The CALS David Stricklin Research Fellowship Experience: Heather McNamee, 2025

Since moving to Washington State in 2024, I have found myself looking for opportunities to return home to Arkansas. This makes sense, as I remain a proud Arkansan and Arkansas historian.

Receiving the 2025 David Stricklin Research Fellowship provided an amazing opportunity to access several collections housed in the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in the Bobby L. Roberts Library of History & Art at the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS).

As a historian of late twentieth-century public education, I spent much of my time there examining the Education subseries of the Bill Clinton Gubernatorial records. My research examines the aftermath of school desegregation and the intersections of race, state, and district policies. The Paul Root subseries, and specifically the folders related to desegregation, was most helpful.

I found several letters from Arkansas constituents to Governor Bill Clinton most interesting. One constituent from Wynne wrote in 1987 that in her small town, racial prejudice caused tremendous tension. She wrote: “In some instances, the arms of prejudice hamper democracy. It reaches and grabs the education system, the elections, the social activities, as well as the emotional states of some,” and she asked Governor Clinton what he could do to ease those tensions.

Parents wrote letters to the governor expressing opinions on everything from busing to school consolidation. These letters have helpd me evaluate grassroots responses to state education policy, and I found that they were often more lively and passionate than policy memos.

As I worked through the Paul Root, Don Ernst, and Kathy Van Laningham papers in the Education subseries, the historical foundations of many of our current educational debates became clear. Varied opinions about teacher certification, school consolidation, school finance, and private school vouchers were extensive across the memos and letters.

Almost a year later, I am still going through my scans and making important connections to my research and manuscript project. I am grateful to everyone at the Butler Center and CALS for their support, for making my research trip so comfortable, and for taking me to have some delicious catfish and providing excellent company while I was in town.

By Heather McNamee, assistant professor of history at Washington State University

Heather McNamee specializes in twentieth-century race, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. South. Her primary interests are Black activism in education after school desegregation and LGBTQ+ activism in the South and in her home state of Arkansas specifically. Her dissertation, “The Road to Respect: African Americans and the Fight for Equal Education in Jonesboro, Arkansas Since 1920,” explored Black activism following school desegregation in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1966. The work adds to other histories that focus on the long Black Freedom Movement by highlighting the ways white supremacy remained in public education following desegregation. See McNamee’s September 2025 article “The History of School Desegregation Reveals That the Job Isn’t Done Yet” in Time magazine.

McNamee served as program director for the Arkansas Humanities Council’s “Reflective Images: A Kaleidoscope of Change and Impact of the LGBTQ+ Community in Arkansas,” a grant-funded initiative highlighting the contributions of LGBTQ+ Arkansans to the state, the South, and the United States. McNamee’s article “Of Incendiary Origin: Interracial, IntraClass, and InterClass Intimidation and Violence in Craighead County, Arkansas,” published in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, examined the various motivations and tactics of night riding in northeast Arkansas. McNamee is also researching trans activism against police brutality in 1970s Arkansas.

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The David Stricklin Research Fellowship was established in honor of former CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies director David Stricklin to assist students, teachers, and other researchers in using materials held by the Butler Center. Learn more about it.