History

Right now, most of the white elected officials in Arkansas seem willing to ignore the fact that Arkansas was a part of the Red Summer of 1919. We must learn that our past will continue to be our present, and will be cemented into our future, if our state does not officially acknowledge and reconcile its past beyond ubiquitous discussions of the 1957 Central High School integration crisis.

Fulbright’s apologists like to claim that the senator’s sins during the Central High Crisis were ones of omission rather than commission — that he played no significant role in stoking segregationist outrage, but rather simply did little to stop it. But they are wrong. As an author and signatory of the Southern Manifesto, Fulbright provided a false cover of legitimacy to segregationists and emboldened them to defy the Brown decision. 

Popular culture has trained us to think of the Klan as first and foremost a racist group, rather than a religious one. But centering racism does not help to explain why the KKK was so popular in places like Paragould, Harrison, and Bentonville — places that were almost exclusively white. What Barnes does, instead, is to show how the Klan operated at the nexus of religion, race, business, leisure, law and politics.

As a young Army officer, president-to-be Zachary Taylor spent a couple of years at Arkansas's Fort Smith. Apparently he didn't have a very good time there.

The 1960 bombing of the home of Carlotta Walls and the sham investigation that followed.

Hot Springs was “running wide open,” with casino gambling happening in full view of God and everybody.

A forgotten historical parallel to the coronavirus pandemic.

The 1974 National Black Political Convention.

Motivated by money and white supremacist beliefs, the state farm bureau, chambers of commerce and others lined up with segregationists to enact the ‘right to work’ law.

From memoirs by Henryetta Peck and Robert Peck

In 1956, Winthrop Rockefeller made his local school district in Morrilton an offer that it surely could not refuse: unlimited access to his considerable inherited Standard Oil fortune to fund a model school program that would be the envy of the state, the South and the nation.

Gambling has defined the city since the 1920s.

Re-Evaluating the 1981 “Monkey Trial.”

Dave Cox's forgotten campaign and the 1962 election for Arkansas governor. An exclusive excerpt of Ernie Dumas' political memoir.

With his Walk Against Fear 50 years ago.

What's lost when we consider the history of racial violence from a white perspective.