August 8, 1914

Hazel Leona Walker was born on her family’s farm near Oak Hill (Little River County), nine miles from Ashdown (Little River County). Recognized as the greatest amateur women’s basketball player of the 1930s and 1940s, the eleven-time Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) All-American was the only woman ever to own, manage, and star for her own professional basketball team. For sixteen seasons, from 1949 to 1965, Walker’s Arkansas Travelers barnstormed the country playing only men’s teams under men’s rules and winning eighty to eighty-five percent of their games.