Days in AR History

Richard Shaver was born in Virginia. Shaver was an American writer and “outsider” artist best known for his controversial stories known collectively as “the Shaver Mystery,” which were presented as nonfiction in science fiction magazines, most notably Amazing Stories. These stories, in which Shaver claimed to have discovered an ancient, sinister civilization in underground caves, led to Shaver Mystery Clubs and influenced many artists and writers, including Harlan Ellison and Phillip K. Dick. Shaver died in the Arkansas town of Summitt (Marion County), where he had moved in the mid-1960s.

The final afternoon edition of the Arkansas Democrat was published after a gradual switch to morning publication. Following a long “newspaper war,” the Arkansas Democrat bought the assets of the Arkansas Gazette in October 1991, creating the statewide Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Mary Steenburgen married actor Ted Danson at their home in Martha’s Vineyard. They met when he auditioned unsuccessfully for a part in Cross Creek, and they later worked together in the movie Pontiac Moon (1994). Steenburgen is one of Arkansas’s most celebrated actresses. Noted for roles in cinema, television, and on stage, she has portrayed a wide range of characters and has won many awards, including an Academy Award for her portrayal of Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard (1980). She was born in Newport (Jackson County).

Governor Mike Huckabee announced that Dortha Scott’s design won the statewide contest for the Arkansas state quarter design. The Arkansas state quarter was the twenty-fifth of fifty state quarters to be issued by the U.S. Mint under its 50 State Quarters Program. Five commemorative state quarters were to be issued each year for a period of ten years in chronological order according to when each state was admitted to the Union. The quarter features a diamond, rice, and a mallard duck with a background of trees and a body of water. Scott’s design was chosen from among more than 9,300 entries.

Hot Springs (Garland County) native Billy Bob Thornton’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled. Thornton is an actor, director, screenwriter, and musician who began his film career in the late 1980s and has since starred in a number of popular and critically acclaimed films. He received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade (1996). Thornton has been married five times (most notably to actress Angelina Jolie) and has four children. He remains appreciated worldwide for his talent and known for his eccentricities (including his many tattoos and fears of antique furniture and reptiles), as well as his openness about dealing with obsessive compulsive disorder.

In what is now known as Maguiretown (Washington County), a post office was established under the name of Maguire’s Store, with Hosea Maguire serving as the postmaster. In spite of the fact that the town never had a population of more than 100 people, it became the leading commercial and cultural center between Fayetteville (Washington County) and Huntsville (Madison County).

The thirty-first governor of Arkansas, Carl Bailey, was born in Bernie, Missouri. Bailey served two terms as governor in the 1930s and struggled to modernize state government and to cope with the Great Depression. He led a political faction consisting of state employees, which clashed with a coalition of federal workers over control of patronage. This conflict split the state, as well as the Democratic Party, into opposing political blocs.

Elmer Wayne Mikel was born in Jenny Lind (Sebastian County). Mikel was a bootlegger during Prohibition and later became a self-published author who wrote books and essays about his criminal life and his experiences at the notorious Tucker State Prison Farm (which later became the Tucker Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction) in Jefferson County in the 1930s. Mikel was also a songwriter who wrote about Arkansas subjects, including the deadly Greenwood (Sebastian County) tornado of 1968. In 1970, Mikel wrote and self-published Uncle Tom’s Prison, which recounted his life as a criminal and prisoner, and issued an album of the same name with his musical collaborator Glenn R. Arters.

The U.S. Department of War informed Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas of the approval for a $23 million ammonia plant to be located near El Dorado (Union County). One of six such ordnance plants in Arkansas during the World War II years, it became known as the Ozark Ordnance Works and was the first plant in the United States to use natural gas to produce ammonia.

James Kelly Hampson, an amateur archaeologist whose Nodena Plantation in Mississippi County yielded rich artifacts dating back hundreds of years, died. Hampson’s collection of about 40,000 items was subsequently donated to the University of Arkansas. A number of items are now displayed in the Henry Clay Hampson II Museum in Wilson (Mississippi County), which is managed by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism. Hampson was one of only a few amateur archaeologists to be honored with an obituary in American Antiquity.

The Marquette Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places under the name Riviera Hotel. The Marquette Hotel is located at 719 Central Avenue in downtown Hot Springs (Garland County), near the Hot Springs Convention Center. The building was constructed in the Chicago School style of architecture by the prominent Arkansas firm of Thompson, Sanders and Ginocchio. The Marquette Hotel thrived in conjunction with Hot Springs’ greatest period of popularity as a resort destination in the early 1930s through the late 1940s.

In recognition of the Sulphur Rock Street Car in Sulphur Rock (Independence County) being the last mule-drawn (bobtail) trolley car in the United States, the Postal Service issued a first-class, twenty-cent commemorative stamp. It was one of a setenant (joined) block of four stamps depicting four streetcars from around the country. A line drawing depicts the side view of the trolley, featuring a white mule pulling the car guided by its operator and transporting several passengers.

As the Tutt-Everett War was brewing, a shootout erupted before a town meeting in Yellville (Marion County), resulting in several deaths, including that of Simmons “Sim” Everett. On October 11, relatives and supporters of Everett ambushed and killed several members of the King family, who had participated in the shootout on the Tutt side. Fearing that law and order had disintegrated in Marion County, Governor Thomas Drew authorized a militia from neighboring Carroll County to enter the county to restore order. It arrested members of the Everett gang but was disbanded after six weeks; after the militia’s departure, Everett supporters broke into the jail where the prisoners were being held and released them. This, unfortunately, was not the end of the tensions.

The Chancery Court ruled that Dale Crowley was the rightful leader of the Jonesboro Baptist Church, which had been founded by traveling revivalist Joe Jeffers after he led a schism from the already established First Baptist Church. The series of violent conflicts between various factions of the Jonesboro Baptist community that took place from 1931 to 1933 is known as the Jonesboro Church Wars.

The Arkansas School for the Blind relocated to 2600 West Markham Street in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where it remains. Founded as the Institute for the Education of the Blind in 1859 by the Reverend Haucke, a blind Baptist minister, the school opened originally in Arkadelphia (Clark County) but was moved in 1868 to 1800 Center Street in Little Rock so it would be more accessible. The school provides statewide service and has expanded its offerings to cover students with multiple problems as well as offering a wider field of instruction.

Grif Stockley was born. An author and historian, Stockley has won numerous awards for his work, including Arkansas’s highest literary award, the Porter Prize. He initially achieved fame for his Gideon Page series of lawyer novels but then turned his eye toward Arkansas history.

The Little Rock Air Force Base was activated. The first bank in Jacksonville (Pulaski County), the Jacksonville State Bank, had been organized in 1949. Founding member Kenneth Pat Wilson was president of the bank for many years. Wilson and other citizens of Pulaski County in 1951 began to approach the U.S. Air Force to locate an air base in central Arkansas. The citizens of Pulaski County raised funds and purchased the land near Jacksonville to donate for the base.

The Action at Devil’s Backbone during the Civil War was fought in Greenwood (Sebastian County) between Union and Confederate forces. The conflict lasted three hours before Union forces prevailed and Confederate soldiers retreated, leaving their dead behind. Union troops moved on to Fort Smith to take control of the fort there. The battlefield is now one of several historical attractions of Greenwood, which has boomed in recent years, more than doubling in size between 1990 and 2010.

Voters decided by an eight-to-one margin not to pay millions of dollars worth of state bonds. Formally known as the Fishback Amendment, it was the first amendment to the state constitution since its adoption in 1874. This vote ended a political debate that had raged for years within the Democratic Party. One strong faction, the “repudiationists,” had argued that the bonds were unconstitutional because they had been passed in a climate of bribery and fraud. William M. Fishback went on to lead the fight for the constitutional amendment that bore his name. The legislation failed in 1880 because of a legal technicality, but it passed in 1884, wiping out in one stroke three-fourths of the state’s debt.

Clinton Briggs, a twenty-six-year-old soldier who had just returned to Star City (Lincoln County) after serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, was lynched after allegedly insulting a young white woman. While walking down a sidewalk in early September 1919, Briggs reportedly stepped aside to allow a white couple to pass. Apparently, the white woman brushed into Briggs, scolding him for not getting off the sidewalk entirely. When Briggs replied, “This is a free man’s country,” the woman’s escort seized him until others came with an automobile and carried Briggs outside of town, where they murdered him.

Jim Skillern Porter Jr. was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Porter became the leader in integrating music venues in Little Rock in the early 1960s. He produced Little Rock’s first integrated-seating concert and became the foremost booking agent in Arkansas for performers, promoting many of the country’s leading jazz artists, such as Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Harry James, and many others. He also operated Little Rock’s first integrated country club and was influential in removing barriers to election of Jewish women to the Junior League.

Conway Twitty, a Country Music Hall of Fame member, was born Harold Lloyd Jenkins in Friars Point, Mississippi. His family moved to Helena (Phillips County) when he was about ten years old, and he formed his first band shortly afterward. He traded his birth name, which came from the famous actor Harold Lloyd, for the stage name Conway Twitty while living in Memphis, Tennessee, and recording for Sun Records. Twitty was successful as a rock and roll performer but preferred country music; he sold more than fifty million records. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame six years after his death.

The city of Jacksonville (Pulaski County) marked the official end of the Vertac site’s cleanup, which cost more than $150 million. The Vertac site in Jacksonville is one of the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites and Arkansas’s most publicized Superfund site. Cleanup of the area after its abandonment by its corporate owner took more than a decade, and the name “Vertac” soon became synonymous in Arkansas with the fear of industrial pollution.

The Arkansas Gazette newspaper was forced to suspend publication after Union forces captured Little Rock (Pulaski County). Typically, when Union troops captured communities, they would shut down the newspapers and start new ones supporting the Union. The National Union published one issue from the Gazette offices, but apparently its tone was too conciliatory for one of the Union generals in Little Rock; it lasted only one edition. A second Unionist paper, the National Democrat, began publishing soon afterward. It continued to publish until May 1865.

The Arkansas State Gazette suspended operation when Union forces captured Little Rock (Pulaski County). Paper shortages during the war hurt the Gazette, as they did most other Southern newspapers. Christopher Columbus Danley and William Holtzman revived the Gazette on May 1, 1865. Danley editorialized in favor of resumed allegiance to the Union. The Gazette became the first state newspaper to subscribe to new telegraphic services that gave it access to news from places such as St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Six weeks after the Union army under General Frederick Steele captured Little Rock (Pulaski County), Union soldiers moved south, building Fort Bussy in north Benton (Saline County) and earthworks in the western part of the city. Four regiments occupied the city until Christmas, commandeering the James Henry Shoppach and the William Ayers Crawford houses for headquarters. Six Confederate regiments had been raised in Benton. Important Benton officers were James Fagan, William A. Crawford, Mazarine Jerome Henderson, George M. Holt, and Jabez Smith. Boy martyr David O. Dodd lived in Benton at the outbreak of the war, and his mother and sisters lived there until 1863.

Lizzie Dorman Fyler, a suffragette lawyer from Massachusetts who made her home in Eureka Springs (Carroll County), reported to the Woman’s Journal that the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association had been organized. Although agitation for political and economic rights for women had been advocated since shortly after the Civil War, Arkansas legislators had failed to enact proposals that would have granted equal privileges and rights to any citizen of at least twenty-one years of age who could read and write the English language.

A liberal arts college, then known as Southern Baptist College, was opened in Pocahontas (Lawrence County) by the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. The college opened as a two-year institution whose students mostly became ministers or public school teachers. The school, renamed Williams Baptist College, later moved to Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County) and began offering baccalaureate programs in 1980. It was formally adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1968. The school, now called Williams Baptist University, enrolls over 500 students, the majority of whom are from Arkansas.

Five African-American students entered Fayetteville High School. A few days later, two more black students entered the school, bringing the total to seven. The only male black student to enroll in classes on September 10, Preston Lackey, entered with the support of white students who had heard rumors of planned violence. Similarly, an Associated Press reporter came prepared to report on violent protests. The only opposition was a lone white woman with a placard. Bringing black students into the high school proved to be the easiest part of integration in Fayetteville (Washington County). Sporadic complaints came from black students, however, about racial slurs and having to acclimate to a predominately white environment.

A group of 120 to 150 settlers, mostly Arkansans, was attacked by Mormons and Native Americans on Mountain Meadows plateau in southern Utah. The settlers had started a journey from Harrison (Boone County) toward California. All died except for seventeen children, who were taken into Mormon homes. The Mormon Church tried to cover up the crime, mostly by blaming the Indians. The U.S. Army found remains of the victims exhumed by animals, and this, in addition to pressure from victims’ relatives in Arkansas, forced the government to act. No one was prosecuted for almost twenty years, when the leader of the massacre, John D. Lee, was put on trial. He was convicted for his role in September 1876 and executed on March 23, 1877. Controversy still surrounds the event.

Jamie Vogel was born in Texas. Vogel taught art to Japanese-American children and adults at Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County during World War II. Her commitment to her work and respect for her students (unusual in the United States, and particularly in Arkansas, at that time) won her the friendship of many of the internees and led her to a commitment to preservation of their art work, much of which has been given to prestigious art institutions.

Former policeman Robert R. McDonald of Argenta (now North Little Rock in Pulaski County) killed an African-American musician, Wiley Shelby, in a barroom fight. This incident was one catalyst for the Argenta Race Riot in October 1906, which left three dead and a number of buildings burned in Argenta.

Lois Lenski, who visited northeast Arkansas after an invitation from schoolchildren who had heard her read one of her books on the radio, died at her home in Tarpon Springs, Florida, at the age of eighty. Lenski was certified as a teacher but spent most of her early career illustrating other people’s books until a publisher encouraged her to write her own stories. She visited Mississippi County in 1947 after the invitation from children in an elementary classroom in Yarbo (Mississippi County), and she inscribed her first book about sharecroppers, Cotton in My Sack, “for my beloved Arkansas cotton children.” She wrote two other books, Houseboat Girl, and We Live by the River about life in that area.

The Arkansas National Guard Museum opened at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock (Pulaski County). The museum’s primary mission is to collect information and artifacts relating to the Arkansas National Guard and its militia predecessor and make that information and those artifacts available to the public and to posterity. The museum, which also tells the story of Camp Pike/Camp Robinson, is located in Lloyd England Hall, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Dual State Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Also known as the Donaghey Monument, it was built in 1931 on the Arkansas-Louisiana state line to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the establishment of the boundary between the two states. It is also a memorial to the birthplace of George Washington Donaghey, governor of Arkansas between 1909 and 1913, who had the memorial constructed and was born about one mile south of the border.

Colonel James Fleming Fagan was promoted to brigadier general. A former Little Rock (Pulaski County) politician and U.S. marshal, he raised a company of volunteers for the First Arkansas Infantry Regiment and later transferred to the Army of the Mississippi. The Arkansas Regiment had previously participated in the Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run) and the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee where it suffered a forty-five-percent casualty rate. Fagan was promoted to major general before he left the service at the end of the Civil War.

The Skirmish at Dardanelle took place. A small conflict occurring after the Action at Devil’s Backbone, this skirmish was part of an effort between Union forces in northwestern Arkansas to link up with their comrades moving toward Little Rock (Pulaski County) from Helena (Phillips County).

The town of Oak Grove (Carroll County) was incorporated. The town is one of twelve communities in Arkansas identified as Oak Grove, and the only one to be incorporated. In 1983, historians wrote that “Oak Grove continues to support a small population with a few stores and a post office. The quiet living in the community finds its focus around the churches of the community and the softball activities of the summer months.” The town has since grown further, supporting a city hall, a fire station, a convenience store, shops, and churches.

The Carmelite Monastery of St. Teresa of Jesus, an autonomous community of Roman Catholic women devoted to service to the Church through prayer, was formally established in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with several applicants who joined after the arrival of five members of the order selected from the founding community in Loretto, Pennsylvania. The order, known as “discalced,” which literally means “barefoot,” is devoted to service to the Church through prayer. In 2007, the group consisted of fourteen members who occupy acreage on 32nd Street in southwest Little Rock. In addition to their service through prayer, they bake communion bread for use by various churches.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the immediate integration of Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County), and Governor Orval Faubus closed all four high schools in the city, interrupting the education of nearly 4,000 students and disrupting as many households and families. Faubus’s action not only locked students from their classrooms but also locked 177 teachers and administrators in the schools, where they had to fulfill their contractual obligations and appear for work, despite the empty classes. Most were soon used as substitutes in junior high and elementary schools.

Magician J. B. Bobo died in Texarkana (Miller County). At the peak of his career, he and his wife performed 400 to 450 school magic shows a year; this decreased to 300 a year in later years. It is estimated that they gave more than 14,000 school shows in more than fifty years. In 1947, Bobo put many of his magic ideas in a book titled Watch This One! But it was his classic book, Modern Coin Magic (1952), that earned him a worldwide reputation. The book has been reprinted several times and is still available.

The Old Independence Regional Museum at 380 S. 9th Street in Batesville (Independence County), which had been established in the early 1990s, held its grand opening after seven years of work. Its mission is to serve the twelve-county region that once held Independence County in northeast Arkansas. Detailed maps describe the region’s historic sites and museums, leading visitors to continue their journey into the other counties in the region, which include all or part of Baxter, Cleburne, Fulton, Izard, Jackson, Marion, Poinsett, Sharp, Stone, White, and Woodruff counties.

Samuel West Peel was born in Independence County. Peel was four years old when his mother died. His father left him with his grandparents and moved to Carrollton (Carroll County), making a home on Crooked Creek and remarrying. Peel’s diversified career in Arkansas included roles as a businessman, politician, county clerk, Confederate soldier, lawyer, prosecuting attorney, congressman, Indian agent, and banker. In Benton County and Arkansas, he is best remembered as the first native-born Arkansan to be elected to the U.S. Congress.

The Arkansas state government began operating almost three months after the creation of the state by Congress. The state constitution was much like those of other recently formed Southern states, implementing suffrage for free, white men and providing ironclad support for slavery.

James Sevier Conway, Arkansas’s first governor, was inaugurated. During his tenure, the population of Arkansas expanded greatly, bringing in a revenue surplus from all the tax collections, though his revision of the tax code plunged the state into economic turmoil. Further controversy ensued with regard to the establishment of a state bank and his dealings with the state militia; this and ill health led Conway not to seek a second term.

Samuel Mitchell Taylor died suddenly while representing Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives. Taylor had represented the Sixth District of Arkansas starting in 1913 after winning a special election to fill the seat vacated by Joseph T. Robinson when Robinson became governor. Following his death, his son Chester Taylor won the special election to fill the seat.

Peter McGehee died in Canada. The gay Arkansas-born novelist was praised by reviewers for his outrageous comedies of Southern manners. Major stories or episodes in his novels are set at the IQ Zoo in Hot Springs (Garland County), at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock (Pulaski County), in a rural black church, and in a family cemetery. Such Little Rock locations as Robinson Auditorium, Central High School, the Quapaw Quarter, Little Rock Country Club, Graffiti’s restaurant, and Discovery discotheque anchor his novels.

Determined never to become an invalid, Richard Colburn Butler Sr. committed suicide. Butler’s most famous work as an attorney began in 1956 when he was one of several lawyers retained by the Little Rock School Board to defend the district against a suit filed by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Butler was also a lawyer, banker, real estate investor, philanthropist, and horticulturist.

Wilton Robert “Witt” Stephens was born in Prattsville (Grant County). Founder of Stephens Inc. and prominent businessman, Stephens played a major role in the economic development of the state through his post–World War II work with the natural gas industry. He established several gas companies within Arkansas and eventually became president and chairman of the board of Arkansas Louisiana Gas (Arkla).

George Hays was elected as the twenty-fourth governor of Arkansas in an overwhelming victory. His tenure as governor saw a number of progressive reforms being undertaken, including a “blue sky law” to protect investors from stock and bond fraud and a law giving women the right to enter into contracts and to own property.