Category: Butler Banner

The essence of a home is often weighted toward the traditions of a mother. Born a few years prior to the Great Depression to James Bailey and Addie L. Carter Bailey, Gertha Lee Bailey Trice spent half of her first decade of life observing and experiencing the reality of life during this historic period. Her daily life was impacted by the conditions and lived experience of her family and their community in eastern Arkansas.

A complete set is a wonderful thing. When I was much younger and collected comic books, I always had to fill out whatever series I was collecting. The first comic book I ever bought was G.I. Joe no. 39, and it took me years to acquire all the previous issues, especially the rare no.

Butler Center Books Make Great Gifts!

It is time to start thinking about gifts for loved ones, especially those Arkansas history buffs in your life. Butler Center Books, which focus on people and events of Arkansas, just might fit the bill.

Here are a few recent and popular titles:

Little Rock’s newest downtown mural was dedicated at 301 E. Capitol Ave. (a former LRPD substation) in a ceremony on Thursday, October 21, 2021. The mural is part of the Forest to Faucet program, which is a partnership between the local arts community and Central Arkansas Water. This program included the creation of the mural in partnership with a local artist,

The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is excited to share forty-one individual maps and one Pulaski County atlas online through the Arkansas Studies Research Portal.

These maps are the first to have been digitized in an effort to encourage use of the Butler Center’s extraordinary collection of historical maps that collectively date from 1710 to 1917—more than two hundred years of changing borders and growing communities right at researchers’ fingertips.

Print and Stitch: Collective Works

Friday, October 8, 2021–Saturday, January 29, 2022  

CALS Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art

Loft Gallery, CALS Galleries & Bookstore at Library Square 

This exhibition featuring artists Mallory Darwin,

Most people seem to believe that history is, broadly speaking, “the study of what happened.” But this is wrong.

More than anything else, history is the critical interpretation of surviving sources of information detailing what happened in the past. Some of those sources are literary: newspapers, official documents, engravings, memoirs, court records, and more.

In 2009, colorful banners were placed atop the new/renovated building now known as the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art (known at that time as the Arkansas Studies Institute) in CALS Library Square in downtown Little Rock.

The images on these banners, ranging from an advertisement for Fletcher’s Rose Bud Coffee to a postcard promoting Arkansas as a tourist destination,

Did you know that the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the CALS Roberts Library has a large collection of school yearbooks (or annuals as they were called when I was in school)? The collection holds over 900 individual yearbooks from Arkansas colleges, universities, and vocational-technical schools, as well as those from public and private schools in the Little Rock area.

As I write this, the calendar has just officially turned to fall, which always wins my personal “Favorite Season” contest. Schools have started and we are finally feeling that nip in the air that we’ve been waiting for. CALS’s summer reading program has finished another successful year, UA Little Rock students are coming to fall semester classes in the Roberts Library,