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Since the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas (EOA) turns 18 years old on May 2 this year (in just over a week!), it made sense to me that there ought to be some kind of high school-style presentation. So, what’s this presentation about? I’m so glad you asked! I figured it’d be fun and interesting to take a look at our stats regarding entry content.

In 2019, Jim Conner of Little Rock donated a treasure trove of family material to the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The family has been part of Little Rock’s history for over 150 years.

What came to be called the Keith-Conner family collection contains documents, photographs, and memorabilia relating to the Keith family of Little Rock and the Conner family of Little Rock and Augusta,

The expansion of historical knowledge starts locally, grows to state significance, and may explode onto the national scene.

A group was organized with a plan to document six communities in Pulaski County that follow Arkansas Highway 365 South. The Arkansas African American Historical and Genealogical Society, Preservation of African American Cemeteries,

By the time you read this, the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas (EOA) will have posted our annual April Fools’ Day entry, and while everyone seems to appreciate them, you should know that I’m not just making stuff up. Or that I’m not making everything up in these entries.

Early in life, I learned that in the United States of America, there was once a “one-drop rule” determining whether a person was black (or “colored” or “Negro” in the terminology of a certain time frame). The rule specified that one ancestor with “one drop” of black blood determined you to be black.

This spring offers a bountiful bouquet of opportunities to view and experience art at the Central Arkansas Library System through exhibitions, events, and classes.

Exhibitions

The exhibition Courtesy of the Collectors: Portraits of African Americans in Photographs, Paintings, and Drawings opened in the Underground Gallery in the CALS Roberts Library in January and is in its last days.

The recent Academy Awards celebration put me in mind of the many movies filmed in—or made about—Arkansas, if only because while the state has sent forth a number of talented people who have been nominated for—and won—Oscars, the state itself has generally not been significantly represented on Oscar night.

Billy Bob Thornton received an Oscar for Sling Blade,

I’m just starting to recover from the three busy days I spent in the Research Room of the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art late last year.

When I applied for the 2023 David Stricklin Fellowship, I listed about fifty collections that seemed likely to have something to do with my research topic: the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas (and eastern Oklahoma).

Some years back, my wife read about the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, which translates literally as “Christmas book flood” and entails giving and receiving new books on Christmas Eve. She liked the idea of this, and so each year we go to our local independently owned bookstore a few days before Christmas and try to find a book for each other.

The neighborhood surrounding what now is Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior High School has historically been predominantly Black. Until the early twentieth century, when restricted additions began being developed in Little Rock, the city’s neighborhoods were not rigidly segregated by race, but certain areas such as the “East End,” the “South End,” and the neighborhood around Dunbar always were more Black than white.