Days in AR History

Patrolman Maurice Neal “Nick” McDonald, a native of Camden (Ouachita County), arrested Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas Theatre, shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The arrest catapulted the McDonald family into the national press. During the arrest, Oswald, who was wanted then for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit, attempted to kill McDonald at point-blank range, but the officer managed to overcome Oswald. For valor in his timely capture of Oswald, McDonald was promoted to the special services bureau and then assigned to the Secret Service protection of Oswald’s widow, Marina, and her two small children.

Members of Significant Structures Technical Advisory Committee, a group appointed by the Little Rock Housing Authority to give advice on the historical and architectural significance of buildings in the MacArthur Park neighborhood, joined other preservation-minded individuals in the community to incorporate the Quapaw Quarter Association. The Quapaw Quarter Association is a nonprofit, membership-based organization dedicated to historic preservation in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Margarete Neel, who became the symbol of the International Red Cross after World War II, died. Neel worked for the Red Cross in the Pacific Theater and the China-Burma-India Theater. While at the 109th Station Hospital in Australia, she was photographed guiding the wheelchair of the wounded Private Gordon Pyle. This photograph was reproduced as a poster for the organization’s post-war funding activities.

The Williford Methodist Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The rectangular, single-story wood-frame building is an excellent example of a vernacular interpretation of Gothic Revival style. Supported on a fieldstone foundation, the building has a total of twelve Gothic-style windows. Each side has four windows, one in the back and three in the front. The front door is bordered by a window on each side. Above the double entrance doors is a lancet window. The roof supports a small pyramid belfry. The interior of the building includes a beaded board ceiling, a raised pulpit, a raised choir platform, and two classrooms.

Harold Alexander was born in Lawrence, Kansas. Alexander was a conservationist and stream preservationist who was a proponent of conservation and wildlife management in Arkansas from the 1950s to the 1980s. The Harold E. Alexander Wildlife Management Area in Sharp County was named in recognition of his service to Arkansas conservation and his long career with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC). He has been called “the father of Arkansas conservation.”

Gene Hatfield, an artist closely associated with the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) in Conway (Faulkner County), was born. Hatfield’s appreciation for thrift and enjoyment of clutter led to his production of art that has made the display of his work in his front yard in Conway the subject of controversy among his neighbors. Hatfield taught drawing, painting, sculpture, crafts and design, as well as art history and appreciation, at UCA for a number of years. Having studied, exhibited, and lived in France, Hatfield’s art exhibits surrealist influences. He uses discarded materials, mechanical parts, and found objects in his sculptural art.

A new lodge at Queen Wilhelmina State Park, modeled after the original hotel on Rich Mountain near Mena in Polk County, was dedicated. Two years earlier, the previous lodge, built and opened in 1963, had been destroyed by fire. This new lodge (the present building and the third lodge at the site) has thirty-eight guest rooms, a restaurant, a number of recreational facilities, and a “Wonder House” built in 1931, which consists of nine levels and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Conway Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Conway Cemetery State Park, near Walnut Hill (Lafayette County) in southwest Arkansas, preserves a half-acre cemetery containing the grave of the state’s first governor, James Sevier Conway. The park is located on grounds that were once part of Gov. Conway’s cotton plantation. None of the plantation’s structures remain, and the earliest graves on the site date from 1845. Conway Cemetery State Park is the second-smallest Arkansas state park.

Little Rock (Pulaski County) native musician Art Porter Jr. died in a boating accident in Thailand. He had just completed a performance at the Thailand International Golden Jubilee Jazz Festival commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s reign. Porter was an extremely talented musician proficient on saxophone, drums, and piano. He was an energetic, engaging entertainer and a creative composer whose work ranged across jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, and ballads. The son of legendary jazz musician Art Porter Sr., he released four albums through Polygram/Verve Records before his death.

Charles “Lucky” Luciano was born Salvatore Lucania in Lercara Friddi, Sicily. Luciano was an Italian-American gangster who was said by the FBI to be the man who “organized” organized crime in the United States. In many ways, he was the model for the character Don Corleone in the popular book and movie, The Godfather (1972). He evaded arrest and survived attempted gangland assassinations only to be arrested in 1936 while vacationing in Hot Springs (Garland County). After his arrest, he was extradited to New York to stand trial. Luciano was sentenced to thirty to fifty years at the maximum security Dannemora Prison in New York. He was deported to Italy in 1946, where he died in 1962.

Scipio Africanus Jones was hired by African-American citizens of Little Rock (Pulaski County) to work with the firm of George W. Murphy, an attorney hired by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to defend the twelve men sentenced to death following the Elaine Massacre. By January 14, 1925, all twelve defendants had been released. Jones described his case as “the greatest case against peonage and mob law ever fought in the land.” As a leader in Little Rock’s black community, Jones was responsible for preventing a repeat of the Elaine Massacre in the state’s capital when he and other leaders persuaded fellow black citizens to avoid confrontation amidst the mob violence surrounding the lynching of John Carter in 1927.

A deadly tornado struck near the town of Wickes (Polk County), killing eight people. While April suffers the most tornadoes on average (291), late fall and winter tornadoes are not at all uncommon in Arkansas. The state also has many night tornadoes, in part due to early sunsets during the winter, but tornadoes in Arkansas occur primarily between the hours of 5:00 and 6:00 p.m.

The first World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest was held on Main Street in Stuttgart (Arkansas County) in connection with the Arkansas Rice Festival. It originated because of a dispute that arose over who was the best duck caller. There were seventeen contestants, and the winner of the event was given a hunting coat valued at $6.60. The competition, which has become a national and international event, is now held every Thanksgiving weekend in Stuttgart. In 1947, the committee began awarding cash prizes. Preliminary contests are held in thirty-eight states and in Canada, and the first-prize winner receives a prize package worth more than $15,000.

Wabbaseka (Jefferson County) native Leroy Eldridge Cleaver, one of the best-known and most recognizable symbols of African-American rebellion, fled to Cuba with his wife after his parole was revoked. A leader of the Black Panthers in the 1960s, Cleaver published several books, including the autobiographical titles Soul on Ice (1968) and Soul on Fire (1978), Eldridge Cleaver: Post-Prison Writings and Speeches (1969), and Eldridge Cleaver’s Black Papers (1969). Cleaver became a born-again Christian in the 1970s, and in 1980, attempted to create a new religion, Christlam, which was a combination of Christianity and Islam. In the early 1980s, he joined the Republican Party and endorsed Ronald Reagan in Reagan’s 1984 presidential reelection campaign. Cleaver died in California in 1998.

The Little Rock and Fort Smith Branch of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad Company was chartered by the State of Arkansas to construct a line west from what would become North Little Rock (Pulaski County) to a point on the Arkansas River in Indian Territory opposite Fort Smith (Sebastian County). It became the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company (LR&FS) on January 22, 1855. Construction was delayed by the Civil War and financial difficulties, and the tracks did not arrive opposite Fort Smith until 1879. The construction of the last few miles was in violation of Indian treaties, so the track was moved back to just north of Van Buren (Crawford County).

Sid Wallace managed to take control of the Clarksville (Johnson County) jail and shoot at citizens from the jail window, killing Thomas Paine, who had testified against him in a murder trial. Wallace, a “noted desperado” attempted to assassinate a Mr. Dickey, a St. Louis drummer (or a railroad foreman, depending upon the source), in the spring of 1872, was suspected of murdering Judge Elisha Mears in 1873, and was convicted of murdering Constable R. W. Ward of Clarksville. Wallace had witnessed his father’s murder by Union soldiers (or by local bushwhackers disguised as Union soldiers) when he was twelve years old and, after his twenty-first birthday, traveled widely to eliminate the men responsible.

Benjamin Travis Laney Jr., thirty-third governor of Arkansas, was born in Jones Chapel (Ouachita County). During his two terms as governor, his most notable achievement was the state’s 1945 Revenue Stabilization Law, which prohibited deficit spending. Though he once said, “I am not a politician,” his conservative views put him in the spotlight at a time when the Democratic Party was becoming more liberal. Although he opposed desegregation, the University of Arkansas School of Law became the South’s first all-white public institution to admit black students during his tenure.

Orval Thomas, who was a teacher, mentor, and role model for most of the television and film industry professionals in Arkansas during much of the twentieth century, was born in Slocum (Saline County). At fourteen, he took a job in Hot Springs (Garland County) with a photography studio editing 15mm movies, such as of birthday parties and weddings, for wealthy people. He worked with all three network television studios in Little Rock, as well as with motion picture producers and well-known actors. He served in India during military service and traveled with Winthrop Rockefeller on campaign trips for governor. In the 1980s, he became an instructor in the Department of Film, Radio and Television at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He was also the first projectionist at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival at its inception in 1992. Thomas died in 2012.

Arkansas’s only Medal of Honor recipient for actions in the Vietnam War, Nicky Bacon, was born in Caraway (Craighead County), although his financially struggling family moved to Arizona in the 1950s. In addition to winning the Medal of Honor, Bacon served for more than a decade as the director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs, championing many programs for Arkansas’s veterans and playing an instrumental part in the erection of a memorial honoring all of Arkansas’s Medal of Honor recipients.

A grand jury indicted escaped slave Nelson Hackett for grand larceny, and Governor Archibald Yell made a formal request to Canadian authorities for Hackett’s extradition four days later. Hackett was an Arkansas slave whose 1841 escape to Canada (then a colony of Great Britain) led to a campaign by his owner to have him extradited to the United States on charges of theft as a way of getting around the legal sanctuary that Canada provided to fugitive slaves. Hackett’s extradition aroused the ire of abolitionists on both sides of the border and ultimately resulted in a limitation of the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty’s extradition provision.

The first group of Italians hired by Austin Corbin to work his plantation at Sunnyside (Chicot County) came to the United States aboard the Chateau Vquen and docked at the port of New Orleans. When they arrived at Sunnyside, the immigrants were faced with contaminated water, poor sanitation, mosquitoes, and disease and eventually left for northwest Arkansas under the leadership of Father Pietro Bandini, who founded Tontitown (Washington County) as their refuge.

Hugh Anderson Dinsmore, the first Arkansan from Benton County appointed as a U.S. foreign minister, and Governor Jeff Davis, who was running against Dinsmore’s friend Senator James H. Berry for his U.S. Senate seat, became embroiled in a physical altercation at the Washington Hotel in Fayetteville (Washington County). News accounts said the clash was over a letter Dinsmore claimed the governor stole, said letter being written by Berry to Dinsmore. At one point, Dinsmore pulled a gun and “pistol-whipped” the governor. No shots were fired, and neither man was arrested.

Owney Madden, gangster and underworld boss in New York City in the 1920s, married a Hot Springs (Garland County) gift-shop clerk, Agnes Demby, the daughter of the local postmaster. Madden had retired to Hot Springs in the 1930s. Though his role in Arkansas politics and history will forever remain enigmatic, he was a powerful figure (from about 1935 until his death in 1965) during the heyday of illegal gambling in Hot Springs and an emblem of the bad old days of machine politics.

Folk singer-songwriter Jimmy Driftwood, who was born in Stone County, married former student Cleda Johnson. Driftwood gained national fame in 1959 when Johnny Horton recorded Driftwood’s song “The Battle of New Orleans,” but he continued to live in Stone County and promote the music and heritage of the Ozarks. After his marriage, Driftwood continued to teach at area schools as well as write songs and play folk music. In 1947, the couple purchased the 150-acre farm where they would live the rest of their lives. Among other accomplishments, Driftwood formed the Rackensack Folklore Society, helped create the Arkansas Folk Festival in Mountain View, and was a leading force in the establishment of the Ozark Folk Center.

Norman Baker was born in Iowa. Baker is best known in Arkansas as a promoter of alternative medicine who settled in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) in 1936 and was convicted of mail fraud in 1940. Anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic, he was also a radio pioneer and a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat and for governor of Iowa.

Some 40,000 Arkansans visited the new state capitol as the cornerstone was laid. The monumental neo-classical structure of the Arkansas Capitol gave rise to political controversy during its construction (which spanned over fifteen years) but has generally been praised since its completion in 1915.

The Polk County Possum Club held a banquet attended by 106 people. At the banquet, J. I. Alley called the opossum the “greatest peacemaker on earth,” adding, “the potential and far reaching value of the Possum Club in the future cannot readily be visioned here tonight.” The Polk County Possum Club (PCPC) began with a challenge issued to local hunters of opossums (commonly called “possums”) in 1913 and henceforth hosted yearly banquets of opossum meat and side dishes until 1947, though it was active again for five years in the 1990s.

Ground was broken for the Fargo Agricultural School in Monroe County. Floyd B. Brown founded the school to provide the equivalent of elementary and secondary vocational education for African-American students. The school was for both day and residential students and was modeled after the Tuskegee Institute, which Brown attended, where students learned practical skills intended to help them achieve success and economic security. By the 1940s, enrollment approached 200 students.

More than 200 masked and robed men drove through Smackover in cars, carrying signs that warned “gamblers and others of the lawless element” to leave the area within twenty-four hours. The vigilantes, possibly members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), killed at least one person, shot at others, and destroyed buildings, and there were widespread reports of floggings and even cases of people being tarred and feathered. This multi-day riot mirrored other vigilante actions in the newly established oil fields in Arkansas.

The Faulkner County Courthouse building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was nominated for its architectural significance at a local level. The Faulkner County Courthouse, located at 801 Locust Street in Conway (Faulkner County), consists of brick and concrete masonry construction standing four stories tall. This building blends Colonial Revival and Art Deco styles, with the Colonial Revival details including the arched fanlight windows, accentuated front door, and classic pilasters. The Art Deco style has been artfully merged into it, evidenced by the smoothly rising vertical projection above the straight roofline, as well as the decorative accents on the building, such as the corner quoins and the symmetrical façade.

One of Arkansas’s larger tornado outbreaks hit the state. While Arkansas is not normally included on maps of the infamous Tornado Alley—which is usually considered to stretch from north Texas up through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska—the state has suffered many devastating tornado outbreaks. Most tornadoes hit in April, but fall and early-winter storms are not unusual. Between 1997 and 2007, tornadoes in Arkansas killed fifty-six people, injured 964, and caused $700 million in damage.

The Engagement at Cane Hill, the prelude to the Battle of Prairie Grove, took place. Union brigadier general James G. Blunt, with 5,000 men and thirty cannon in the Kansas Division of the Army of the Frontier, surprised 2,000 Confederate cavalry and six cannon under Confederate brigadier general John S. Marmaduke while they were gathering supplies. The nine-hour struggle covered about twelve miles over the wooded, rocky terrain between Cane Hill (Washington County) and the Cove Creek valley. While it was a Union victory, casualties were light on both sides. Blunt’s decision to remain at Cane Hill set in motion the entire Confederate force at Fort Smith (Sebastian County), leading to the Battle of Prairie Grove.

The current version of the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs (Garland County) was completed. Designed by George R. Mann, primary architect of the Arkansas State Capitol, the structure was located across the street from the previous building, which was completely destroyed by fire in 1923 while officials and guests watched, thinking that the blaze was under control. Always among the largest hotels in the state, the Arlington is one of the most recognizable landmarks associated with Hot Springs and its bathhouse district, and it has been a destination, throughout its history, for the wealthy and famous, including infamous gangster Al Capone, baseball great Babe Ruth, humorist Will Rogers, singer Kate Smith, and movie star George Raft.

Arkansas’s first state park, located on Petit Jean Mountain in Conway County, was dedicated. Early development was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which, from 1933 to 1938, constructed roads, buildings, bridges, lakes, and trails that are still in use today. Most of the existing CCC structures, which were built in the rustic architectural style, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Mather Lodge, a twenty-four-room guest facility, is one of the most significant CCC structures in the state and is the only lodge built by the CCC in an Arkansas state park. The natural beauty of Petit Jean inspired the creation of the state park system.

Author Richard Nathaniel Wright died of a heart attack. He was cremated along with a copy of his most famous work, the autobiographical Black Boy, which was a controversial bestseller that opened the eyes of the nation to the evils of racism. Born in Roxie, Mississippi, in 1908, Wright moved with his mother and brother to Elaine (Phillips County) in 1916. Wright wrote fiction and nonfiction. His many works, influenced by the injustices he faced as an African American, protested racial divides in America.

Morris Kevin Hayes was born in the small town of Jefferson (Jefferson County), just outside Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). As a keyboardist, Hayes worked with superstars such as Prince, George Clinton, Elton John, Whitney Houston, and Stevie Wonder. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2013.

Senator John McClellan died in Little Rock (Pulaski County). McClellan served longer in the U.S. Senate than any other Arkansan and was one of its most powerful members. Under McClellan’s leadership, the Senate conducted some of its most significant investigations, including probes into the activities of such men as Jimmy Hoffa, Dave Beck, and Billie Sol Estes.

Ouachita County was founded, named after the Ouachita River. Its county seat is Camden. The county has been home to a thriving paper industry, as well as Grapette Soda, Camark Pottery, and the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot. Ouachita County also provided Arkansas with three governors: George Washington Hays, Benjamin Travis Laney Jr., and David Hampton Pryor.

The twelfth governor of Arkansas, William Read Miller, died. The Batesville (Independence County) native was the first Arkansas governor born in Arkansas, and, as governor, Miller acted to preserve civil rights for African Americans and to advance the cause of public education. Granted an honorary degree in 1880 by Arkansas Industrial University—now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County)—which was apparently the first granted to an Arkansas governor, he was known to have been outside the state only four times and then only for short periods. Despite the length of his service, no collection of Miller papers exists, and he rarely corresponded with other politicians on the leading issues in his four decades of service.

Al Allen was born in Steele, Missouri. Allen was a painter whose contributions to Arkansas culture were his artwork, his teaching, his development of the Department of Art at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and two autobiographical books. His mature work is of idealized man-made structures, often with windows, bathed in bright light. His style presents realistic subjects in a classical and abstract way. Former U.S. senators Dale Bumpers and David Pryor both displayed Allen’s works in their Washington DC offices, and two of Allen’s works hung in the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Thelma Mothershed Wair, one of the Little Rock Nine, was born in Bloomberg, Texas. She attended Dunbar Junior High School and Horace Mann High School before becoming one of nine African-American students to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Despite daily tormenting from some white students, she completed her junior year at the formerly all-white high school. Because the city’s high schools were closed the following year, she earned the necessary credits for graduation through correspondence courses and by attending summer school in St. Louis, Missouri.

During the Central High School desegregation crisis in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the Arkansas State Press, a newspaper founded by civil rights pioneers L. C. and Daisy Bates, noted in a front-page editorial, “The Negro is angry, because the confidence that he once had in Little Rock in keeping law and order, is questionable as the 101st paratroopers leave the city.” The State Press was the sole newspaper in Arkansas to demand an immediate end to segregated schools.

Adolphine Fletcher Terry was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Terry was a civic-minded woman from a prominent family who worked to improve schools and libraries and fought sexism and racism in the Old South. She was a leader of the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), which sought the re-opening of Little Rock’s high schools following the decision of Governor Orval Faubus to close them rather than integrate them. The Adolphine Fletcher Terry branch of the Central Arkansas Library System is named for Terry.

The small community of Olyphant in Jackson County was the scene of one of the last train robberies in Arkansas. Eight men hijacked an Iron Mountain Railroad train, robbing the passengers and killing the conductor. The robbers were captured, tried, and found guilty. Three were sentenced to be hanged in 1894 in the only known incident of multiple executions in Jackson County.

The last train robbery in Arkansas took place in the small town of Olyphant (Jackson County), when bandits robbed the seven-car Train No. 51 of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, which was pulled off to a side track so that the Cannonball Express, a much faster train, could pass. What followed was a sensationalized manhunt and the execution of three bandits involved in the incident.

Sid Umsted died from injuries he suffered in a train wreck. Umsted, known as the “Father of the Smackover Oil Field,” drilled the first well in the Smackover (Union County) area, resulting in Arkansas’s largest oil discovery. In 1925, the Smackover field produced over 77 million barrels of oil and was the largest oil field in the nation at that time.

Hope (Hempstead County) native Bill Clinton was elected the forty-second president of the United States for the first of two terms. He is the only person from Arkansas ever elected to the office of president. His election as president in 1992 was followed by the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history, but he was president during a period of intense partisanship. Throughout his political career, he demonstrated an ability to bounce back from defeats and scandal. His presidency was beset by numerous investigations, one of which resulted in his becoming the first elected American president to be impeached. Still, he left office in 2001 enjoying high popularity.

Polk County, named for President James K. Polk, was separated from Sevier County by the legislature. Located on the western edge of Arkansas, Polk County was home to the comedy team of Lum and Abner, country singer T. Texas Tyler, and the controversial Commonwealth College. The 1860 census gave the Polk County population as 4,090 whites and 172 African-American slaves. Slaves were not widely used in Polk County because the mountainous terrain was not good for row crops, though some corn, wheat, oats, and cotton were farmed early on. Hunting and timber attracted many of the early settlers, who came principally from Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

Swiss-German Catholic priest and missionary Father Eugene John Weibel wrote to the Vienna, Austria–based Leopoldine Society, reporting that when he had first arrived in Pocahontas (Randolph County), less than twenty years before, only eighteen Catholics lived in the town, and there was no other priest for 150 miles. In those twenty years, he had built fifteen churches and chapels, seven schools, and five convents. Seven priests and sixty sisters served an area he once covered alone. While Weibel maintained that he hated to beg, he also reported that when a small child in Paragould (Greene County) swallowed a coin, a child nearby spontaneously exclaimed, “Call Father Weibel. He can get money out of anyone.”

Blues great Robert Nighthawk was born Robert Lee McCollum in Helena—present-day Helena-West Helena (Phillips County). Nighthawk was among the most remarkable slide guitarists in blues history, widely admired among his peers and the Southern audiences he spent his life entertaining. Nighthawk influenced a generation of bluesmen such as Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Earl Hooker, and supposedly Elmore James. He was the archetype of the rambling bluesman, roaming all over the South with frequent trips to the North, though he chose Helena as his home base. This rambling nature and his decision to remain in the South likely explain why Nighthawk never achieved greater fame.