Time Period: Early Twentieth Century (1901 - 1940)

Chiles, Marcellus Holmes

Army captain Marcellus Holmes Chiles is one of twenty-one Arkansas natives to have received the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. He is also one of just three Arkansas soldiers to have received the award for his service in World War I. All three received the honor posthumously. Marcellus Chiles was born on February 5, 1895, in Eureka Springs (Carroll County). He was the oldest of three children born to attorney John Horne Chiles and Lillian Irene Hughes. It is not known how long the family remained in Arkansas after Marcellus’s birth, but by 1900, they were living in Denver, Colorado. Sometime after graduating from high school, Chiles enrolled at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he was …

Chitwood, Oscar (Murder of)

Oscar Chitwood was murdered on December 26, 1910, at the Garland County Courthouse in Hot Springs. A deputy sheriff who was with Chitwood at the time of the murder claimed that a lynch mob killed Chitwood, but other witnesses contradicted his account. The murder remains officially unsolved. On August 17, 1910, Garland County sheriff Jake Houpt and his chief deputy (and younger brother) Sid Houpt attempted to arrest Oscar Chitwood and his brother George Chitwood for stealing horses. The Chitwood brothers resisted arrest, and a gunfight broke out on the grounds of the Garland County Courthouse. When the fight ended, George Chitwood was dead, and Jake Houpt was mortally wounded. Oscar Chitwood escaped, although badly wounded. Sid Houpt was unharmed. …

Christ Church Parochial and Industrial School

Christ Church Parochial and Industrial School was a private school for African-American children operated in Forrest City (St. Francis County) by the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas from 1923 until 1968. It was closely related to Christ Church Mission, an African-American congregation founded in 1921. The mission and school were founded by the Right Reverend Edward T. Demby, the African-American suffragan (assistant) bishop for “Colored Work” in the Diocese of Arkansas and in the southwestern province of the national Episcopal Church. Bishop Demby sought to build a thriving African-American ministry in eastern Arkansas and also saw the need for quality education in academic and vocational skills for the black children of Forrest City and the surrounding county. He requested and received …

Civil Rights Movement (Twentieth Century)

The 1957 desegregation crisis at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is often viewed as the most significant development in the civil rights struggle in Arkansas. However, this event is just one part of a struggle for African-American freedom and equality that both predates and outlasts the twentieth century. African Americans in Arkansas at the turn of the twentieth century were in an embattled state, as they were across the rest of the South. They were politically disfranchised and increasingly segregated in most areas of public life. In the Arkansas Delta, where the vast majority of Arkansas’s black population was concentrated throughout the twentieth century, blacks were often bound to the land by exploitative peonage contracts with white …

Civil Works Administration (CWA)

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was one of the first federal relief programs under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to provide employment and infrastructure improvements in the depths of the Great Depression. During this time, U.S. officials realized that the system created by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) to fund unskilled-labor jobs through state and local governments to provide employment was not sufficient to combat the worsening effects of the economic depression gripping the country. In response, Harry Hopkins, who was Roosevelt’s federal relief administrator and a proponent of work relief (as opposed to direct relief for the able-bodied unemployed), proposed a new agency to provide jobs. Roosevelt established the Civil Works Administration by executive order in November …

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

A brainchild of newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began in 1933 with two purposes: to provide outdoor employment to Depression-idled young men and to accomplish badly needed work in the protection, improvement, and development of the country’s natural resources. Camps housing 200 men each were established in every state: 1,468 in September 1933, 2,635 in September 1935, and, because of the improving economy, down to 800 by January 1, 1942. During this period, seventy-seven companies undertook 106 projects located in Arkansas. Variously called, “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” “Tree Troopers,” “Soil Soldiers,” and the “Three-Cs Boys,” the CCC was the result of Senate Bill 8.598, which was signed into law on March 31, 1933. Reserve officers …

Clark County Courthouse

The Clark County Courthouse at 4th and Clay streets in Arkadelphia (Clark County) was constructed in 1899 to replace an aging structure built in the 1840s. Except for a time when the building was closed for repair and restoration following damage from a tornado in 1997, the courthouse has operated continuously as the center of Clark County’s government. As one of the state’s oldest courthouses that is still serving the purpose for which it was constructed, the Clark County Courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 1, 1978. Clark County was established in 1818, becoming one of the five counties in existence at the time the area became known as Arkansas Territory in 1819. Court …

Clark County Library

The Clark County Library is a purpose-built red brick building located in Arkadelphia (Clark County) at 609 Caddo Street. Constructed in 1903, it serves as the main branch of the Clark County Library System and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 5, 1974. The Women’s Library Association was formed in Arkadelphia on November 11, 1897, with the goal of establishing a public library. The group collected a number of books that were stored in a succession of locations in the town, but in 1899 the group was unable to find a rent-free location. At this time, the association began working to build a permanent facility to house the library. A number of fundraising events were …

Clark House (Malvern)

The Clark House in Malvern (Hot Spring County) was designed by noted Arkansas architect Charles Thompson. Incorporating design elements from both Victorian and Craftsman styles, the house was constructed in 1916 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The home was constructed for Dayton D. Clark, a local lumber mill manager. His wife was Louise Clark, and the couple had two daughters. Clark commissioned the plans for the house from Charles Thompson’s architectural firm. The east-facing, one-and-a-half-story home is located on a corner lot at 1324 South Main Street. A porch fronts the house, wrapping around the eastern edge of the structure, which is accessed by a set of concrete steps from the circular drive. …

Clarke, Albert Oscar (A. O.)

Albert Oscar (A. O.) Clarke was a self-educated teacher-turned-architect who worked as a draftsman under the leading architect of St. Louis, Missouri, of the 1880s, Jerome Bibb (J. B.) Legg. He later partnered with William Matthews to draw dozens of commissions in St. Louis in the 1890s. Clarke was then recruited for the employ of William “Coin” Harvey for his resort in Monte Ne (Benton County), where Clarke designed the two largest log buildings in the world at the time. He went on to design Classical Revival–style structures throughout northwest Arkansas, as well as in Clarksville (Johnson County). A. O. Clarke was born on May 23, 1859, to Edgar W. Clarke, who was a Presbyterian minister, and Martha A. (Northrop) …

Clarksville Confederate Monument

The Clarksville Confederate Monument, located in the south-central section of Oakland Memorial Cemetery in Clarksville (Johnson County), is a ten-foot-tall marble obelisk atop a limestone base. The commemorative monument was financed and erected through the efforts of the Felix I. Batson Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and erected around 1902. Inscribed upon the monument’s northern side is: “SACRED TO THE / MEMORY OF / OUR / CONFEDERATE / DEAD / 1861–1865.” Despite Johnson County’s relatively small population, “about 1,000 men, perhaps more,” joined the ranks of the Confederacy in at least seven different companies, according to the Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas; about half of that number returned from the war. On April 20, …

Clarksville High School Building No. 1

The Clarksville High School Home Economics Building in Clarksville (Johnson County) was a one-story Craftsman-style brick building designed and constructed in 1936–37 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal public relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1992. In late August 1936, the Clarksville school board decided to take advantage of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and seek funding for additional buildings to bolster the offerings on its high school campus. Clarksville’s Herald Democrat reported on August 27 that “projects were worked out and submitted to the Works Progress Administration for a Smith-Hughes building and a home economics cottage, a gymnasium and repair of all school buildings in the …

Clarksville National Guard Armory

Built in 1930, the Clarksville National Guard Armory at 309 College Street is an Art Deco–style building constructed as part of a statewide armory building program to house National Guard companies based in Johnson County. Citizen-soldier militias have had a constant presence in the United States since the colonial era, but it was not until Congress passed the Dick Act—sponsored by Senator Charles W. F. Dick, chairman of the Committee on the Militia—in 1903 that the National Guard became an official partner in the nation’s armed services, receiving federal support for training, equipment, and pay. Arkansas’s state militia was organized into the Arkansas National Guard as a result of the Dick Act. The Clarksville (Johnson County) armory was constructed in …