Days in AR History

Piggott (Clay County) was incorporated. A thriving agricultural town in northeast Arkansas, Piggott has several claims to fame, including its relationship with famed American writer Ernest Hemingway, its selection as a site for filming the classic movie A Face in the Crowd, and its reputation as a “marrying mecca.” This reputation was garnered In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when most states had a three-day waiting period for marriage licenses. Arkansas had a law that the waiting period could be waived in special cases, and the Clay County judge took the position that all marriages were special cases. People flocked to Piggott from neighboring states to be married. During the peak year of 1950, there were 5,960 marriages in Piggott, more than twice the entire population of the city.

Alan Ladd, known for his role in the movie Shane, was born in Hot Springs (Garland County). He appeared in nearly 100 movies, including The Great Gatsby and This Gun for Hire. When he was four years old, he and his widowed mother were forced to leave Hot Springs after Ladd accidentally burned down their apartment house while playing with matches.

The North Little Rock School District finally desegregated, when eight African-American students were admitted to the all-white Clendenin and Riverside elementary schools. A group of six black students (known as the North Little Rock Six) had attempted to desegregate the district on September 9, 1957, when they arrived for the first day of the school year at North Little Rock High School. A group of students blocked the school’s entrance, and a crowd of more than 200 had gathered by noon. The students did not attempt again to attend the school and enrolled instead in the black Scipio Jones High School.

Pennsylvania priest Father George Tribou, whose name became synonymous in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with rigorous academics and strict discipline, became principal of the Catholic High School for Boys (CHS). A 1970 Arkansas Gazette article by reporter Bill Lewis stated that CHS was—in an era widely viewed as permissive—“almost an anachronism, an institution out of its time.” The article went on to say that the school’s promotion of spiritual formation, discipline, and high educational expectations nonetheless found a receptive audience in both parents and students. Tribou ended his tenure as principal on December 10, 2000.

Madison County was founded. Named after U.S. President James Madison, its county seat is Huntsville. The county is a beautiful and still largely unspoiled part of the Ozarks. Forests mostly of hardwood trees cover about two-thirds of the county.

Benton County was formally established as a separate county from Washington County. Located in the northwest corner of Arkansas, Benton County borders Missouri and Oklahoma and is part of the Ozark Plateau. It was named in honor of U.S. senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who had played a key role in Arkansas’s admission into the Union. The county seat, Bentonville, was also named after Sen. Benton.

Benjamin Joseph Altheimer Sr. was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to German-Jewish immigrant parents. He and his two brothers became land developers and established the town of Altheimer (Jefferson County). A few years after Altheimer married a young woman in Chicago whose family was engaged in merchandising, the Altheimer family moved to Chicago. Altheimer served as general counsel and secretary to Mendel Brothers firm and became president of the company in 1945, but he maintained connections with Arkansas. He created the Ben J. Altheimer Foundation in 1942, endowed faculty chairs at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, founded the Benjamin J. Altheimer Law Library in Pine Bluff, and provided for the William H. Bowen School of Law courtroom.

Second Lieutenant John Hanks Alexander reported to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, for duty with the Ninth Cavalry, the famous Buffalo Soldiers. The Ninth Cavalry was an all-black regiment commanded by white officers. Alexander, the second African-American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, became the sole black officer in a command position of these Buffalo Soldiers.

The notorious Elaine Massacre erupted, which marked the deadliest racial episode in Arkansas history. The lynchings and murders that occurred in Elaine arose out of whites’ fear and distrust of a black union organization in Phillips County. A shooting at a church in Hoop Spur (Phillips County) sparked the conflict; the presence of about 100 sharecroppers attending a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union quickly spurred massive violence by whites against blacks throughout the county. Although the exact death toll remains unknown, historians have estimated that hundreds of black citizens were killed, while five white citizens died in the incident.

Blanche Lincoln was born Blanche Meyers Lambert in Helena (Phillips County) into a seventh-generation Arkansas farm family. Later, she became the youngest woman elected to the U.S. Senate and the first woman from Arkansas since Hattie Caraway to be elected to the Senate.

The Lafayette Hotel in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County) was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel opened in 1925 and was one of the state’s best-known hotels until its closure in 1973. The building’s exterior featured elements of the Renaissance Revival style of architecture with its decorative terra cotta detailing, arched windows on the top floor, and a projecting copper cornice.

Virginia Maud Dunlap Duncan and her husband, Gilbert Duncan, began the weekly publication of the Winslow American. The couple had changed the name of the paper they bought, which was originally the Winslow Mirror. After her husband’s death, Virginia Duncan continued the paper until 1956. Virginia Duncan achieved national recognition for being elected mayor of Winslow (Washington County) and serving from 1925 to 1926 with an all-women city council.

Author Richard Wright was born on a farm in Roxie, Mississippi. After Wright’s father left the family, Wright and his mother and brother eventually moved to Elaine (Phillips County). Wright wrote fiction and nonfiction. His many works, influenced by the injustices he faced as an African American, protested racial divides in America. His most famous work, the autobiographical Black Boy, was a controversial bestseller that opened the eyes of the nation to the evils of racism.

Franklin County native Betty Flanagan married future Arkansas governor and U.S. senator Dale Bumpers while he was attending law school at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. The two had dated during their last year of high school, but they had been separated while attending different colleges and while Dale was in the U.S. Marines. Flanagan was teaching the fifth grade before the couple wed, and after Dale graduated from Northwestern, they returned to Charleston (Franklin County), where Betty Bumpers continued to teach elementary school while her husband established a law practice.

The Arkansas Gazette’s executive editor Harry Ashmore and the Gazette vehemently answered Governor Orval Faubus’s calling out of an armed detachment of the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High School, ostensibly to quell mob violence, with the front-page editorial, “The Crisis Mr. Faubus Made,” taking the argument beyond segregation-versus-integration to the supremacy of the federal government in all matters of law. Under Faubus’s orders, the guardsmen had turned away the Little Rock Nine as they tried to enter the school. As the days and weeks wore on, the Gazette covered all the developments of the ongoing crisis.

Nine African-American students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School but were turned away by the Arkansas National Guard, which had been called out by Governor Orval Faubus. One of the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, arrived alone and was confronted by an angry mob before managing to board a city bus and get to safety.

The Skirmish at Maysville took place. The skirmish consisted of a series of engagements over the course of a single day between Union and Confederate troops in northwestern Arkansas that ended with the complete rout of the Federal force. Originally a mission to escort a Union officer carrying messages, the movement ended with the capture of the messenger and some of his comrades.

The thirty-fifth governor of Arkansas, Francis Cherry, was born in Fort Worth, Texas. In addition to being governor, Cherry also served as a chancery judge and chairman of the federal Subversive Activities Control Board. However, he is most remembered for his political ineptness, which resulted in Orval Faubus handily winning the 1954 gubernatorial election.

A disastrous fire in Hot Springs (Garland County) destroyed approximately sixty blocks and caused an estimated $10 million in losses. No one was killed, but about 2,500 people were left homeless. A shortage of water due to the destruction of the water company and power house aggravated the firefighting efforts. The fire finally went out during a heavy rainstorm. The city had just recovered from a fire in 1905 that had devastated twenty-five blocks.

Elias Camp Morris died at his son’s home in Little Rock (Pulaski County). An African-American minister who became president of the National Baptist Convention, the largest denomination of black Christians in the United States, he was acknowledged as a liaison between the black and white communities. Morris oversaw the establishment of a denominational newspaper and assisted in the establishment of a black seminary which, in 1884, became Arkansas Baptist College.

Myra Dell McLarey, the youngest of five children, was born in Okay (Howard County), the company town of the Okay Cement Plant. McLarey is a teacher and an author of a wide variety of works, many influenced by her childhood in southwest Arkansas. She is best known for her 1995 debut novel Water from the Well, a semi-autobiographical work of fiction set in the fictional town of Sugar Springs, Arkansas. McLarey’s Water from the Well has been described as a work of “place” and brings to life the characters, locations, and memories of southwest Arkansas through a century’s worth of short tales that explore a rural community divided by race.

Joseph Boone Hunter, director of Human Services at the World War II–era Japanese American Relocation Center at Rohwer (Desha County) and the founding minister of Pulaski Heights Christian Church, died. His position at Rohwer covered schools, churches, hospitals, births, and deaths. The Japanese American Citizens’ League awarded him its highest honor for his work in social justice and racial understanding. He and Sam Yada, a farmer and former Rohwer resident, were instrumental in having Rohwer proclaimed a national landmark.

The Skirmish at Norristown took place. One of the earliest engagements between Confederate and Union forces during Major General Sterling Price’s 1864 raid into Missouri, this skirmish would ultimately prove to be bloodless. While only a brief engagement, this skirmish set into motion a series of battles that would ultimately lead to the destruction of much of Price’s force and an end to Confederate hopes of retaking Missouri.

John Daniel Rust, who invented the first practical spindle cotton picker in the late 1930s, was born near Necessity, Texas. The Rust cotton picker threatened to wipe out the old plantation system and throw millions out of work, creating a social revolution. The Rust Cotton Picker Company, however, lacked financing for commercial production and slipped into bankruptcy. After World War II, the use of mechanical pickers produced by others slowly increased across the Cotton South, and the Rust cotton picker eventually achieved commercial success. Late in his life, Rust moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). After years of hardship, he had finally became a wealthy man. He repaid his sponsors and established scholarships at colleges in Arkansas and Mississippi. He died in 1954, just as the use of mechanical cotton pickers moved the South into a new era of agribusiness. He is buried in Graceland Cemetery at Pine Bluff.

Effie Mae Howard was born in Arkansas. Under the assumed name Rosie Lee Tompkins, she became a widely acclaimed African-American quiltmaker whose prodigious talents catapulted her to the forefront of contemporary art. As New York Times critic Roberta Smith put it, “Tompkins’s textile art [works]…demolish the category.”

Frances “Sonny” Dunlap, a local star female athlete, played an entire Arkansas-Missouri League game in right field for the Fayetteville (Washington County) team. The event is believed to be the first time a woman played in a men’s professional baseball game.

Jacksonville (Pulaski County) was incorporated. In June, the Arkansas Gazette had carried the news that a fuse and detonator plant, called the Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP), was to be built in Jacksonville (Pulaski County). The land near Jacksonville was taken over by the government by condemnation proceedings, and Jacksonville became a boom town. Housing was in very limited supply, and people lived wherever they could, even in their cars, until a trailer park and housing addition were built. The AOP stayed in production from 1942 to 1945.

A volunteer fire department was organized for Sherwood (Pulaski County). It was not until September 1951, however, that the town was able to get its own fire truck. Sherwood is a city in central Arkansas just north of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). In 1990, Sherwood was named the fastest-growing town in Arkansas, in terms of both population and area, as it has frequently annexed land over the years. In 1950, there was a campaign to have Sherwood give up its status as a town. Many people worked to convince the Sherwood residents to remain an official town, and they succeeded in 1951.

It is thought that Hernando de Soto and his band traveled down the North Fork of the Saline River and visited the site where Benton (Saline County) stands. They found the area densely populated with Native Americans, and it would be nearly 300 years before another white man would come that way. A de Soto trail marker rests at the old junction of U.S. Highways 67 and 70. It is a large boulder of bauxite ore on a gray granite base with a cast aluminum tablet bearing the inscription, “De Soto Trail. By here the De Soto expedition marched September 7, 1541. Erected 1935 by citizens of Saline County.”

The city of Strong (Union County) was incorporated. Strong, located seven miles north of the Louisiana border, was founded in the early twentieth century as a settlement along the railroad tracks. Originally named Victoria, the settlement grew quickly. Later rechristened as Strong, it became an important shipping station for local farm products, especially cotton. Twenty-first-century Strong is a thriving community of more than 500 with about sixty officially recognized businesses and organizations. In the early twenty-first century, the school system was consolidated with the nearby Huttig District. Students in grades K–12 attend classes in the Strong-Huttig School District, consisting of Strong-Huttig High School and Gardner-Strong Elementary School, both located in Strong.

Theressa Hoover was born in Fayetteville (Washington County). Hoover worked for human rights and unity through the United Methodist Church for nearly fifty years, representing those who, in the words of her 1974 monograph, were in “triple jeopardy”: female, African American, and Christian. Hoover worked for justice and empowerment for women and children around the globe. On October 6, 1990, the Women’s Division of the United Methodist Church established a $100,000 Theressa Hoover Community Service and Global Citizenship fund in her honor, providing grants for young women to travel and study. In 2000, Hoover was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. In 2004, Hoover was on Ebony magazine’s list of the 100 most influential African-American women. In 2008, a scholarship was established in her honor at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville, supporting students from Fayetteville High School. Hoover passed away in 2013.

After months of preparation by Northwest Arkansas Archeological Society volunteers and curator Linda Allen, the Shiloh Museum of Springdale (Washington County) opened its doors with exhibits featuring artifacts from lifelong Native American artifact collector Guy Howard’s collection, medical instruments used by local physicians, and a research library. The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History (it received this name in 1993) serves the public by providing resources for finding meaning, enjoyment, and inspiration in the exploration of the Arkansas Ozarks. The museum takes its name from the pioneer community of Shiloh, which became Springdale in the 1870s.

Sonja Tate was born in Hughes (St. Francis County). Tate played basketball at Arkansas State University (ASU) from 1989 to 1993 and is considered one of the finest female athletes in the state’s history. Tate became the single-season scoring record holder, with 820 points during the 1992-93 season at ASU, and became the only ASU women’s player to have scored forty or more points in a game, a feat she accomplished five times.

Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Ben Piazza died of cancer. Piazza was an actor, director, author, and playwright who starred in such notable films as The Hanging Tree (1959) and Tell Me that You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970). He was compared to the young Marlon Brando in his youth but achieved acclaim for character roles in his later years, often portraying an edgy, tightly controlled suburbanite or a repressive parent in films such as The Blues Brothers (1980).

Arkansas Cumberland College opened. After Cane Hill College in Washington County closed in 1891, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church moved the school to Clarksville (Johnson County) and renamed it Arkansas Cumberland College. The school was renamed the College of the Ozarks in 1920 and became the University of the Ozarks in 1987. The College of the Ozarks housed a Civilian Pilot Training Program course beginning in 1942, as well as a naval training facility from 1944 to 1945. In December 1943, the navy began using the college for a course in the new radar technology. The first pharmacy school in the state was established at the college in 1946.

Fontaine R. Earle died at home in Cane Hill (Washington County). Earle was a major in the Thirty-fourth Arkansas Infantry (CSA) from Cane Hill. He fought in a number of Civil War battles in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and later served northwest Arkansas as a legislator (1866–1867), minister, teacher, administrator, and author.

Norman Baker died. 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. He was also a radio pioneer and a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat and for governor of Iowa. Unlike his cohort John Brinkley, Baker did not claim to be a doctor. Instead, this showman, with his white suits and lavender ties, hawked a form of populism that distrusted science, education, Jews, and Catholics. Paranoia ran throughout his life, and in Eureka Springs he had his office sealed off in bulletproof glass and kept two submachine guns within easy reach.

The Arkansas State Medical Board endorsed a new drug policy for the athletic training center at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). The new policy came on the heels of revelations that athletic trainers at UA had dispensed narcotics without prescription and had kept inadequate records of drug transactions.

Louis T. Hardin, a musician and composer who adopted the name “Moondog” and became known for living on Manhattan streets dressed as a Viking and beating a drum, died in Munich, Germany. Hardin was born in Kansas and lost his sight as a teenager when a dynamite cap exploded. He learned to play the piano in Batesville (Independence County) after his father became rector of St. Paul’s Church there. After study at the Memphis Conservatory of Music, Hardin moved to New York where he met influential and prestigious musicians like Igor Stravinsky, Arturo Toscanini, and Leonard Bernstein. His music was played by jazz, classical, and rock musicians alike. He became even better known and recorded more after he moved to West Germany.

Betty Blake was born at Silver Springs (Benton County), later called Monte Ne; she moved to Rogers (Benton County) as a child. The wife of Will Rogers, one of the most beloved entertainers of the twentieth century, she was a partner in his career, encouraging him to start on the lecture circuit and helping him choose film scripts. On August 15, 1935, Rogers’s husband, along with aviator Wiley Post, died in a plane crash in Alaska. After his death, she concentrated on furthering his reputation. She contributed to the creation of the Will Rogers State Park at the Santa Monica ranch and the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma. She also wrote Will Rogers: His Wife’s Story, published in 1941.

Francis Gwaltney, an author, professor, and longtime friend of Norman Mailer, was born in Traskwood (Saline County). Gwaltney wrote eight novels, the most successful and best known of which is The Day the Century Ended, which is regarded as a courageous account of the social conditions in the South and one that captures the spirit of Arkansas in particular. Gwaltney taught English at several Arkansas schools and founded the creative writing program at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville (Pope County).

American forces of the First, Third, and Fourth Ranger battalions were the first to land during the World War II invasion of Italy. These troops, expanded from the original First United States Army Ranger Battalion organized and trained by West Point graduate William Orlando Darby from Fort Smith (Sebastian County), were principally involved in actions at Anzio and Cisterno, Italy. Unopposed at first, the First and Third battalions later suffered severe casualties, leaving the Fourth battalion the only remaining ranger force.

The North Little Rock Six, six African-American students who attempted to desegregate North Little Rock High School, arrived for the first day of school, accompanied by four black ministers. Five days earlier, however, the North Little Rock School Board had announced its decision to postpone “indefinitely” the high school’s integration. When they tried to enter the school, the six students were met with a group of students blocking the entrance. The six students were instructed to meet the superintendent at another location. By noon, a crowd of around 200 had gathered at the school. The six did not attempt to desegregate the school again and had enrolled at Scipio Jones High School by September 23. The district did not desegregate until September 3, 1964.

Actress Esther Rolle won an Emmy for her role in the NBC television movie Summer of My German Soldier, based on the famous book by Arkansan Bette Greene. The story of both the novel and the movie centers upon a young Jewish girl who, during World War II, hides a German soldier who had escaped from the local prisoner-of-war camp.