Category: Butler Banner

The ripple effect of change starts at a single point. The point could be an object, place, event, or person. Names are sometimes lost to history, but many survive with little notice. The name of Sam Ella Jones Ward still resonates in a community where she lived nearly one hundred years ago. Born in Prescott,

“I am sixteen, going on seventeen…” sings the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas in its best Rodgers and Hammerstein Sound of Music teenager voice.

Watch out on the roads—we’re old enough to DRIVE!

Born (as in launched to the public as a work in progress—aren’t we all works in progress?) on May 2,

Guest post by researcher Callie Williams

Throughout the last decade, I have explored the archives at the Central Arkansas Library System’s Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the CALS Roberts Library to find the unique histories of the homes built in the historic neighborhoods of Little Rock. Every year in the early spring,

It’s been an exciting season at the Central Arkansas Library System and at the CALS Roberts Library. We have received some accolades and are revving up some programs that have been incubating for a while.

Annual Report: First, if you’d like to review last year’s accomplishments at CALS, check out CALS’s 2021 Annual Report.

With Easter coming up on Sunday and Mother’s Day coming up next month (Sunday, May 8!), we’re excited to have some one-of-a-kind pieces of Arkansas art that are perfect for your springtime decorating and for those special mothers, stepmothers, godmothers, and anyone else who deserves a treat for Mother’s Day.

Maybe you are the one who deserves a springtime treat!

Photography by David Ankeny 

On view through Saturday, April 30 

CALS Galleries & Bookstore at Library Square, Loft Gallery   

David Ankeny started taking photographs long ago and far away. He caught the photography bug from his father, and later his wife nurtured the habit.

Guest post by Bernadette Cahill:

The campaign to win women the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, beginning in 1848, was the longest such civil rights struggle in American history. The campaign culminated with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920—seventy-two years after it began.

Arkansas women played a role in this enormous struggle for women’s suffrage,

Guest post by Bernadette Cahill:

“They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton toll’d the bell.”
–Final couplet from “Faithless Sally Brown,” by Thomas Hood (1799–1845)

These words echoed in my mind in 2021 when my husband Ron and I arrived at Oakland &

Language changes. This fact is rather frustrating for us editors.

And the irony is that, while online resources can most capably respond to changes in usage, they can also appear the most behind the curve. When many of the nation’s newspapers, for example, decided to capitalize the word “Black” in reference to African Americans,

Guest post by Ron Fuller:

As a lover of history, member of the Arkansas History Commission, and occasional writer of historical articles, I have come to rely on the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Roberts Library to assist me with my research. Being somewhat old-school, I often find myself simply browsing the wonderful stacks in the Roberts Library Research Room covering a wide range of pertinent and historical topics.