Month: August 2023

Moments in history sometimes stand out because of the audaciousness of the action. Looking beyond the moment to examine the root reveals fascinating facts, placing that moment in a new context.

One such moment is the Central High Desegregation Crisis that was spotlighted around the world in 1957–58. The pioneering Black teens were highlighted in news programming as they attempted to attend the supposedly desegregated Little Rock Central High.

Women’s Equality Day is observed in the United States each year on August 26 to recognize the day in 1920 that the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was officially certified and became law, guaranteeing women the right the vote. In 1971, Representative Bella Abzug of New York championed a bill in the U.S. Congress to designate August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.”

The resolution reads as follows:

Joint Resolution of Congress,

Elizabeth Findley Shores, an independent historian living in Little Rock, received this year’s Booker Worthen Literary Prize, presented by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies on behalf of the Central Arkansas Library System, for her book Shared Secrets: The Queer World of Newbery Medalist Charles J. Finger. Published by the University of Arkansas Press,

Ron Robinson was a Little Rock businessman, a friend of the Central Arkansas Library System, and a collector of many things related to the state of Arkansas. A previous post described his assortment of postal curiosities related to Arkansas, but Robinson also preserved hundreds of postcards depicting the state over the years.

In his 1998 book The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness down to Size, Danish science writer Tor Nørretranders introduces the concept of a “tree of talking.” The idea is that if I want to communicate something to you, I have to take my disparate ideas and images and distill those into a narrower term or phrase,