Time Period: World War II through the Faubus Era (1941 - 1967) - Starting with C

Carlisle, Irene Jones

Originally from Texas, Irene Carlisle lived much of her life in Fayetteville (Washington County), where she became a widely respected teacher, poet, and folklorist. Carlisle taught Latin and English at Springdale High School; published poetry in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and journals; published a well-received book of poetry; and collected folksongs and folklore in northwestern Arkansas. Irene Jones was born to Stephen and Tela Jones on May 24, 1908. She married Jack Carlisle in 1929, and the couple moved to Fayetteville. She earned a BA from Texas Christian University in 1929. During World War II, her husband served in the U.S. Navy, and she worked as a welder in a California shipyard; she composed a popular poem, “Welder,” about …

Carmen, Jeanne Laverne

During the 1950s and 1960s, Jeanne Carmen was a pin-up model, a trick shot golfer, and a B-movie actress. Jeanne Carmen was born Agnes Lavern Carmon in the Lafe community in Greene County near Paragould (Greene County) on August 4, 1930. Her mother was Georgia Ellen Wright, who was twenty years old and was not married to her daughter’s father. On March 20, 1930, Georgia Wright had appeared before the Greene County Court, explaining that she was pregnant and was due in August. She testified that Dennis “D. B.” Carmon was the father of her unborn child. She asked for an arrest warrant to hold him to answer to the charge. On August 4, she gave birth to Agnes and …

Carpenter, Flavius Josephus (Flave)

Flavius Josephus (Flave) Carpenter was a steamboat captain, U.S. marshal, and businessman. He is credited with selecting sites for two Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L, now Entergy) dams on the upper Ouachita River. Carpenter Dam, which created Lake Hamilton, is named for him. Flave Carpenter was born on March 24, 1851, in Franklin County, Georgia, to Martin Sims Carpenter and Martha Weeks Carpenter. The family moved to Arkansas in 1857, settling in Clark County. Carpenter’s father owned and operated a steamboat that plied the Ouachita River from Arkadelphia (Clark County) to points south, including New Orleans, Louisiana. As a young man, Carpenter accompanied his father and learned to pilot the boat. On June 28, 1875, Carpenter married Jane Elizabeth Wallis …

Carpenter, Preston

Preston Carpenter played football in high school, in college, and in the National Football League (NFL). He played for the Arkansas Razorbacks in the 1952–1955 seasons and went on to play for several teams in a twelve-year professional career. His older brother, Lewis Carpenter, preceded him as a Razorback, and they once played for the same professional team. Verba Preston Carpenter was born in Hayti, Missouri, on January 24, 1934, to Verba Glen Carpenter and Edna Earl Pullam Carpenter. He spent most of his early years in West Memphis (Crittenden County) but graduated from high school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he was an all-state high school football player. A gifted athlete, Carpenter also played baseball in high school years, when …

Carver Gymnasium

The Carver Gymnasium, located at 400 Ferguson Street in Lonoke (Lonoke County), is the last remaining structure associated with the town’s first African-American school. The plain-traditional-style concrete block construction building was added to the National Register on September 23, 2009, under Criterion A, due to its significance to local African-American history. In 1889, Goodspeed’s history documented that Lonoke was home to two schools, one for white students and one for “colored people.” A total of 1,640 African-American students were recorded in the county. The African-American school consisted of a two-story frame structure. It provided educational opportunities for grades one through eight. Attendance was sporadic due to the vast majority of students living and working on farms. In the fall of …

Castleberry-Harrington Historic District

The Castleberry-Harrington Historic District in Republican (Faulkner County) consists of three Mixed-Masonry houses, all rocked by mason Silas Owens Sr. of Twin Groves (Faulkner County). The district, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 2007, contains the Loyd and Willie Castleberry Cottage, the Hinkle and Ermon Castleberry House, and the Wilbur and Mary Harrington House. It is an example of a rural farm family compound featuring rockwork by Owens. The homes were built using local sandstone for economy and exhibit the typical low, Craftsman styling of rural post–World War II houses in Arkansas. Owens was a rock mason who was well known in central Arkansas for his meticulous coursing method and his work ethic. …

Castoro, Laura Parker

Bestselling author Laura Parker Castoro has published more than forty novels across multiple genres with major publishing houses such as HarperCollins, Dell Books, Simon and Schuster, Berkley, Avon, Warner, MIRA, Kensington, Pocketbooks, and St. Martin’s Press. Under the name Laura Parker, she writes historical and contemporary romance, westerns, and sagas. She writes contemporary African American and women’s fiction as Laura Castoro. Under pen name D. D. Ayres, she created the bestselling romantic suspense series K-9 Rescue. Laura Parker was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on September 18, 1948, to Dr. David E. Parker and Mary Dell Parker Johnson. She has three brothers: David E. Parker Jr., Michael J. Parker, and Kenneth L. Johnson III. The family moved to Pine Bluff …

Central High School, Desegregation of

aka: Crisis at Central High
aka: Little Rock Desegregation Crisis
In its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public education was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. As school districts across the South sought various ways to respond to the court’s ruling, Little Rock (Pulaski County) Central High School became a national and international symbol of resistance to desegregation. On May 22, 1954, the Little Rock School Board issued a statement saying that it would comply with the Court’s decision, once the court outlined the method and time frame for implementation. Meanwhile, the board directed Superintendent Virgil Blossom to formulate a plan for desegregation. In May 1955, the school board adopted the Phase Program …

Chamberlin, Henry Howard “Hank”

Henry Howard “Hank” Chamberlin is considered to be the father of forestry education in Arkansas. He began the forestry department at Arkansas Agricultural & Mechanical College (A&M)—now the University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM)—in September 1945 with three students. From this humble beginning came the School of Forest Resources at UAM and the Arkansas Forest Resources Center of Excellence. The School of Forest Resources at UAM is the only forestry school in Arkansas. Hank Chamberlin was born on March 8, 1913, in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, to William Chamberlin and Ellen Reed Chamberlin; his father worked as a barber. He was the youngest of four children. After high school, Chamberlin attended Pennsylvania State University and received his BS in forestry. He received …

Chandler, Florence Clyde

Florence Clyde Chandler was a plant geneticist with a broad background in tree-breeding and the induction of polyploidy (the quality of having one or more extra sets of chromosomes) in flowering plants. Her exceptional success inducing polyploidy in the nuclei by using colchicines resulted in the production of a series of outstanding tetraploid and diploid verbenas. During World War II, she worked at the Guatemalan experimental station as a cinchona (a type of evergreen tree) breeder, where she furthered the successful development of a derivative for quinine, a malaria remedy. Born on September 28, 1901, in Oliver (Scott County) to William Festus Chandler and Nannie Charlotte Shannon, Florence Chandler was educated at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington …

Charleston Schools, Desegregation of

Much has been written about the Little Rock School District desegregation in 1957. However, the Charleston Public School District quietly and successfully integrated first through twelfth grades, without any publicity until about three weeks after school had opened for the fall term in 1954. Charleston was the first school district in the former Confederate states to integrate all twelve grades, and because of this, Charleston School District has been named a National Commemorative Site by the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service. Following the May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that deemed state laws mandating public school segregation unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, …

Cherry, Francis Adams

Francis Adams Cherry was a chancery judge, Arkansas’s thirty-fifth governor, and chairman of the federal Subversive Activities Control Board. Cherry is most remembered for his political ineptness, which resulted in the election of Orval Faubus as governor in 1954. Francis Cherry was born on September 5, 1908, in Fort Worth, Texas, to Haskille Scott and Clara Belle (Taylor) Cherry. The youngest of five children, he only briefly lived in Fort Worth before his father, a Rock Island Railroad conductor, was transferred. Cherry grew up in El Reno and Enid, Oklahoma, graduating from high school at the latter town. He majored in prelaw at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University) from 1926 to 1930. The Great Depression delayed …