Days in AR History

Pierce Winningham “Mac” McKennon, a talented musician more widely remembered as a famous World War II flying ace, was born in Clarksville (Johnson County). After graduation from high school in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), he attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Washington County) but left because of poor academic performance. He later left the U.S. Air Corps because of lack of aptitude. In Canada as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he excelled as a pilot and later became a member of the Eagle Squadron in Shropshire, England. After transferring to the U.S. Air Force as a second lieutenant, he was shot down behind enemy lines in France and Germany. In both instances, he made spectacular escapes.

David Auburn was born in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in Ohio and moved with his family to Arkansas in 1982. Auburn is a Tony Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning American playwright, screenwriter, and director best known for his 2000 play Proof, which he also adapted for the screen, and for the screenplay for the film The Lake House. In high school in Arkansas, Auburn worked for local professional companies in such jobs as stagehand or assistant to the lighting designer. Auburn has been awarded the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a New York Critic’s Circle Award.

Archibald Yell was inaugurated Arkansas’s second governor. A charismatic Jacksonian Democrat, Yell, as governor, clashed with the state legislature on more than one occasion, primarily over his attempt to investigate the two state banks for their freewheeling ways, and he ended up resigning in 1844 before his term was up. Yell won a seat in Congress in 1844 but returned to Arkansas at the onset of the Mexican War and ended up dying at the hands of Mexican lancers at the Battle of Buena Vista.

Evander McNair was promoted to brigadier general in the Confederate army. McNair was a prosperous antebellum merchant in Mississippi and Arkansas, a Mexican War veteran, and a Confederate general who ranks among Arkansas’s most successful and respected Civil War commanders, perhaps most noted for the efficient leadership of his brigade in Dyer’s Field during the Battle of Chickamauga.

Tracks from St. Louis, Missouri, reached the Missouri–Arkansas state line and the Cairo, Arkansas and Texas Railroad (CA&T) track. Today’s Union Pacific Railroad line from the Missouri state line through Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Texarkana (Miller County) was constructed by the Cairo and Fulton Railroad (which became CA&T in 1872). Over a period of more than 100 years, the Cairo and Fulton merged first into the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern (StLIM&S), then into the Missouri Pacific, and finally into today’s Union Pacific. As the first railroad to connect Arkansas to Missouri and the eastern United States, the Cairo and Fulton opened up the state for development.

Work began on the current Little Rock City Hall. From 1929 to 1942, the third floor of the building was home to the Museum of Natural Science and Antiquities, precursor to the Museum of Discovery. Thompson’s original design included a dome, but a popular vote in 1955 decided that it should be torn down; it was demolished in 1956.

The Leo N. Levi Hospital was founded in Hot Springs (Garland County). The hospital was named after distinguished attorney Leo Napoleon Levi (1856–1904), a beloved past president of the national B’nai B’rith. Today, it is a nonprofit hospital that offers mental and physical therapy for the residents of Hot Springs and surrounding communities.

William Leake Terry died in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Terry was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fourth District of Arkansas from 1891 to 1901 and had previously served on the city council and in the Arkansas Senate.

John Charles Floyd died in Yellville (Marion County). Floyd was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Third District of Arkansas in the Fifty-Ninth through the Sixty-Third Congresses, serving from 1905 to 1915.

Lockesburg (Sevier County) native Effiegene Locke Wingo began her service in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the second of only four women from Arkansas to be elected to the position. She introduced eighteen bills and served on three House committees during her congressional service.

Leo Patrick McLaughlin married Florence Paul of Texas on the day after his second marriage ended. They divorced in 1936. “Missing” court documents and the fact that several of his siblings never married only added to the intrigue felt by the citizens of Hot Springs (Garland County) regarding McLaughlin’s marriages. McLaughlin, who reigned as mayor of a corrupt Hot Springs for almost twenty years (1927 to 1947), was the undisputed boss of Garland County politics. During his time in office, many underworld characters frequented Hot Springs’ spas, and gambling became one of the town’s most popular forms of entertainment. Even today, many recall McLaughlin as one of Hot Springs’ most memorable personalities.

Civil rights activist Daisy Bates died of a heart attack at Baptist Medical Center. Bates gained national and international recognition for her courage and persistence as a mentor to the Little Rock Nine, the nine African-American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1957. She and her husband, L. C. Bates, also published the Arkansas State Press, a newspaper dealing primarily with civil rights and other issues in the black community.

The Grand Lodge of Tennessee instituted Washington Lodge Number 82 in Fayetteville (Washington County) after a period of dormancy in Arkansas Freemasonry. As Arkansas moved toward statehood, Freemasonry entered a period of rebirth. Soon after statehood was granted, three more lodges were established: in 1837, the Grand Lodge of Louisiana instituted Western Star Number 43 in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Morning Star Number 42 at Arkansas Post (Arkansas County), and the Grand Lodge of Alabama established Mount Horeb in Washington (Hempstead County).

Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, later the highest-ranking Irish-born officer in American military history, boarded the ship Bridgetown for America, landing in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Christmas Day. Cleburne entered the Civil War as commander of the Yell Rifles, which became part of the First Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He became a drugstore owner and lawyer in his new Arkansas hometown of Helena (Phillips County) and was a delegate to the Democratic Convention in 1858. Cleburne County was named for him when it was established in 1883.

Dandridge McRae was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. McRae went on to command a brigade at the December 7, 1862, Battle of Prairie Grove (Washington County) and at Helena (Phillips County) on July 4, 1863. Following the Battle of Helena, General Theophilus H. Holmes, the Confederate commander at Helena, accused McRae of “misbehavior before the enemy” for allegedly failing to make an attack. A court of inquiry disagreed, clearing McRae of all charges. After the war, McRae returned to Searcy and resumed his law practice, which he continued until 1881, when he became deputy secretary of state. The town of McRae (White County) is named in his honor.

James Camp Tappan was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Tappan had joined the Confederate army and was commissioned colonel of the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry Regiment in May 1861. The Thirteenth Arkansas first saw action under Tappan at the Battle of Belmont, Missouri, under the command of General Leonidas Polk, who commended Tappan on his military skills during the engagement. Tappan was a Confederate general, lawyer, and politician from Helena (Phillips County). After the war, he established a law firm in Helena (Phillips County) with Major J. J. Horner and was reelected to the state House of Representatives in 1897, serving until 1900, including a stint as speaker of the house from 1897 to 1898.

Lucien Coatsworth Gause died in Jacksonport (Jackson County). Gause was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the First District of Arkansas in the Forty-Fourth and Forty-Fifth Congresses, serving from 1875 to 1879.

Scholar and linguist Ben Kimpel was born in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). A professor of English at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), Kimpel wrote the definitive biography of the eighteenth-century novelist Samuel Richardson with UA colleague Duncan Eaves.

Geologist George William Featherstonhaugh married Sarah Duane of Schenectady, New York. Featherstonhaugh was appointed to make a geological survey of Arkansas, and as he did, he recorded life in the early Arkansas Territory, later publishing his observations as Excursion Through the Slave States.

Nathaniel “Preacher” Doke married his second wife, sixteen-year-old Charlotte House, in Bloomfield, Indiana. Doke was a Benton County pioneer, evangelist, entrepreneur, and benefactor. The Methodist exhorter “talked from his heels” in a sincere, convincing manner and was also a master carpenter, blacksmith, farmer, hunter, and fiddler. By the turn of the century, Doke had married for the third time and fathered a total of twenty-three children, six of whom were borne by House.

B. S. Petefish organized the first Polk County Possum Club banquet, which was held at the Hotel Mena. The “sumptuous meal” featured baked opossums (commonly called “possums”) and all the trimmings, with a dash of “fun, nonsense and good fellowship.” The Polk County Possum Club began with a challenge issued to local hunters of opossums 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.

By a margin of 108,991 to 63,406, Arkansas voters approved a proposed amendment to the Arkansas constitution to outlaw the teaching of the theory of evolution in any school that received state funds. Passage of this act made Arkansas the only state in the Union to outlaw such teaching by initiated act.

Overflow National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect one of the remaining bottomland hardwood forest tracts in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Located in Ashley County, it is part of the National Wildlife Refuge System administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service under the Department of the Interior. These bottomland forests are used by a huge contingent of migratory birds including waterfowl, wading birds, raptors, and songbirds. Original refuge land acquisitions were limited to forested bottomlands only, as they were in eminent danger of being drained and cleared for agriculture. The refuge has been officially designated a globally Important Bird Area (IBA) by the American Bird Conservancy.

The future Philander Smith College began as Walden Seminary in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Named for Freedmen’s Bureau activist John Walden and located in the Wesley Chapel Methodist Church at 8th Street and Broadway, it was designed to educate black ministers. The Reverend Thomas Mason, its first president (serving from November 1881 to May 1897), moved the school in 1882 to a new campus at 10th and Center streets. This move was made possible by a public plea for gifts to the school. Responding to an article published in the Christian Advocate in 1882, Adeline Smith of Oak Park, Illinois—the widow of Philander Smith, “a liberal giver to Asiatic Missions”—donated $10,500 to Walden Seminary, which was promptly renamed Philander Smith College.

Jack Fleck was born on the outskirts of Bettendorf, Iowa. Fleck won one of most improbable victories in golf history with his 1955 U.S. Open playoff victory over perennial golfing great Ben Hogan, an established star on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour who had previously won four U.S. Opens. Fleck was an unknown who had been playing regularly on the PGA Tour for less than a year when he recorded his historic victory. Fleck moved to Arkansas in 1988, opening the Lil’ Bit a Heaven Golf Club in 1992.

Johnny Sain, an Arkansas-born star major league pitcher who is widely considered to have been the best pitching coach in major league baseball history, died in Downers Grove, Illinois, from complications from a stroke. He is buried in his hometown of Havana (Yell County). Sain had unique (and still controversial) approaches to working with pitchers, the success of which earned him the respect and affection of his charges. As a pitcher, he won 139 games, the third-highest total for an Arkansas native; only Dizzy Dean, with 150 victories, and Lon Warneke, with 192, won more.

The citizens of Bella Vista (Benton County) voted by a two-to-one margin for incorporation. In unison with the incorporation vote, town government elections were held for eight positions (mayor, recorder/treasurer, city attorney, and five aldermen). Census Bureau statistics show that the percentage of residents age sixty-five and older dropped in 2000 to 21.4 percent from 49.1 percent in 1990. Children of school age in Bella Vista accounted for 19.1 percent of Bentonville School District students in 2006. In 2006, the Bentonville School District began construction of an elementary school on the east side of Bella Vista to accommodate 750 students. Bella Vista has changed from a retirement community to a bedroom community, primarily for the Walmart Home Office and nearby Walmart vendor companies.

Mike Beebe was elected Arkansas’s forty-fifth governor with an overwhelming majority of the vote. Beebe received 55.6 percent of the vote, holding Asa Hutchinson to only 40.7 percent; each of the two other candidates received approximately two percent of the vote. Beebe’s victory also had great geographical reach; he lost only fifteen of the state’s seventy-five counties. His campaign emphasized a mixture of progressivism on economic issues (strong support for reducing the state’s sales tax on groceries, for raising the state’s minimum wage, for universal access to pre-kindergarten educational opportunities, and for maintenance of the state educational standards) and traditionalism on cultural issues (strong support for private property rights and gun ownership rights).

Mulberry (Crawford County) was incorporated. With the coming of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad in 1876, a permanent settlement near its path had been desired. According to Goodspeed’s Biographical & Historical Memoirs of Northwestern Arkansas, Thomas A. Carter bought the land east of the main road to the river—a road that later became Mulberry’s Main Street—from the heirs of Allan Miller. Carter erected the first home in 1874; Quesenbury and Company built the first business house in 1876. The city was situated in Maxey Township. Mulberry was located in Franklin County until 1895, when Crawford County received the township, by act of the legislature, in exchange for building a bridge over the Mulberry River.

William Henry Grey died in Helena (Phillips County). Grey emerged as a leader of African Americans in Arkansas after he settled in Helena in 1865. His involvement in politics included being a Republican member of the 1868 state constitutional convention and a member of the Arkansas General Assembly, as well as serving as the Commissioner of Immigration and State Lands. In 1872, he became the first African American to address a national nominating convention, seconding the nomination of Republican presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant.

The First U.S. Army Rangers Battalion went into action during World War II as part of Operation Torch under the command of Major General Lloyd Redendan. The Rangers were an elite commando unit organized and trained by then-Major William Orlando Darby from Fort Smith (Sebastian County). They served a distinguished role in the invasion of Italy and Sicily. Darby became known as an exemplary leader who received many military honors and was promoted posthumously to brigadier general, the only soldier to have received that distinction.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a proclamation classifying the area previously known as the Eastern Arkansas Grazing Recreation Wildlife Area as the St. Francis National Forest. The land had been transferred to the U.S. Forest Service in 1954. The land covers 11,462 acres in Lee County and 9,628 acres in Phillips County for a total of 21,090 acres. The St. Francis Scenic Byway, which runs through the area, is situated in one of the nation’s smallest national forests and takes its name from the St. Francis River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, which parallels the eastern boundary of the St. Francis National Forest.

Voters approved the proposal to initiate a four-mill tax to finance construction of East Arkansas Community College (EACC), a comprehensive two-year college dedicated to meeting the educational needs of its service area in eastern Arkansas. The college, located in Forrest City (St. Francis County), has served as a leader for social and economic improvement and continued growth in the region.

Jim Guy Tucker, who later became Arkansas’s forty-third governor, married Betty Allen; they had four children. Tucker’s administration carried Arkansas from the end of the Bill Clinton administration—during which Tucker essentially acted as governor the last year because of Clinton’s campaigning for president—to the beginning of the Mike Huckabee gubernatorial administration, which remained in power long enough to be stopped only by term limits. In his personal life, Tucker weathered political challenges, survived health problems, and faced a criminal indictment.

Congressional delegate Henry Wharton Conway died from wounds he had sustained in a duel on October 29 with Territorial Secretary Robert Crittenden. The duel took place after animosities following a tumultuous campaign for Congress between Conway and Robert Oden were aggravated by supposed insults made by Conway. In the duel, which took place on the east side of the Mississippi River because dueling was illegal in Arkansas Territory, Conway’s shot grazed Crittenden’s coat, but Crittenden shot Conway in the rib, causing an injury that eventually led to his death. The Crittenden-Conway duel was just one of many between Arkansas politicians and others over the years; the practice did not end until 1863.

Susie Pryor was born in Camden (Ouachita County). She was the first woman in Arkansas to run for a political office after women obtained the vote and was one of the first women to hold a seat on a local school board. She also participated in one of the first historic preservation projects in the state, was the mother of David Pryor (who served as governor of Arkansas and U.S. senator), and was the grandmother of Mark Pryor (who served as Arkansas’s attorney general and was elected U.S. senator in 2002). She was nominated as Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1975.

Mary Frances Files Silitch, the first woman to be editor-in-chief of a national aviation magazine, was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). A licensed pilot, she has flown 250 kinds of aircraft and logged 5,000 hours of flight. In 2006, she received the top journalism award of the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA). She is the first woman to win the NBAA Platinum Wing Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism Excellence. On October 28, 2010, Silitch was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame.

The first Arkansas Livestock Show began, held in conjunction with the Arkansas State Fair. The show was held in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) for five years on land given by the city, but after a massive fire destroyed all its buildings shortly after the end of 1942’s fair, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seized the land for its World War II efforts. The show and fair were moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in 1943. No show or fair were held in 1944 and 1945 because of demands and shortages related to World War II. In 1945, Little Rock (Pulaski County) offered land on Roosevelt Road for the state fair.

Prominent Methodist minister, educator (elected one of the nation’s youngest college presidents), and publisher Alexander Millar died in Little Rock (Pulaski County). In addition to his tireless promotion of education, Millar advocated the conservation and development of the state’s natural resources and recommended improvements in its railroads and highways. He was chairman of the state’s first Good Roads Convention, and his activities helped lead to the state constitutional amendment authorizing counties to levy road taxes. Later, he was appointed to the state forestry commission.

A supposed fossilized baby, which was later revealed to be a carved stone statue, was dug up in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) by a cohort of Henry Johnson. Johnson was a Scottsville (Pope County) merchant who closely modeled his deception on the nationally famous Cardiff Giant. The 1880 discovery was not revealed as a hoax until 1948. The find was exhibited locally and then around the state, generating money for its creators. Within a year, the carving—known variously as the “Eureka Baby,” the “Petrified Indian Baby,” or as a Hindu idol—had been exhibited in St. Louis, Missouri; Galveston, Texas; and New Orleans, Louisiana. It was also reportedly en route to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC at the time of its disappearance.

The first school for black children in Hope (Hempstead County) opened in a one-room building on South Hazel Street, with Henry Clay Yerger, an African American, as the only teacher. A few years later, Yerger built Shover Street School. Yerger was later instrumental in securing funding for his educational projects from the General Education Board, the Rosenwald Foundation, and Smith-Hughes and Slater Funds; in 1918, he built a dormitory to house girls who wanted to attend high school. A teacher-training summer school that Yerger established in 1895 continued until 1935.

The town of Gillham (Sevier County) was incorporated. Originally founded as Silver City, it was relocated and renamed with the arrival of the railroad in the area. The main highway through Gillham is the concurrent route of U.S. Highways 59 and 71.

Bonnie Parker, of the famous criminal duo Bonnie and Clyde, was born. Arkansas was frequented by Parker, Clyde Barrow, and their associates, collectively known as the Barrow Gang, between 1932 and 1934. The gang’s criminal exploits in Arkansas included murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery, and automobile theft. Western Arkansas was also on the circuit of back roads Barrow used to evade lawmen from other states.

The War Relocation Authority (WRA) initiated a new, comprehensive “leave” or “resettlement” program for the incarcerated Japanese Americans in the ten relocation camps around the country. All classifications of leaves were subject to specific conditions and could be denied or revoked at any time. The WRA’s leave and resettlement program met with limited success; each month usually fewer than several hundred well-qualified and socially acceptable Japanese Americans were able to clear the elaborate process and earn the right to live in relative freedom outside the camps. As with all relocation centers, the two Arkansas camps were mainly able to resettle only the young, college-bound, well-educated, or well-connected Japanese Americans.

Arkansas Travelers general manager Bill Valentine, who was an umpire in the American League from 1963 to 1968, ejected Detroit Tigers pitcher Dave Wickersham, who was going for his twentieth win, after Wickersham violated a rule against players touching umpires. Valentine was also known as one of the few umpires who would call New York Yankee Mickey Mantle out on borderline pitches, and he was one of only two who ever threw Mantle out of a ballgame.

Dandridge McRae was born in Baldwin County, Alabama. McRae was a Searcy (White County) attorney who, during the Civil War, rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Confederate army and led troops in most of the major battles in Arkansas. Following the war, McRae held various state and federal government positions and was active in promoting the state. The town of McRae (White County) is named in his honor.

With its main building complete, St. Johns’ College in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the first college in Arkansas to receive a charter, began its classes with about fifty students. By this time, two other chartered colleges in Arkansas were holding classes: Arkansas College in Fayetteville (Washington County) and Cane Hill College at Cane Hill (Washington County). The Civil War halted the college’s success. The three professors enlisted in the Confederate army, and many of the students followed. The Grand Lodge gave permission to the Confederate forces in Little Rock to use the college as a hospital, and they erected eleven buildings. When Union general Frederick Steele took Little Rock on September 10, 1863, the Union army also used the college and its campus as a hospital.

President Theodore Roosevelt was featured as the key speaker at an early incarnation of the Arkansas State Fair, which was held at Oaklawn Park Racetrack in Hot Springs (Garland County).

The position of Poet Laureate of Arkansas was established by concurrent resolutions of both houses of the General Assembly. In Arkansas, as elsewhere, the title of poet laureate is generally awarded on grounds not restricted to fame or literary eminence; none of the best-known or most distinguished Arkansas poets have received the title. The term “laureate” refers to the ancient custom of crowning a person with a wreath made from leaves of the laurel tree. In antiquity, military heroes, athletic champions, and winners in singing, music, and poetry contests typically received this honor. In modern times, monarchs, governing bodies, or other organizations have named poets laureate, often in recognition of a significant talent but sometimes for political or other reasons.

About 2,000 people celebrated the nation’s first Peace Day with a rally at the State Capitol in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Hundreds more rallied in thirty-six towns across the state. Peace Links Worldwide, an independent organization with the goal of making people aware of the threat of nuclear war, sponsored the Arkansas rallies, as well as rallies in six other states and Washington DC. Betty Bumpers, wife of Arkansas senator Dale Bumpers, founded Peace Links. Betty Bumpers said at the Little Rock rally, “We must find better ways to live together or we will find better ways to die together.”