Days in AR History

Pianist Floyd Cramer was born in Campti, Louisiana, near Shreveport. Cramer—who spent most of his childhood in Huttig (Union County)—was one of the creators of what became known as the Nashville Sound, a forerunner of the slick, upscale pop/rock that emerged in Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1990s. Cramer released fifty solo albums, had a classic hit in the song “Last Date” in 1960, and accompanied Elvis Presley on such rock and roll hits as “Heartbreak Hotel.” He was a longtime friend of Chet Atkins and performed with other music luminaries, including Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold, the Everly Brothers, Perry Como, and Roy Orbison. In the 1980s, he recorded a hit version of the theme from the Dallas TV series. Cramer died in 1997.

Original Tuskegee Airman Milton Pitts Crenchaw was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. Crenchaw was one of the first African Americans in the country and the first from Arkansas to be trained by the federal government as a civilian licensed pilot. He trained hundreds of cadet pilots while at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in the 1940s and was the catalyst in starting the first successful flight program at Philander Smith College in Little Rock (Pulaski County) from 1947 to 1953. His combined service record extends for over forty years of federal service from 1941 to 1983 with the U.S. Army (in the Army Air Corps) and eventually the U.S. Air Force.

John Newton Sarber was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sarber was a Union soldier who remained in Arkansas after the Civil War and served in the state Senate, where he introduced a number of influential bills, including those creating the public school system and what is now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He also served as U.S. marshal of the U.S. Western District Court at Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Logan County was originally named Sarber County in his honor.

A combined force of approximately 1,000 men from Colonel James O. Gower’s First Iowa Cavalry (US) and Colonel John F. Phillips’s Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry (US) of Brigadier General Francis J. Herron’s Army of the Frontier attacked a Confederate camp at Oxford Bend in Washington County, four miles east of Fayetteville. There, they engaged approximately 3,000 cavalrymen commanded by Colonel Jesse L. Cravens of Major General Thomas C. Hindman’s Trans-Mississippi Corps (CS). After this one-hour engagement, Federals reported five wounded (including one mortally wounded), while Confederate casualties numbered eight killed and seven wounded.

George William Stanley Ish, who became a highly respected African-American physician in both black and white medical communities, was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County); his parents were both prominent educators. Ish, who first wanted to be an engineer, became a physician because he recognized the great need for medical service in the community. He attended public schools in Little Rock and received degrees from Talladega College in Georgia and Yale University. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He was on the staff at Arkansas Baptist Medical Center and St. Vincent Infirmary and was a member of Pulaski County and Arkansas medical societies. He was largely responsible for establishment of the McRae Memorial Hospital in Alexander (Pulaski County).

Benton county native Field Kindley, in his final action near Bapaume, France, made his twelfth kill, a Fokker. 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.

Winkley Bridge at Turney’s Ferry, one of three bridges over the Little Red River, collapsed, killing five people. The bridge was known locally as “Swinging Bridge” and had become something of a tourist attraction after it was closed to vehicular traffic in 1972.

The Arkansas State Quarter officially entered circulation at Murfreesboro (Pike County). The quarter was designed by Dortha Scott of Mount Ida (Montgomery County) and features a diamond flanked by depictions of rice and a mallard duck, with a background of trees and a body of water.

The most famous and perhaps the most tragic duel in Arkansas took place between Robert Crittenden, territorial secretary and acting governor, and Henry Conway, who was running for reelection to Congress against Robert Oden. Tempers flared early in the election. Letters published in the Arkansas Gazette fanned the flames, and the feud continued even after Conway’s victory. When Conway called Crittenden a liar, Crittenden sent Conway a challenge. The two met for the duel just across the Mississippi River from Montgomery’s Point at the confluence of the White and Mississippi rivers. Conway fired first but only grazed Crittenden’s coat. Crittenden’s first shot struck Conway, and he died eleven days later. Many duels and fights centered on the Conway-Oden election and its aftermath.

Albert Edward Brumley Sr. was born in Indian Territory near present-day Spiro, Oklahoma. Brumley was one of the most successful American gospel song composers of the twentieth century, penning such standards as “I’ll Fly Away,” “I’ll Meet You in the Morning,” “If We Never Meet Again,” and “Turn Your Radio On.” Between 1926 and 1931, he studied, lived, and worked at the Hartford Music Company in Hartford (Sebastian County) under the tutelage of its founder, Eugene Monroe (E. M.) Bartlett. Although Bartlett died in 1941, Brumley forever credited him as the chief mentor and inspiration behind his music and eventually purchased the Hartford Music Company in 1948.

Ernie Deane was born in Lewisville (Lafayette County). Deane—journalist, teacher, historian, and folklorist—was best known for his newspaper columns “The Arkansas Traveler” and “Ozarks Country.” He taught journalism at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and was a proponent of restoring Old Main to its historical character at the UA campus. Deane often said to his students, “I was trained in the old journalistic school of striving for accuracy, clarity, honesty, courage, fairness, completeness, and timeliness.” The Ernie Deane Award is presented annually for the journalist or writer whose work “best exemplifies the spirit, style, and courage of Ernie Deane.”

Novelist William Harrison was born in Dallas, Texas. Harrison established the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1966. As advisor to the university literary magazine, he actively opposed censorship and defended academic freedom. However, he is probably best known for writing the screenplay to the 1975 movie Rollerball, based upon his short story.

Orean Lencola Sullivan was born in Morrilton (Conway County). Sullivan broke many color barriers in Arkansas, including being the first African American to win the Miss Arkansas Pageant (1980). In September 1980, Sullivan competed in the Miss America Pageant and was the fourth runner-up in the national pageant, the highest placement achieved by a Black contestant up to that time. In 2006, Sullivan was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.

Mike Ross, congressman for the Fourth District of Arkansas, read a statement into the Congressional Record for the first session of the 108th Congress, honoring the design contributions made by Dortha Scott of Mount Ida (Montgomery County) for the Arkansas state quarter. Scott was recognized at the Arkansas quarter launch ceremony held at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro (Pike County).

Arkansas State Gazette owner Christopher Columbus Danley died, after having revived the paper earlier in the year with William Holtzman after it had suspended operation during the Civil War. Holtzman continued alone to produce the paper, which had recently been called the Arkansas State Gazette and the Little Rock Daily Gazette, a non-partisan publication. In poor health, Holtzman sold to William E. Woodruff Jr., the son of its founder, in 1866. Woodruff added steam presses and changed the name back to the original Arkansas Gazette, which it would bear until its demise. After Reconstruction began in 1867, the Gazette became a leader in the Democratic opposition, advocating any means necessary to end Republican rule.

Fay Templeton died in San Francisco, California, where she had moved to live with a cousin. Born into a theatrical family during a tour in Little Rock (Pulaski County), Templeton excelled on the legitimate and vaudeville stages for more than half a century. At age three, Templeton, dressed as Cupid, sang fairytale songs between the acts of her father’s plays. Gradually, she was incorporated into the productions as a bit player and then, at age five, had actual lines to recite. At age eight, she played Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at New York’s Grand Opera House. As an actress, singer, and comedian, she was a favorite headliner and heroine of popular theater. She is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.

President Jonn F. Kennedy dedicated Greers Ferry Dam and Reservoir on the Red River near Heber Springs (Cleburne County). The master of ceremonies for the dedication was Representative Willbur D. Mills. Construction on the dam began in 1959, bringing employment and economic growth to the area. The dam was completed in 1962 at a cost of about $46.5 million.

Al Capp, creator of the Lil’ Abner comic strip, spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony for a development that was to become Dogpatch USA, an entertainment park with an Ozarks theme. The 835-acre theme park had an initial cost of $1,332,000 and had many original buildings, which were disassembled, cataloged, and reassembled authentically. The park opened in 1968. Jess Odum bought controlling interest in the operations, upgraded some facilities, and hired former governor Orval Faubus as general manager. After years of successful operation, decline of the project began when unfavorable interest rates on loans and added competition from larger and more sophisticated entertainment projects nearby put a strain on the business. The final season was in 1993.

William Jefferson Clinton, governor of Arkansas, announced that he would run for president in 1992. He received forty-three percent of the popular vote to incumbent George H. W. Bush’s thirty-eight percent and Independent Party’s Ross Perot’s nineteen percent; he won even more decisively in the Electoral College, 370 to 168.

Fort Curtis was dedicated. Fort Curtis was a major Union army fortification located in Helena (Phillips County) during and immediately after the Civil War. It is best known for being part of the Federal defenses at the July 4, 1863, Battle of Helena.

Clifton Clowers, the subject of the song “Wolverton Mountain,” was born in Center Ridge (Conway County). The song, written by Clowers’s nephew, Merle Kilgore, tells the story of a man who keeps would-be suitors away from his daughter, being “mighty handy with a gun and a knife.” It became a number-one hit country song in the 1960s. According to his neighbors, however, the real-life Clowers was nothing like the man in the song.

Hugo Bezdek, football coach at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), was greeted by a crowd of excited students at the Fayetteville train station. His underdog team had scored a major victory on the road, defeating Louisiana State 16-0. Coach Bezdek shouted to the delighted crowd that their team had performed “like a wild band of Razorback hogs.” The crowd loved the comparison to Arkansas’s ferocious wild boar, with its ridged back and fierce fighting ability, and, in 1910, the students voted for the official university mascot to be changed from the Cardinals to the Razorbacks.

Otto Ernest Rayburn died in Fayetteville (Washington County). Rayburn was a writer, magazine publisher, and collector of Arkansas and Ozark lore. Noted folklorist Vance Randolph once wrote of Rayburn, “There is no denying that, in the period between 1925 and 1950, Rayburn did more to arouse popular interest in Ozark folklore than all of the professors put together.”

Ground was broken for Mid-South Community College (now ASU Mid-South), located in West Memphis (Crittenden County). The two-year public institution serves Crittenden County and the surrounding area. The school offers programs and services that enable students to get better jobs, contributing to the development of the workforce necessary to attract new business and industry to the east Arkansas Delta area.

The first induction ceremony for the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame was held in the exhibition hall of Robinson Auditorium. The Arkansas Black Hall of Fame was founded in 1992 by Charles O. Stewart and Patricia Y. Goodwin as a means of recognizing the best and brightest African Americans with Arkansas roots. Each year, six individuals from diverse fields of endeavor are singled out and recognized for their contribution to African-American culture and to the nation.

Sam Houston received citizenship in the Cherokee Nation after having arrived in Arkansas Territory following his resignation as governor of Tennessee because of the collapse under “mysterious circumstances” of his marriage to eighteen-year-old Eliza Allen. Houston had joined the band of John Jolly, chief of the Cherokee in Arkansas, whom he described as his adopted father. He served as the chief’s representative in negotiations between tribes and is given credit for helping many bands resettle in Arkansas and present-day Oklahoma.

Bruce Bennett was born in Helena (Phillips County). As attorney general of Arkansas, Bennett authored legislation to bypass federal desegregation orders, including acts “designed to harass” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Later in his career, he became infamous for his part in the securities fraud scandal involving the Arkansas Loan and Thrift.

The North Hills Exceptional School began with five children, but it tripled its enrollment by the end of the first year. It later became the North Hills Services for the Handicapped. The Sylvan Hills Junior High graduated its first class in 1954. Sherwood has several public schools and magnet schools; the public schools are part of the Pulaski County Special School District. The William Jefferson Clinton School, opened in Sherwood in 1995, was the first school in the country named after President Bill Clinton. Although the schools in Sherwood were segregated in the town’s early years, desegregation was not a major issue. White students now have only a slight majority in the schools, even though the population of Sherwood is seventy-five percent white as of the 2010 census.

The Menard-Hodges Site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Menard-Hodges Site, located in Arkansas County near Lake Dumond, is part of the Arkansas Post National Memorial. It is widely considered to have been the first location of Arkansas Post and also a location of the Quapaw village Osotouy. Recent research indicates that the site is part of the historic eighteenth-century landscape, but the precise location of the village and post have yet to be pinpointed. Two large mounds and several smaller house mounds are still evident at the site, as are the locations of nineteenth-century French family farms. The site is closed to the public.

The Gannett Corporation, owner of USA Today and several other newspapers, purchased the Arkansas Gazette. Gannett brought in a steady stream of company executives who tried to revamp the Gazette with color photographs, jazzier stories, and more emphasis on soft news and features. Readers took umbrage at many of the changes, and Walter Hussman and his Democrat used their advantage of being the locally owned product, although such innovations as color photography had been a staple of the Democrat for some time. Gannett eventually sold the Gazette to Hussman, and, on October 19, 1991, the first issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was published.

Sallie Stockard was born in Alamance County, North Carolina. Stockard was a historian, author, and frontrunner in the fight for equality of women in education. Her book The History of Lawrence, Jackson, Independence and Stone Counties of the Third Judicial District of Arkansas is a valued source of early Arkansas history. This book, often referred to as “The Arkansas Book,” was one of the earliest regional history books to be researched locally and to quote the pioneers extensively.

Lillian Dees McDermott, a social worker and community leader in Little Rock (Pulaski County), was born. Referred to as the “dean of social workers in Arkansas,” she was the first person in Arkansas to become a certified professional social worker. McDermott was named Little Rock’s most useful citizen in 1936. The Pilot Club named her woman of the year in 1942 for her work with members of the armed forces and their families. In 1961, McDermott was elected woman of the year in Greater Little Rock in the Arkansas Democrat’s annual poll.

Elizabeth Eckford was born. She made history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine African-American students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The image of fifteen-year-old Eckford walking alone through a screaming mob in front of Central High propelled the crisis into the nation’s living rooms and brought international attention to Little Rock (Pulaski County).

The town of Oakhaven (Hempstead County) was incorporated. Originally built as housing for officers serving at the Southwestern Proving Ground during World War II, Oakhaven never had a post office or a school. Across the highway from Oakhaven, military buildings were converted into a steel manufacturing plant.

Arkansas Children’s Colony, a state-supported full-residential facility designed to care for mentally handicapped children, was dedicated in Conway (Faulkner County) on 400 donated acres. Accommodations were designed for as many as 1,000 children. The institution, renamed the Conway Human Development Center in 1981, served such a need that five other such institutions were opened in other parts of the state (although the facility in Alexander closed in 2011). In past years, it has also served to care for children who needed to be quarantined, as with cases of German measles, and has expanded to care for some who have physical limitations. While the facility continues to offer a residence and provide habilitative and medical care for qualifying children, the approximately 500 residents of Conway Human Development Center are primarily adults.

Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families (AACF) was incorporated. The charter was signed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sharon Pallone, and Betty Lowe. The nonprofit policy advocacy organization was modeled after the Children’s Defense Fund. AACF advocates for programs and policies that help Arkansas’s low- and middle-income families, including better access to high-quality preschool programs, affordable health coverage, a tax system that benefits working families, and juvenile justice reforms that focus on the rehabilitation of youthful offenders.

Verna Lee Hinegardner was appointed Arkansas’s poet laureate by Governor Bill Clinton, serving until 2003. She created the “minute,” a poetry form consisting of sixty syllables in rhyming couplets. The titles of some of her collections indicate her wry sense of humor, love of nature, and strong ties to family and friends: The Ageless Heart (1974), Mud and Music (1976), One Green Leaf (1978), and Seven Ages of Golf (For Women) (1980). In 2003, Governor Mike Huckabee appointed Peggy Vining of Little Rock (Pulaski County) to the position of Arkansas’s poet laureate. Before this time, the poet laureateship had been considered a life appointment. A small storm of publicity resulted, but in the end, Vining’s appointment stood.

Louis Betts was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Betts was a painter active in the first half of the twentieth century in the United States, especially noted for his portraits. The subjects he chose and his skill with handling paint gave his work a grand and conservative quality, recalling Old Master paintings from the Baroque era as well as styles popular in late-nineteenth-century European art centers.

Nancy Pearl Johnson was born in Prescott (Nevada County). When she was six years old, her family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County), where she attended Little Rock’s public schools. Nancy Pearl Johnson Hall was the first woman to be elected to a constitutional office in Arkansas. A staff member to several agencies and constitutional officers of state government, she was appointed to succeed her husband C. G. “Crip” Hall as secretary of state upon his death and went on to be elected state treasurer by the voters.

Rockabilly musician Billy Lee Riley was born in Pocahontas (Randolph County). Riley’s career began in the Arkansas Delta and peaked in the 1950s after he signed a record deal with Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded many songs during his career, alternating between the rockabilly style that made him famous and the blues music that he loved.

Ground was broken for University Hospital, the medical center of the University of Arkansas College of Medicine (now UAMS). Designed by Edward Stone, it was a nine-story, 450-bed facility with a seven-story educational building attached. Governor Sid McMath and state senator Ellis Fagan had introduced a cigarette tax to support the project; this eventually resulted in $6.4 million becoming available for the center. On June 18, 1956, the building was occupied by staff and patients. The center’s medical relevance was reinforced in 1976 when the Veterans Administration (VA) announced plans to move from Roosevelt Road to a site adjacent to the hospital.

Secretary of State Kelly Bryant hosted a reception for Eva Ware Barnett, the composer of Arkansas’s first official state song, at the capitol. The songwriter autographed copies of the sheet music to “Arkansas” to be distributed free to the public upon request. Governor Orval Faubus had signed the resolution on March 4, 1963, restoring “Arkansas” to its former status as official state song. More than two decades earlier, Barnett had brought a copyright lawsuit against the state after Secretary of State C. G. “Crip” Hall had distributed a free pamphlet containing the song during the election year of 1940. Barnett maintained that this was done for political purposes and injured sales of her sheet music, for which she collected about six cents per copy.

The Mountain View Waterworks was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Mountain View Waterworks is located on the corner of Gaylor and King streets in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in north-central Arkansas. The metal water tower and associated fieldstone well house were built by the Public Works Administration (PWA) in 1936–37.

Mary Celestia Parler was born in Wedgefield, South Carolina. Parler was responsible for developing and implementing the most extensive folklore research project in Arkansas history. She was a professor of English and folklore at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and the wife of noted Ozark folklore collector Vance Randolph. Through her vast knowledge and appreciation of Arkansas culture, she enabled many future generations to glimpse the state’s cultural history, much of which remains only in the stories, songs, and images she collected with the help of her students and assistants.

John B. Lindsey, a farmer, and Milton Lindsey, his son, were ambushed as they walked in front of the black-owned Colum Brothers Funeral Home; the elder Lindsey died. Several days prior, Robert Colum had been killed after trying to prevent the younger Lindsey from blocking a group of African-American customers wanting to enter his business. These events were part of what became known as the Argenta Race Riot, which left three people dead and a number of buildings burned in what is now North Little Rock.

Governor Dale Bumpers announced Lily Peter’s appointment as poet laureate of Arkansas. Peter, a farmer from Phillips County, was a renowned patron of the arts and an advocate for the environment. She wrote lyrical and historical poetry, including a book-length poem about the Hernando de Soto expedition in the United States. 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.

Photojournalist Will Counts, who is best known in Arkansas for his photograph of Elizabeth Eckford being harassed during the desegregation of Little Rock Central High in 1957, died of cancer. Counts, who was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to sharecropper parents, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and one of his photographs was selected as one of the world’s fifty most memorable news pictures of the last fifty years. He graduated from Little Rock High School, earned a BA at Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas), and a master’s and a PhD at Indiana University. He was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 1996. Early in his career, Counts worked at both the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat.

The Violet Cemetery in Osceola (Mississippi County) was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Violet Cemetery contains 634 marked graves and approximately sixty-five unmarked graves. Family names on the markers are a compendium of individuals who developed the area, including Dr. Henry Clay Dunnivant, a local doctor who served in the Confederate army; William J. Driver, a congressman who sponsored legislation in 1939 to control the Mississippi River; and Thomas Craighead, after whom Craighead County was named.

The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum in Tyronza (Poinsett County) opened. The museum is owned and operated as an educational program of Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County) and focuses on the tenant farming system of agriculture in the South and the farm labor movement that arose in response to this system.

Bruce Roy Anderson was born in Newport (Jackson County). Anderson was a prominent Arkansas architect and watercolorist in the mid-twentieth century and was a member of the National Watercolor Society, Mid-Southern Watercolorists, Southwestern Watercolor Society, California Watercolor Association, Arkansas Arts Center, American Institute of Architects, and Guild of Religious Architects.