Help Us Preserve Arkansas’s COVID-19 Experience

During the 1918 Flu pandemic, a Little Rock woman wrote the following to her son, who was away fighting in France:

You know we have been having a strict quarantine here for two weeks on account of the Spanish Influenza. No school, church, club meetings or gatherings of any kind. The situation is improving some. While there is no school some of the women teachers are driving milk wagons—one of them brings me milk.

Just over one hundred years later, we find ourselves in very similar circumstances. And while the author probably did not think about her letter becoming a primary source of history, that’s exactly what it is. Now it is your time to be a primary source.

Our community is in the midst of a historic event. Future generations will want to know how we lived through the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020.

The CALS Butler Center encourages members of our Central Arkansas community to document their experiences during this time of crisis. We are looking for diaries, photographs, poetry, oral history interviews, artwork, video, etc.

How are you spending these days? How has your life been affected? Share those details with us here.

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