of the George W. Bush tax cuts and promoted a new national healthcare program and the restructuring of the “war on terrorism” through improved relationships with other countries.

Hendrix College, which had been known as Central Collegiate Institute since its establishment fourteen years earlier as an ungraded school in Altus (Franklin County), formally opened its academic year after having been relocated to Conway (Faulkner County) by vote of the board of trustees the previous spring. Bidding for selection as the new site was based on pledges of financial support and land and was hotly contested by several Arkansas cities. From an initial enrollment of twenty pupils in 1876, the school has grown into one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the nation.

Five French-speaking nuns from Ottawa, Canada, arrived in Hot Springs (Garland County) after Bishop John Baptist Morris inquired about the possibility of members of the order of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge opening a home for underprivileged girls. The sisters established and operated several schools, including a private school, a school for African-American children, and a junior high school, and, for more than fifty years, supplemented their income by operating a laundry. The group received notoriety in 2007 when the diocesan administrator announced that six of the ten sisters had been formally excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because of their association with a Canadian group called the Army of Mary, whose founder claimed to be a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.

The Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County, one of two World War II–era incarceration camps built in the state to house Japanese Americans, opened. The Japanese-American population, of which sixty-four percent were American citizens, had been forcibly removed from the West Coast of the United States under the doctrine of “military necessity” and incarcerated in ten relocation camps in California and various states west of the Mississippi River. This marked the largest influx of any racial or ethnic group in the state’s history.

Arkansas native Maurice “Footsie” Britt, who was the first person in American history to have been awarded all the American military’s top awards for participation in a single war, gave the dedication speech for War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. The stadium was named to honor those who had lost their lives in World War I and World War II. Britt, who had fought with distinction in Europe during World War II, had lost his right arm in 1944 when an artillery shell exploded near him. After returning to Arkansas and civilian life, he was elected lieutenant governor twice during Winthrop Rockefeller’s tenure as governor.

The Beatles finished a concert at Memorial Coliseum in Dallas, Texas, and immediately boarded a plane owned and operated by Reed Pigman, who owned a ranch in Alton, Missouri, that would serve as a vacation getaway before the group’s final U.S. concert of the year, which would be in New York. Before traveling to Alton, the Beatles made a brief stop in Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County), whose airport provided the ideal spot for the group to change planes before heading to Missouri. Also, the Beatles could avoid the crush of screaming fans by landing at a secluded airport at the edge of a small town. The plane landed in Walnut Ridge shortly after midnight.

Boswell School was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The school was constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the mid-1930s. The structure built by the WPA is a rectangular, single-story, fieldstone masonry classroom building with a central porch on the western end with a large projecting gable roof. The school was in use until the 1950s, when Boswell School District No. 66 was consolidated with Calico Rock School District No. 50.

The first stagecoach to deliver transcontinental mail service, the Butterfield Overland Express, entered Fort Smith (Sebastian County) over old Washington Street, which today is 2nd Street, and was greeted with music, cheering, and cannon fire, which continued until the coach left for California.

Stone County native Richard Ewing (Dick) Powell married Joan Blondell, his second wife. The marriage ended in 1944. His marriage to June Allyson, however, on August 19, 1945, lasted until Powell’s death. An ambitious man always pursuing new avenues for his creativity, Powell was a musician, actor, and director who experimented with different media (radio, film, and television) at a time when not many did. The films of which he was a part ranged from 1930s comical musicals to 1940s films noir.

William Overton, who served as U.S. district judge from 1979 to 1987, was born in Hot Spring County. Overton was known for the clarity of his writings and his ability to get to the heart of a question. He became known especially for rulings in the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education case, which declared the teaching of creationism in public schools to be unconstitutional. Also notable was the case of Donovan v. Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation, in which it was ruled that the foundation must pay minimum wages, rather than compensation of only room and board, to young workers who were followers of a quasi-religious group.

A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses was attacked in Little Rock (Pulaski County). After being refused permission to gather at Traveler Field in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) for a local convention, the Jehovah’s Witnesses met at a service station on Asher Avenue in Little Rock. Recognized by area workers, they were attacked and severely beaten; some were also shot. Police arriving to break up the disturbance arrested only the Jehovah’s Witnesses, allowing their attackers to remain free.

Dan Hampton was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A defensive star for the Arkansas Razorbacks football team and for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL), Hampton earned the nickname “Danimal” for his intense style of play. Earning All-American honors in college and Pro-Bowl recognition during his professional career, Hampton is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the University of Arkansas Sports Hall of Honor, and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

The Skirmish at Quitman was fought. This skirmish took place in conjunction with the early stages of Major General Sterling Price’s Missouri Raid. Following up on a report that a forty-man Confederate detachment crossed the Arkansas River at Dardanelle (Yell County) on August 29, with a supply of ammunition intended for Brigadier General Joseph Orville Shelby’s command, Colonel Abraham H. Ryan of the Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) ordered a patrol led by Captain Archibald D. Napier of Company I and First Lieutenant George P. Carr of Company G. Ryan reported no Federal casualties in the engagement.

A fire destroyed more than two-thirds of the business district of Wynne (Cross County), slowing its development. Damage was estimated at $200,000, but the buildings were quickly rebuilt. Wynne had become the headquarters for construction of the railroad being built from Bald Knob (White County) to Memphis, Tennessee, in the summer of 1885, and had developed into a “typical Western town.” With five saloons in Wynne, men working with the railroad drank and gambled for leisure. By 1887, Wynne had grown with six general stores, seven groceries, two drugstores, two hotels, three doctors, one jeweler, one blacksmith, one lawyer, a gentlemen’s furnishing store, two saloons, two barbers, and two meat markets.

The existing Romanesque St. Mary’s Church in Altus (Franklin County) was dedicated. From 1879 to 1902, the congregation had met in a wooden structure. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, more commonly known as St. Mary’s Church, was founded in Altus in 1879. It has been located atop Pond Creek Mountain, better known as St. Mary’s Mountain, since its inception. The congregation was founded by and for immigrants from Germany and Switzerland. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and the Kulturkampf (religious persecution) of the 1870s in Germany drove many Catholics out of Europe and to the Altus region of Arkansas.

The Pottsville Citizens Bank, with a capital stock of $15,000 and $140,000 in deposits, opened for business. The bank prospered and, unlike many others, was able to remain open during the Great Depression. In the mid-1930s, the southeastern corner of the building also had a barbershop. A community gathering place, the bank also served as a polling site during elections.

William T. Dillard was born in Mineral Springs (Howard County). Dillard was the founder of Dillard’s, Inc., one of the nation’s largest fashion apparel and home-furnishings retailers. From an $8,000 investment in a single store in Nashville (Howard County), Dillard built a retail chain with more than 300 stores in twenty-nine states. In 1999, Dillard was among the first four Arkansas business leaders inducted into the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame. Dillard died at the age of eighty-seven in Little Rock (Pulaski County). He often said, “Business without integrity is not good business—and in the long run will not be successful.”

Baseball star Sue Kidd was born in Choctaw (Van Buren County). Kidd gained local fame with the athletic prowess she displayed—including a deceptive curve ball—while playing on and against all-male baseball teams in Van Buren County and surrounding areas. As a student at Clinton High School, Kidd pitched so well that she was allowed to play on the high school boys’ baseball team in 1949. She is best known in the county for pitching all nine innings of a winning game in 1949 at the age of fifteen. After her athletic career ended, Kidd attended Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway (Faulkner County), now the University of Central Arkansas.

After peaceful desegregation the previous year, thirteen African American students attempted to enroll in the Van Buren (Crawford County) public schools for the 1958–59 school year. Because of continuing unrest in Little Rock (Pulaski County) over desegregation, however, the mood had changed considerably. The black students were met by jeering white students carrying hateful signs. The desegregation of Van Buren schools produced several national headlines and is one of Arkansas’s most intriguing episodes of compliance with—and defiance against—the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas school desegregation decision.

Commandant Alexandre de Clouet reported that everybody at Arkansas Post had come down with a fever as a result of high water; archaeologist Samuel Dorris Dickinson surmises that this might have been an early instance of typhoid in Arkansas, from the fact that the settlement’s drinking water was polluted. Typhoid is among the earliest diseases reported in Arkansas and was a significant public health problem up through the early twentieth century. Though it became less common in the modern era, typhoid had a significant impact upon state health in times and places where poor sanitation was the norm.

Helen Martin King was born in Powhatan (Lawrence County). A highly educated woman, she studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the Ohio Mechanical Institute, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans, Louisiana. She developed the almost-forgotten craft of rug hooking and became a designer, teacher, and businesswoman, creating thousands of original designs. In 1940, an article appeared about her in Life magazine, and she was featured in National Geographic magazine in 1946.

Gene Lyons was born in New Jersey. Lyons became an award-winning author, columnist, and political commentator, living in Arkansas and writing a nationally syndicated column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, among other publications. He authored several books and served as co-author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (2000), which was made into a documentary film in 2004.

Two to three hundred Beatles fans descended on the Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County) airport in anticipation of the Beatles’ return (the group had made a brief stop in Walnut Ridge two days before to change planes on their way to vacation at a ranch in Missouri). The plane that had carried the group from New York on September 18 sat on the runway waiting for them. After many false alarms, a small commuter aircraft with John Lennon and Ringo Starr landed. At the same time Lennon and Starr ascended the steps to the larger plane, a truck holding George Harrison and Paul McCartney pulled up next to it. All four quickly boarded and left for New York for their last U.S. concert of the year.

The federal government announced plans to consolidate unprocessed Cuban refugees at Fort Chaffee to spare them the cold winters of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In mid-September, fewer than 3,000 refugees who had fled from the port of Mariel, Cuba, seeking political asylum remained at Fort Chaffee near Fort Smith (Sebastian County). The American government then moved refugees from other centers to raise the Cuban population of Fort Chaffee to more than 8,300. Governor Bill Clinton is among those who felt that the association of the Cuban refugee problem with his term in office contributed to his defeat for reelection by Frank White.

The gravesite of Hattie Caraway was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, the first to preside over a session of the Senate, the first to chair a committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing. The gravesite was placed on the National Register under Criterion B for national significance and Criterion C for being the grave of a historical figure of outstanding importance.

Operations at Arkansas State Normal School, now the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), began. UCA was created by the passage of Act 317 of 1907 as Arkansas State Normal School, the only institution of higher learning in the state created for the sole purpose of teacher training. UCA has been one of Arkansas’s leading institutions of higher education for more than 100 years. By 2020, students could choose from more than 160 degree and certificate options, which include undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs.

Country singer Arkie Shibley was born in Van Buren (Crawford County). Shibley was best known for recording the original version of “Hot Rod Race” in 1950. The song is included in the book What Was the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Record? as one of fifty recordings that were influential in the origination of rock and roll. According to the book’s authors, the song’s importance lies in the fact that “it introduced automobile racing into popular music and underscored the car’s relevance to American culture, particularly youth culture.”

In its “Religion” section, Time magazine referred to “the Battle of Jonesboro.” The town had made headlines in the New York Times for what became known as the Jonesboro Church Wars. Following fiery preaching by evangelist Joe Jeffers, two opposing factions, one described as fundamentalist and the other as more moderate, fought each other in the streets, and gunfire was exchanged before order was restored. Local police were of little use as they wanted to join the fight by taking sides. Governor Harvey Parnell called out the National Guard and ten state policemen to keep peace. The guardsmen stood ready with machine guns and fixed bayonets, and an airplane bearing tear-gas bombs circled the town.

Sidney Alvin Moncrief was born in a housing project in rural western Little Rock (Pulaski County). Moncrief is one of the greatest basketball players ever to come out of Arkansas. While playing guard for the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) from 1975 to 1979, Moncrief was named Southwest Conference Most Valuable Player and went on to help lead the Razorbacks to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament and ultimately to the NCAA Final Four in 1978. After college, Moncrief was picked in the first round of the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, where he went on to be a five-time NBA All-Star.

The first Daisy Airgun Museum was dedicated. The museum consisted of six upright cases and two flat display cases housing antique airguns from Europe as well as an excellent representation of Daisy Manufacturing’s product, dating to the 1880s. The current Daisy Airgun Museum in historic downtown Rogers (Benton County) attracts visitors from all over the world, due in part to the popularity of the Daisy BB gun that was once a staple of childhood in America. People visit in order to experience Daisy’s history and to buy unique collectibles and souvenirs.

Charles M. McDermott was born in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. McDermott was a doctor, minister, plantation owner, Greek scholar, charter member of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and inventor. He was a regular contributor to the Scientific American, and he was among the first to advocate the germ theory of disease. While visiting Mississippi, McDermott had heard of the rich land in Arkansas’s Chicot County and traveled to investigate it. He bought a large tract of land, which is now in Dermott (Chicot County), in 1834 and established a plantation. After living in cabins on the bank of Bayou Bartholomew for seven years, the McDermotts moved into their new home, Bois D’Arc, which was designed after Louisiana houses of the period.

Bob Burns, a popular radio and movie personality of the 1930s and 1940s, who became widely known as a “hillbilly” philosopher and created a unique musical instrument that sounded like a “wounded moose,” married his first wife—Elizabeth Fisher, who died in 1936. The couple had one child. During his career, Burns worked in radio, played on Paul Whiteman’s show, appeared with Bing Crosby on NBC’s Kraft Music Hall radio show, starred in movies, and appeared with many other well-known performers such as Rudy Vallee and Dick Powell.

Ernest Green was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). He made history as the only senior of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African-American students who, in 1957, desegregated Central High School in Little Rock. The world watched as they braved constant intimidation and threats from those who opposed desegregation of the formerly all-white high school. Green’s place in Arkansas’s civil rights history was solidified when he became the first black student to graduate from the previously all-white Central High School.

Time magazine wrote of Arkansas journalist Gene Wirges, “Once war was declared, Wirges waged it with unabating belligerence.” Wirges is noted for his crusade against the influence over Arkansas politics exerted in the early 1960s by Governor Orval Faubus and his political ally Sheriff Marlin Hawkins of Conway County. As a crusading editor and good-government advocate, Wirges, along with his wife, Betty, allied themselves with the forces of reform at serious personal risk. Principally as editor of the Morrilton Democrat, as well as other local papers, Wirges led a campaign for better government and honest elections, which resulted in lawsuits, criminal prosecution, physical altercations, and—allegedly—a contract on his life. His chief nemesis, Hawkins, vehemently denied being involved in such activities.

The William Frazier House, or Frog Level, near Magnolia (Columbia County) was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was constructed in 1852 by William Frazier, a native of Ireland. According to some, the name “Frog Level” was suggested by B. F. Askew because of the noise created by the numerous frogs in the river bottoms near the house. Others suggest that the plantation house may have stood at the center of a settlement named Frog Level, much like similar settlements in North Carolina and other southeastern states, and that as the settlement declined due to the growth of Magnolia, the name was transferred to the one house. The house is one of the few remaining antebellum plantation homes in southwestern Arkansas.

The Franklin County Courthouse in Ozark was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Franklin County Courthouse for the Northern District, located at 211 West Commercial, 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.

A Baxter County segment of the Fort Smith to Jackson Road was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Fort Smith to Jackson Road was one of several “military roads” the U.S. Congress funded during the 1830s to improve transportation in territorial Arkansas. The John Benge detachment of Cherokee traveled in 1838 during the Trail of Tears over the Baxter County segment.

The Arkansas State Parks, Recreation, and Travel Commission met and voted to change the Old Washington Historic State Park’s name to Historic Washington State Park. The name change followed the approval of the park’s new master plan at the commission’s February 2006 meeting. These changes were approved in an effort to promote the community more effectively to visitors. Historic Washington State Park is one of fifty-two state parks operated by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism. This park primarily exists to preserve and interpret the history of the city of Washington (Hempstead County), emphasizing its political, cultural, and architectural history in the nineteenth century.

The town of Letona (White County) was incorporated. First rising to prosperity as a stop on the Missouri and North Arkansas (M&NA) Railroad, Letona became a center of the timber industry and of agriculture, primarily fruit. Three structures in the town were listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the hotel, a corn crib, and the Wesley March House.

Harding College began operations as a four-year college in Morrilton (Conway County). It was a combination of two struggling two-year schools—Arkansas Christian Academy of Morrilton and Harper College of Harper, Kansas. Initial enrollment was 248 students, only seventy-five of whom were college level. The school, which has grown into the largest private educational institution in Arkansas, is now known as Harding University and has well over 4,000 students, in addition to maintaining campuses in Florence, Italy, and Athens, Greece, and providing programs in five other foreign countries.

Swiss-German Catholic priest and Arkansas missionary Father Eugene John Weibel was on route to Europe after a brief visit to Arkansas, where he celebrated the fifty-year jubilee of his ordination. He would never to return to America. In 1919, he had begun writing his account of his years in Arkansas, later titled, Forty Years Missionary in Arkansas. By 1922, he had returned to Europe, serving as a prison minister in Lucerne, Switzerland. In 1927, he published in German his account of his Arkansas career. He died on March 3, 1934, at the Benedictine monastery in Einsiedeln.

Roy Buchanan was born in Ozark (Franklin Country). Buchanan was a guitar innovator whose skill inspired an aptly titled documentary, The Best Unknown Guitarist in the World. For more than thirty years, the guitarist melded blues, country, jazz, and rock music into a unique sound. The guitar innovator never achieved major commercial success, but he had a great influence on many guitarists, including Jeff Beck, Danny Gatton, and Robbie Robertson.

The Little Rock Nine entered Central High School through a side door. The mob outside, which was controlled only by the Little Rock (Pulaski County) police, became unruly when it learned of the students’ entry, and the Nine had to be escorted back out of the building. In response to the disturbances, Little Rock mayor Woodrow Mann asked the federal government for assistance, and President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730, sending units of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock and federalizing the Arkansas National Guard.

During the Whitewater scandal, a federal grand jury indicted David Hale, a municipal judge who ran a small-business lending company called Capital Management Services. In July, Paula Casey, the new U.S. attorney in Little Rock appointed by President Bill Clinton, had obtained a federal search warrant for Hale’s Little Rock offices. The next day, FBI agents raided the offices. Hale had advanced $2.04 million to thirteen dummy corporations that he controlled. Hale’s business also had extensive transactions in the 1980s with James and Susan McDougal, Jim Guy Tucker, and several prominent Republican officials. After his indictment, Hale alleged that Clinton had a secret interest in one of his illegal loans and had pressured him to make it, although no records ever supported this.

Meriwether Lewis Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson and friend of Andrew Jackson, died of malaria at age twenty-seven. He fell ill on a trip to acquire supplies for winter. He served as the last secretary of the Arkansas Territory. Despite his strong connections with many influential families in Virginia, as well as intimate friendships with numerous U.S. presidents, Randolph 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.

William J. Baerg—a naturalist, entomologist, and teacher who served thirty-one years as head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County)—was born. His research on black widow spiders, tarantulas, scorpions, and other arthropods led to descriptions of their behavior, biology, and natural history that had previously been largely ignored by biologists and entomologists. Baerg occasionally used himself as an experimental subject to test the effects of venom on humans, in one case allowing himself to be bitten repeatedly by a black widow spider; he lived to be ninety-four years old.

The town of Rison (Cleveland County) was incorporated. When the railroad was routed through the county in 1882, Rison did not exist. Samuel Wesley Fordyce of Huntsville, Alabama, a former Union army officer, was authorized to determine the route of the railroad from Texarkana (Miller County) to Birds Point, Missouri. According to unsubstantiated legend, when the leading citizens of Toledo (Cleveland County) snubbed his plans to route the railroad through that community, he planned a route three miles north through land that later became the town of Rison.

The Ronald Reagan administration announced plans to retire the Titan II Missile program. The Titan II Missile program was a Cold War weapons system featuring fifty-four launch complexes in three states. Eighteen were in Arkansas, from which intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nine-megaton nuclear warheads could be launched to strike targets as far as 5,500 miles away. Two of the most noteworthy disasters that occurred in the Titan II program took place in Arkansas. The first happened on August 9, 1965, when fifty-three civilian workers perished in an accidental fire while they were modifying Launch Complex 373-4. The second occurred on September 19, 1980, when an explosion destroyed the missile at Launch Complex 374-7 near Southside in Van Buren County.