Time Period: Early Twentieth Century (1901 - 1940)

Smith, Morgan

Morgan Smith—a physician, administrator, and legislator—was a leader in the drive to improve public health and medical education in Arkansas. Following his service as dean of the Arkansas Medical School, now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), from 1912 to 1927, he represented Pulaski County as a Democrat in the state House of Representatives from 1928 to 1934. Born on March 8, 1868, in El Dorado (Union County), Morgan Smith was the second son of James Monroe Smith, who was a planter and merchant, and Mary Josephine Morgan Smith. He had two brothers and one sister. His father, who formerly served in various county offices, was a state senator and a representative from Union County. Educated in the …

Smithville Public School Building

The Smithville Public School Building, located on Highway 117 in Smithville (Lawrence County), is a single-story, T-shaped educational structure built in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 1993. The first school in Smithville, then the county seat of Lawrence County, was a one-room log building built before the Civil War at the southwest corner of the Smithville Cemetery. School teacher Jasper N. Hillhouse later built a one-room building in 1872 on land that was donated by W. C. Sloan. As Smithville thrived in the late nineteenth century, two rooms were added to accommodate the growing student population. Smithville’s fortunes waned in …

Sneed Tornado of 1929

aka: Tornado Outbreak of April 10, 1929
The only F5 tornado ever recorded in Arkansas destroyed the Sneed and Pleasant Valley communities in Jackson County on April 10, 1929, one of a series of twisters on that day that claimed at least fifty-four lives in the state. At least eight tornadoes hit northeastern Arkansas on April 10, 1929. The most powerful, with wind speeds of 261 to 318 miles per hour, formed near Batesville (Independence County) and traveled northeast, entering Jackson County at about 6:15 p.m., with a half-mile-wide path. As it approached Pleasant Valley (also known as Possum Trot) north of Swifton (Jackson County), people sought shelter in homes that were quickly destroyed by the tornado “dipping down into the farm communities as if a gigantic …

Snodgrass, William Anderson

William Anderson Snodgrass was an instructor at the University of Arkansas Medical School (which later became the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences). During World War I, he organized Hospital Unit T and served as a major in the United States Medical Department in England and France. William Snodgrass was born on March 17, 1874, to Andrew J. Snodgrass and Elmira F. Masterfield Snodgrass at Murray, Kentucky. When he was ten, his family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County). After completing public school and his premedical courses, he entered the Medical School of the University of Arkansas. He graduated in 1896 and was employed as Little Rock’s city physician in 1898. In 1898, he married Lelia Phillips, and they had …

Socialist Party

Partly as a result of the extreme poverty that has plagued the state and partly due to the fiercely independent nature of the people in the more mountainous regions of Arkansas, there has long existed a portion of the populace that frequently supported political movements outside the long-dominant Democratic Party. While such movements failed to overthrow the Democrats, they served the discontented elements in the state and gave them a platform of their own. Among the strongest of the third-party groups was the Socialist Party. Arkansas, along with Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, possessed some of the strongest statewide groups in the nation prior to World War I. The earliest formal effort to create a state group occurred in 1898, but that …

Sogandares, Lidia Gertrudis

Lidia Gertrudis Sogandares was the first Latin American woman to be accepted into the University of Arkansas School of Medicine (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences—UAMS). A pioneer in medicine, she was the first woman to become a physician in Panama and one of the first female doctors in Central America. Sogandares became renowned in the medical fields of obstetrics and gynecology. Lidia Sogandares was born on October 17, 1908, on the island of Taboga in the Gulf of Panama. She grew up in a large family with four brothers and a younger sister. During her childhood, her father went to work for the National Navigation Company in Panama and later moved his family to Panama City. She …

Solar Eclipse of 1918

The second of two recorded total solar eclipses—in which the moon totally obscures the sun, leaving only the corona visible—that could be seen in Arkansas occurred on June 8, 1918. While the first, in 1834, was clearly observed as a “magnificent phenomenon of nature in all its sublimity,” the 1918 event was reported as “somewhat of a disappointment.” On January 3, 1918, the Arkansas Gazette announced that June 8, 1918, would be “a gala day for astronomers,” as a total solar eclipse would cross the United States, beginning in northern Oregon and traveling to northern Florida “at a speed of something like 1,000 miles an hour.” The Hot Springs New Era noted a few weeks later that Mount Ida (Montgomery …

Somervell, Brehon Burke

General Brehon Somervell was a major factor in the success of American military forces during World War II. He oversaw the construction of troop-training facilities and the supply of all American military forces. As construction division chief of the Army Quartermaster Corps, he was a major influence in the planning and construction of the Pentagon. Brehon Burke Somervell was born on May 9, 1892, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the only child of Dr. William Taylor Somervell and teacher Mary S. Burke. In 1906, his family moved to Washington DC. In 1910, Somervell received an appointment to West Point upon the recommendation of Representative Charles C. Reid of Arkansas and, in 1914, graduated sixth in a class of 107. Upon …

Sorrells, John Harvey

John Harvey Sorrells was executive editor of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain and former deputy director of the U.S. Office of Censorship during World War II. At the time of his death, the Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) native was well respected in journalism circles for his first-hand knowledge of the field and his warm, engaging personality. John Harvey Sorrells was born on March 31, 1896, in a one-story house on State Street in Pine Bluff, one of four children of Walter Bartlett Sorrells, who was a circuit judge, and Mary Iva Fletcher Sorrells. In 1886, his maternal grandfather, Reid Fletcher, launched and edited the Daily Graphic newspaper in Pine Bluff. As a high school student working part time, John Sorrells would …

Souls Aflame

aka: Thou Shalt Not Kill
Written and directed by Raymond Wells, Souls Aflame (1928) was a late-silent-era film made either entirely or partly in Norfork (Baxter County). The movie is sometimes described as a Civil War film, but it dealt with a fictitious feud between the Buck and Lilly families during Reconstruction. Souls Aflame may have been the first movie filmed largely or entirely in Arkansas. It is now considered a lost film. One valuable secondary source with authoritative information on this movie is the American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1921–1930. Entries in the catalog were based on copyright information and articles and reviews in contemporary periodicals. The entry on Souls Aflame reads, “Drama. Shortly after …

South Elementary School (Wynne)

South Elementary School, located at 711 East Union Avenue in Wynne (Cross County), is a single-story, brick-veneered four-room schoolhouse constructed in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era public relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 24, 2006. In the early part of the twentieth century, white children in Wynne’s segregated school system were attending classes in a 1906 building; in 1928, an elementary school and gymnasium were erected when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal offered an opportunity for funds for a new school. The school district successfully applied for financing from the WPA to build a new school in the fall of 1938. The Wynne Daily Star-Progress reported in …

South Side High School Sign

The South Side High School Sign, located on the grounds of the South Side Bee Branch School District complex in Van Buren County, consists of large stones that were placed by workers of the National Youth Administration (NYA) in 1937 to mark the location of the local high school. The South Side Bee Branch School District was established in the fall of 1929 to serve the students living south of the small, thriving town of Bee Branch (Van Buren County). The Great Depression began around the same time, and Van Buren County took advantage of the federal relief programs established to bring jobs to afflicted areas. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp at Damascus (Faulkner and Van Buren …

Southern Club

The Southern Club was a gambling and entertainment facility established in 1893 in Hot Springs (Garland County) that gained notoriety during the 1930s as a hangout for visiting gangsters. Among the oldest structures in Hot Springs, the club is located at 250 Central Avenue near the center of the downtown business district. The building was added to the National Register of Historic places on June 25, 1985, as part of the Hot Springs Central Avenue Historic District. At the end of the nineteenth century, Hot Springs experienced tremendous growth as a health resort and spa. One of the buildings constructed during this period was the private club of Charles Dugan and Dan Stuart, the Southern Club, which was built and …

Southern Tenant Farmers Museum

The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum in Tyronza (Poinsett County), which opened on October 6, 2006, focuses on the tenant farming system of agriculture in the South and the farm labor movement that arose in response to this system. The museum is owned and operated as an educational program of Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County). It is housed in the historic Mitchell-East Building, which served during the 1930s as a dry-cleaning business for H. L. Mitchell and a service station for Clay East, two of the principal founders of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU). The museum was created after the Tyronza community approached Arkansas State University for assistance in saving the rapidly deteriorating building and in utilizing it …

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) was a federation of tenant farmers formed in July 1934 in Poinsett County with the immediate aim of reforming the crop-sharing system of sharecropping and tenant farming. The facts that the STFU was integrated, that women played a critical role in its organization and administration, and that fundamentalist church rituals and regional folkways were basic to the union’s operation dramatically foreshadowed the post-war civil rights era. A series of natural disasters in the late 1920s and early 1930s, plus the unique circumstances present in Poinsett County, led to the formation of the STFU. The Flood of 1927 revealed the desperate plight of the Delta cropper to the outside world, sparking the interest of unionists …