Days in AR History - Starting with F

The first passenger train pulled into “Hope Station” in the town that officially became Hope (Hempstead County) a few years later. By the time the railway offered lots for sale, the wood-frame depot was almost complete. James Loughborough, the railroad company’s land commissioner, had named the workmen’s camp in honor of his daughter. Hope is the birthplace of William Jefferson Clinton, the fortieth and forty-second governor of Arkansas and the forty-second president of the United States. Hope received national attention when Clinton closed his nomination acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention with the words, “I still believe in a place called Hope.”

Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was born near Bakersville, Tennesee. Caraway was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, the first to chair a Senate committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing. She served from 1932 to 1945 and was a strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic recovery legislation during the Great Depression.

A grand opening was held for the Little Rock Public Library at Seventh and Louisiana streets, and the library officially opened on February 2, with 500 people applying for library cards that day. The library opened with a staff of two women and a janitor, and it had 2,160 books. Much of the cost of the library was underwritten by an $88,100 donation from the Carnegie Foundation. The library was governed by a board established in 1907.

Omaha (Boone County) was incorporated. The town is on State Highway 14 (old U.S. 65) and was a stop on the Missouri Pacific Railroad’s White River line. The railroad tunnel near Omaha was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Arkansas/Delta blues great Albert King was booked as the opening act for the premiere presentation at San Francisco’s soon-to-be top rock-and-roll showcase, the Fillmore West. Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall followed him onstage, but King stole the show and became a regular attraction at the Fillmore West. He also recorded one of his most powerful albums, Live Wire/Blues Power, there in 1968.

Stand-up comic Ralphie May was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee; he was raised in Clarksville (Johnson County). May was famous for his topical humor combined with hip-hop slang and Southern comedy, as well as his numerous appearances on reality and talk shows. May appeared in such films as For da Love of Money and was the only white standup comedian featured on The Big Black Comedy Show Vol. 4 DVD in 2005. He died in 2017.

Jonesboro was incorporated as the county seat of Craighead County, twenty-four years after its charter of incorporation set forth a mayoral form of government. Voters approved the town’s official incorporation only after the railroads connected to the town. Jonesboro is the largest community in northeast Arkansas and the fifth largest in the state.

Russellville (Pope County) was chosen over competing cities in the area as the site of a “State Agricultural School” authorized by legislative act as a means of reversing the decline in the quality of rural life. Cities chosen for location of the district agricultural schools had to pledge $40,000 and a site of not less than 200 acres. From a school that was essentially a regular high school that offered some agricultural education, the school progressed gradually to become Arkansas Polytechnic College in 1925 and then Arkansas Tech University in 1976.

Ronald Gene Simmons, Arkansas mass murderer, was found guilty in the Johnson County Circuit Court of fourteen counts of capital murder in the deaths of his family members. Simmons’s killing spree is said to be the worst mass murder in Arkansas history and the worst crime involving one family in the history of the country. His six-day rampage left fourteen members of his immediate family and two former coworkers dead. He was later sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Neil Ernest Compton, a physician of obstetrics by profession and a conservationist by avocation who is widely recognized as the founder of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River (today known as the Ozark Society, Inc.), died. The Ozark Society successfully campaigned to stop the construction of two dams on the Buffalo River (Gilbert and Lone Rock) that had been proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Actor Roy Scheider, best known for his roles in All That Jazz and Jaws, died in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Scheider suffered from a rare cancer called multiple myeloma and was receiving treatment at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy at UAMS is one of the largest centers of its kind in the world and is a leader in developing curative therapies for multiple myeloma.

An article appeared in the Arkansas Gazette stating that Miles Ledford Langley of Arkadelphia (Clark County) had introduced legislation in the Arkansas General Assembly providing that any citizen twenty-one years old who can read and write in English is entitled to vote and to have equal political rights and privileges. An address expressing that women needed the right to vote was delivered the following day to the Arkansas House of Representatives, and it was reported in the newspaper that he “spoke earnestly” but that his remarks “elicited much laughter.”

Magician J. B. Bobo was born in Texarkana (Miller County). He was christened with initials only, and he patiently explained this when anyone asked what they stood for. His French immigrant great-grandfather, Jean Beaubeaux, had anglicized the family name from the original spelling. Adults across Arkansas and the country remember him for taking his magic shows to their schools when they were children. At the peak of their school show career, Bobo and his wife performed 400 to 450 shows a year. It is estimated that they performed more than 14,000 school shows in more than fifty years. Magicians around the world own copies of Bobo’s books on coin magic, which are universally agreed to be the best ever written.

John Wilson Martin died in Warren (Bradley County). He settled in Warren by 1848 and married Mary Elizabeth Franklin. He established what became a flourishing medical practice. It was said that Martin would ride by “horseback all day to reach the frequently remote residences” of the sick. Martin’s medical practice was especially active, if unprofitable, during the Civil War. Stories abound of his night-long rides around the countryside to reach wounded Confederate soldiers while trying to avoid Union patrols. His house, the John Wilson Martin House, is the oldest surviving residence in Warren. It now houses the Bradley County Historical Museum and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

Albert L. Fletcher became the bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock. Fletcher was the first native Arkansan ever to be raised to the rank of bishop within the American Catholic episcopacy, and he oversaw Arkansas Catholicism during an era of unprecedented growth and upheaval.

After defeat in the South, Wesley Clark—who was born in Chicago, Illinois, but grew up in Little Rock (Pulaski County)—stepped down from the 2004 presidential race. Clark was the top Democratic candidate until a decision not to campaign in the Iowa caucus allowed John Kerry the momentum to pull to the forefront, with Howard Dean close behind. Clark fell to third and took third in the New Hampshire primary. He was first in the Oklahoma primary, third in Tennessee, second in Arizona, and a remote third in Virginia. A political analyst and commentator, Clark is president and CEO of Wesley K. Clark and Associates, a consulting firm located in Little Rock, formed in March 2003.

The Skirmish at Madison took place. With most major military operations concluded in the state by this period near the end of the war, the majority of actions were small skirmishes and patrols like this one. Federal troops used this lack of major organized Confederate resistance to keep the enemy off balance and disorganized.

Roberta Evelyn Winston was born in Helena (Phillips County), one of six children of William and Anna Winston, proprietors of a general store. She began studying piano at age six. Her family relocated to Cairo, Illinois, before she was ten, and, following her arrival in Chicago in 1917, Winston played for various church functions, working with Thomas A. Dorsey, the “Father of Gospel Music,” at Chicago’s Pilgrim Baptist Church. Winston was one of the most significant figures during gospel music’s golden age (1945–1960). A performer and publisher, she reached iconic status in Chicago, where she influenced numerous artists (such as Alex Bradford, James Cleveland, and Albertina Walker) and had an impact on an entire industry with her innovation and business acumen.

The town of Ulm (Prairie County) was incorporated. Ulm is located on U.S. Highway 79 between Clarendon (Monroe County) and Stuttgart (Arkansas County). Although the town is named for a city in southern Germany, the pronunciation differs from the German, with Arkansans speaking the name of the town as a two-syllable word (“Ull-im”). Ulm native Bill Kerksieck pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies major league baseball team in 1939, appearing in twenty-three games that year.

Entertainer Will Rogers included Helena (Phillips County) in his tour of Arkansas, visiting the city and raising $1,500 from his appearance, money that was divided among various unemployment committees. Major floods in 1927 and 1937 devastated the farms and the cities of Phillips County. Levees that had been rebuilt and improved after earlier floods were unable to handle the water those years. During the Flood of 1927, the Laconia Circle levee at Snow Lake broke in six places, leaving the unprotected farms under sixteen feet of water. The flood was also a setback to the lumber industry from which it did not recover.

Outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow once again escaped the clutches of the law. The heavily armed couple and three other members of the Barrow Gang were speeding through Missouri’s Ozarks when officers gave chase. The gang shot its way out of a police trap near Reed Spring, then stole a car in Galena and headed south into Arkansas. Officers lost them after trailing them to Berryville (Carroll County) and toward Eureka Springs (Carroll County). On May 23, 1934, Barrow and Parker drove into a trap set by law officers (with the help of Henry Methvin of the Barrow Gang) near Gibsland, Louisiana. They were shot repeatedly and died at the scene. On the so-called death car was a stolen 1934 Arkansas license plate.

John Elward Brown died after breaking his hip during a fall. He is buried in Siloam Springs (Benton County). A prominent evangelist, publisher, radio pioneer, and educator in the first half of the twentieth century, Brown established John Brown University (JBU), one of the state’s leading private universities. He was also the leading figure in securing passage of a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol in Benton County, a ban that continued into the twenty-first century.

Charles Kemmons Wilson, founder of the Holiday Inn hotel chain, died at his Memphis, Tennessee, home. Born in Osceola (Mississippi County) and called the “Father of the Modern Hotel,” he revolutionized the travel industry by providing affordable, comfortable, dependable lodging. Among his accolades are the Horatio Alger Award (1970) and induction into the National Business Hall of Fame (1982). He left a living legacy with the creation of the Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management at the University of Memphis, with the first students admitted in August 2002.

Ambrose Hundley Sevier took his seat in Congress as a territorial delegate. He quickly aligned himself with Andrew Jackson, and his political faction evolved into Arkansas’s Democratic Party. Sevier was one of the founders of a political dynasty known as “The Family” that ruled antebellum Arkansas politics from the 1820s until the Civil War, and he also secured Arkansas’s bid for statehood.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in Arkansas, twenty-nine degrees below zero, was noted at Gravette (Benton County) in the northwest corner of the state. Officially classified by climatologist Wladimir Köppen as having a humid sub-tropical climate, Arkansas is indeed humid, but numerous weather extremes run through the state. Humid sub-tropical is classified generally as a mild climate with a hot summer and no specific dry season. The Köppen classification is correct in that regard, but the state truly has four seasons, and they can all range from fairly mild to incredibly extreme.

Gilbert (Searcy County), situated on the Buffalo River, was established, coinciding with the railroad’s moving south from Missouri. The town was named for Charles W. Gilbert, president of the Missouri and North Arkansas (M&NA) Railroad. The Gilbert Saloon, owned by Uriah Still, was the first and only saloon during the town’s heyday. In August 1915, the Buffalo River flooded, and the saloon washed away along with the Eagle Pencil Company mill on August 18. A man tried to stabilize the saloon by wrapping several coils of cable around the building and attaching the end to the railroad tracks, but the cable snapped, and the saloon was lost. According to rumor, full bottles of liquor still rest at the bottom of the Buffalo River.

William Alvin (Bill) Whitworth was born in Hot Springs (Garland County). He attended Central High School in Little Rock, where he also spent time working as an advertising department copy boy for the Arkansas Democrat. In 1960, Whitworth graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in English and journalism and began to work for the Arkansas Gazette and its city editor Bill Shelton. He came to be recognized as one of the nation’s most reputable journalists, having been a writer and associate editor for the New Yorker and editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly.

Nationally known artist and professor at Arkansas State University (ASU) John Salvest was born. Salvest’s art is noted for exploring issues of time and mortality, the paradoxes of life, and the true and proverbial in literature. His success is evident through awards and solo exhibitions across the nation and a career that has spanned decades.

The Skirmish at Ross’ Landing took place. Twenty-two self-described “half bushwhackers” from Captain W. N. “Tuck” Thorp’s Company E of the Ninth Missouri Cavalry (Elliott’s Scouts, serving as the advance of Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby’s brigade and sometimes called the First Missouri Cavalry Battalion) surprised and attacked a detachment of the First Mississippi Infantry (African Descent) under First Lieutenant Thaddeus K. Cock on the Johnson family’s Tecumseh plantation near Grand Lake.

The original wooden Craighead County Courthouse in Jonesboro was consumed by fire, destroying many early documents. Seven years later, in 1876, a second wooden structure burned, and another was destroyed two years later. In 1885, yet another wooden courthouse building burned. Beginning in 1876, county records were kept in a vault, and a brick building was finally completed in 1935.

Roberta Waugh Fulbright was born in Rothville, Missouri. She is known for taking charge of the inherited, fragmented business holdings originally assembled by her husband and molding them into a multi-enterprise family firm. She emerged as an influential newspaper publisher, columnist, bank president, business owner, and civic crusader in Fayetteville (Washington County).

Lonnie Glosson was born the seventh of eleven children in Judsonia (White County). Glosson popularized the harmonica nationwide and had a hand in several hit songs during a time when radio stations employed harmonica orchestras. After enjoying a radio career playing the harmonica, Glosson delved more into gospel as the years wore on, self-issuing songs such as “For Christmas Give Jesus Your Soul.” Nicknamed “the Talking Harmonica Man,” he toured mainly in schools and continued performing into his nineties.

The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was signed into law by Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. The Arkansas FOIA is generally considered one of the strongest and best models for open government by investigative reporters and others who research public records for various purposes. The intent of the FOIA is to keep government business and government records open and accessible to the people of Arkansas. The Arkansas FOIA has been called “the people’s law” in that it provides the citizens of Arkansas open access to the conduct of the public’s business at every level of government, as well as ready access to public records on file with a host of custodians for records in county courthouses, city halls, public schools, and other public facilities across the state.

Susie Pryor died after having suffered a fall a few days earlier. Pryor had been the first woman in Arkansas to run for a political office 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.

An article in the Arkansas Gazette reported that, although Representative Miles Ledford Langley of Arkadelphia (Clark County) had spoken earnestly in support of his view that women needed the right to vote, his remarks caused much laughter. Langley had introduced legislation in the Arkansas General Assembly providing that any citizen twenty-one years old who could read and write in English is entitled to vote and to have equal political rights and privileges. The legislature failed to approve his proposal.

Hoxie (Lawrence County) became a formally incorporated city after Lawrence County accepted a petition submitted by Dr. G. W. Parker, F. M. Lee, and A. C. Rogers. The town was named for Kansas City, Springfield, and Memphis (KCS&M) railroad executive Jack Hoxie. Hoxie garnered national attention in 1955 when its schools became the fourth schools in the state of Arkansas to desegregate. Profiled in Life magazine, Hoxie’s desegregation caught the attention of the entire country. Hoxie is closely tied to the town of Walnut Ridge, which is Lawrence County’s seat.

William Fadjo Cravens was born in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Cravens was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fourth District of Arkansas in the Seventy-Sixth through the Eightieth Congresses, serving from 1939 to 1949. During his tenure in Congress, Cravens served on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, the Committee on Mines and Mining, and the Committee on Territories.

Oaklawn Park Racetrack opened in Hot Springs (Garland County). Even before the Civil War, the former pasture where Oaklawn Park Racetrack now stands was home to impromptu races between local farm boys riding their fastest ponies. Today, the track is Arkansas’s only thoroughbred horse racing venue and the lone remaining gambling center in a city once known as much for its casinos as for its famous thermal baths.

Federal Judge J. Smith Henley ruled in favor of the Council on Community Affairs (COCA) desegregation lawsuit. The ruling ordered an end to racial segregation in all public facilities in Little Rock (Pulaski County), except for public swimming pools, which COCA did not specifically mention in the suit. COCA was an African American civil rights leadership group that grew out of a need to provide coordinated black leadership in the city after the 1957 Central High School desegregation crisis.

Lee County native James Albert Banks married Cherry A. McGee; she is, like Banks, a college professor and author. The two have written several books and articles together, and they have two daughters. James Banks is an educator who has been called the “father of multicultural education,” a discipline that seeks to develop awareness and skills in teachers and students for living in a culturally diverse United States and world. Growing up as an African-American youth in the Arkansas Delta during the Jim Crow years, Banks developed a commitment to social justice. Banks became the first black professor in the College of Education at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle and is also founding director of UW’s Center for Multicultural Education.

Ground was broken for Hot Springs Village, a retirement community planned by John Cooper Jr. Hot Springs Village, which stretches across the Garland–Saline County line, became a gated community and began attracting wealthy retired citizens; its golf courses and trails have also made Hot Springs Village a regional tourist destination. Most of those employed within the village reside within the community. Other amenities offered are libraries, a restaurant, and a recreational center for younger children. The Hot Springs Village Voice, a weekly newspaper, was founded in 1990. In the 2010s, the community began marketing itself to younger professionals, rather than primarily to retirees. In 2019, Hot Springs Village began hosting the Arkansas Senior America Pageant. By the 2020 census, the population was 15,861 (Garland County and Saline County populations combined).

The brief skirmish between Union and Confederate forces at Pott’s Hill (Benton County) was the first engagement in Arkansas between the two sides during the Civil War. The conflict lasted about twenty minutes and resulted in victory for the Union army. It left minimal casualties but was a precursor to the Battle of Pea Ridge less than a month later.

Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Richard Carrel Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi. As a child, Ford spent his summers at the Marion Hotel his grandfather managed in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County). The time spent at the hotel provided him a unique glimpse into the adult world and helped form the keen sense of observation that illuminates much of his work.

The USS Arkansas (BB-33) participated in the bombardment of Iwo Jima, followed by forty-six days of bombardment at Okinawa beginning on March 25, 1945, where the crew had to fight off numerous kamikaze attacks. At the end of World War II, the Arkansas participated in Operation Magic Carpet, making repeated trips from Nakagusuku Bay and Hawaii, carrying thousands of soldiers home to the mainland United States. The battleship was the third ship of the U.S. Navy to bear the state’s name, the prior vessels being a wooden-hulled steamer during the American Civil War and an 1890s single-turret monitor that was renamed Ozark in 1909 and used as an instruction ship.

Bob Riley died in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Riley was a politician and educator who overcame debilitating World War II injuries to serve with distinction in both arenas. His career in state and local politics spanned four decades and culminated in two terms as lieutenant governor (1971–1975) and eleven days as governor (1975). He taught social sciences at Little Rock University (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) and Ouachita Baptist University (OBU).

Little Rock (Pulaski County) native Jermain “Bad Intentions” Taylor lost a rematch with Kelly Pavlik. He began boxing at the age of thirteen and rose through the amateur and professional ranks to become one of the best boxers in the sport. He won a bronze medal for boxing in the 2000 Olympics and became the undisputed middleweight champion in 2005, holding that title for two years and then regaining it in 2014, only to be stripped of it the following year following an arrest for assault. Taylor was actively involved in the “Stamp Out Smoking” Healthy Arkansas campaign and became part-owner of a D1 Sports Training facility in Little Rock. Taylor has also spoken at several events related to speech therapy for children who, like Taylor, suffer from speech impediments.

Marjorie Florence Lawrence, a star soprano who rebuilt her career after being stricken with polio, was born in Dean’s Marsh, Victoria, Australia. After having sung in many of the world’s leading opera houses, Lawrence made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York in 1935 and became a fixture there until 1941. She later established a home in Hot Springs (Garland County) and advanced the study of classical music by holding coaching sessions at her home.

Wallace Coulter was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Coulter was an engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who was co-founder and chairman of Coulter Corporation, a worldwide medical diagnostics company headquartered in Miami, Florida. The two great passions of his life were applying engineering principles to scientific research and embracing the diversity of world cultures. He invented the principle of using electronic impedance to count and size microscopic particles suspended in a fluid. The “Coulter Principle” is responsible for the current practice of hematology laboratory medicine.

Fort Smith (Sebastian County) native and West Point graduate William Orlando Darby, who had organized and trained an elite commando unit that became the First United States Army Ranger Battalion and later expanded into several battalions, was reassigned to head the 179th Infantry Regiment of the Forty-fifth Division. Darby reorganized the broken regiment into a serviceable unit after it had played a role in saving the Anzio, Italy, beachhead. Darby was known as an exemplary leader and received many military honors.

An article in the Saturday Evening Post bore the headline, “The Terrible-Tempered Angel of Arkansas,” referring to Ruth Beall. Beall was superintendent of Arkansas Children’s Hospital and Home from 1934 to 1961. She disliked staying in her office and usually wandered the halls of the hospital, checking on her patients and staff. Her temper was famous; she was easily angered when things were not done the way she wanted. However, the Arkansas Democrat named her 1951’s “Arkansas Woman of the Year.” She was largely responsible for the hospital’s survival during the financial difficulties of the Great Depression and for its expansion and improvement in the following years.