“The collection contains many interesting items from the life of a man who played a significant role in the political and educational community in Little Rock and the state of Arkansas” said Deborah Baldwin, associate provost of CAHC and the dean of the UALR College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

In 1960, Ledbetter joined the faculty at Little Rock University, now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and served as Chair of the Political Science Department, and, later, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, now the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.  After retiring in 1997, Ledbetter became Professor Emeritus of Political Science.

Ledbetter, 84, led an accomplished career.  “He went from the JAG Corps, to a Ph.D. program, to a faculty position, to five consecutive terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives, the list goes on. His dedication to political science in all of its expressions is clear to see, said Monica Mylonas, assistant archivist.

Ledbetter held five terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives from1967 to 1977.  In the course of this political career, Ledbetter served alongside three of Arkansas’s iconic governors:  Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, and David Pryor.  CAHC holds two collections of these three, Rockefeller and Bumpers.

“This collection adds to our gubernatorial holdings.  Ledbetter co-authored, sponsored, or otherwise supported many of the bills that now characterize these governorships,” said Mylonas.

Ledbetter’s papers deal mainly with his political career, documenting the state’s legislative sessions from 1967 to 1977. A portion of the papers represent his academic career with the UALR.

Cal Ledbetter with Students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock

In addition to donating his legislative papers to CAHC, Ledbetter has also established the UALR Cal Ledbetter Arkansas Legislative Institute Endowment, founded to promote a better understanding of the state of Arkansas through scholarly study.

This endowment has encouraged the recent donation of state several legislators’ papers to CAHC including: former Representatives Kathy Webb and Johnnie Roebuck, and former Senator Jimmy Jeffress.

To commemorate the opening of the Calvin R. Ledbetter, Jr., Papers, CAHC has launched a digital exhibit that celebrates Ledbetter’s work in several key areas, such as legislative leadership, education, and progressive reform.  The online exhibit highlights the range of resources the papers have to offer, and incorporates a selection of digitized photographs, documents, and audio clips.   See the digital exhibit here.

The collection is available in the research room inside the Arkansas Studies Institute building from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information, contact CAHC at 501-320-5780.

World War II Japanese American Internment Museum, McGehee, Arkansas

The exhibit was produced by the Life Interrupted Project, and originally premiered in 2004 as part of a joint effort by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Master’s in Public History Program and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California.

The project’s mission was to gather documents and artifacts related to internment, pursue conservation efforts at the two internment camps in Arkansas – Rohwer and Jerome – and to create and distribute curriculum materials. The project also hosted a national conference in Little Rock, Camp Connections, which attracted over 1,200 people, along with eight coordinated exhibitions around the city, including “Against Their Will.” Additionally, the documentary Time of Fear was produced as a result of this project, which aired on PBS.

Yesterday, the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum held its grand opening. George Takei, actor and social media activist, spoke about his personal experience with Japanese American internment at the dedication ceremony.

Takei was among the 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast who were sent to internment camps.  He and his family were forced to leave their home and move to Santa Anita Assembly Center, where they would eventually be transferred to the Rohwer Relocation Center.

To learn more about Takei’s experience, listen to clips from an exclusive interview he did for the documentary, Time of Fear.

The internment of Japanese Americans was a result of Executive Order 9066. Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on Feb. 19, 1942, the order granted the U. S. government authority to relocate both citizens and non-citizens based on the fear that anyone with Japanese ancestry was a potential spy or saboteur.  In all, ten relocation centers were constructed across the country. Arkansas was the site of two internment camps, the Rohwer Relocation Center (Desha County) and the Jerome Relocation Center (Drew and Chicot Counties).

The collection gathered by the Life Interrupted Project is currently being processed by archivist Shannon Lausch of the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC), and is set to open later this year.

Each month, CAHC is releasing a new clip from 35 hours of interview footage, leading up to the opening of an exhibit on Japanese American internment in Arkansas. The interviews include accounts from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated at the Jerome and Rohwer internment camps, narratives from Arkansans who lived near or worked at the camps, and perspectives from scholars on this period in history.

Courtesy, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission

Already, APRIL has a collection more than 2,500 items related to historic accounts of opossums in Arkansas.  According to CAHC Associate Provost, Deborah Baldwin, there is a great need for sound data at the state and local levels on this marsupial.

The materials collected thus far, are comprised of papers, recipes, photographs, audio and visual materials, and memorabilia.  Included in these historic accounts are several documents on such important events in modern Arkansas history as:

• ‘Possum Post, 1686, the first European settlement in Arkansas
• The Civil War Battle of ‘Possum Ridge, 1862, also known as the Battle of ‘Possum Creek
• The Brooks-Possum War, 1874, regarded as the end to Reconstruction in the state
• An account of temperance advocate Carrie Nation’s destruction of 40 barrels of “Hot Springs ‘Possum Licker” outside a Little Rock saloon, 1906
• Drafts of the 1935 School Lunch Program established by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in which roasted ‘possum was placed on the lunch menu for low-income children.  Including notes by WPA-employed home economists on teaching women the basics of how to cook a tasty ‘possum.

When asked to comment, CAHC Senior Archivist Linda R. Pine opined, “The creation of the Arkansas ‘Possum Research and Inquiry League is a red-letter event for all Arkansans.  It furthers our archives mission to collect and preserve the rich heritage of our state’s cultures and regions including men, women, and now opossums. Furthermore, the acquisition of databases such as OpossumQuest and Marsupial.com will increase our knowledge of opossums and their contributions to the state and the nation, other than as road-kill or cooking.”

In conjunction with the grand opening of APRIL, the Center will host a conference scheduled for the spring of2014, titled, Opossums: America’s Misinterpreted Marsupial.   APRIL invites proposals for research projects that examine the economic, social, literary, and political contribution by opossums in Arkansas.

“If not for the Arkansas ‘Possum Research and Inquiry League, much of Arkansas’s opossum history would be lost to the ages,” Jama A. Best, Opossum Historian and Folklorist.  Ms. Best is scheduled to present on Opossums and the Presidency at next year’s conference. Read Ms. Best’s entire essay here.

The conference will, of course, occur at night.  Several session titles have already been confirmed for the meeting, such as:

Opossums in Popular Culture

Opossums: Friend or Food

Opossum or Possum: An Examination of the Etymology of America’s Only Marsupial

Cooking and Class: How Opossum Recipes Illustrate Class Divisions in Arkansas

Opossum, Oh Why: An Investigation into the 1927 Opossum Emigration from Arkansas

Opossums and the Presidency: A Tail of Intrigue and the White House

The ‘possum-bilities for sessions are endless.  Full proposals are strongly encouraged and should include the following information:  title and brief description of each paper and complete contact information for session participants, including opossums…

Just kidding! But the Center for Arkansas History and Culture does continue its commitment to ensuring the state’s history is accessible through collection and maintenance of archival materials, promoting an understanding of the past through scholarly exchange and public dialog, and supporting academic achievement through the education of undergraduate and graduate students.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Among the lively scenes in this Historypin collection are a fire rescue, a parade float with buffalos, and a man hanging off the roof of an eleven-story building. Take a tour of Little Rock in the early 20th century or browse through all of our Little Rock photographs available so far.

CAHC’s latest Historypin additions come from a collection newly available to the public: the Calvin Hanna Collection. Donated by Hanna in 2012, this collection includes an album of over 250 photographs of Little Rock taken during the winter of 1912. Scenes depicted include: the downtown area and Main Street, aerial views of the city, and landmark buildings, such as the Boyle Building, the Old State House, and the Masonic Temple.

In addition to the Little Rock album, the Calvin Hanna Collection also contains letters of the Moon family of North Little Rock (1877-1929) and the Jane Woodruff (1913-1979) photograph collection of family gatherings and outdoor excursions (ca. 1900-1950), purchased by Hanna at auction after her death.

To see everything we have on Historypin click here. Keep in mind that not all of our photographs are on Historypin.  Browse our online catalog to see what else we hold in our photograph collections.

The panel will include John A. Kirk, UALR Donaghey Professor, chair of the history department, and civil-rights scholar, Cherisse Jones-Branch, associate professor of history at Arkansas State University, and Stephanie Harp, the great-granddaughter of one of the deputy sheriffs involved in the lynching, and George Fulton, Jr., the great-grandson of Carter.

Limited scholarly and popular articles about the circumstances surrounding this incident have been published to date.

Little Rock was mired in social instability that resulted in the incident in 1927.  “The lynching of John Carter was one of the worst episodes of racial violence in Little Rock in the twentieth century, and it continues to shape the collective memory of the African American community in the city today,” said Kirk, who has authored such books as Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970 and Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis.

Carter’s murder is often called the “last lynching in Little Rock.”

For more information about this event, contact the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center at (501) 683-6457.

Interview with Sam Mibu, internee at Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas

Sam Mibu recalls his experience as a teenager forced to leave his home in California and move to the internment camp located in Jerome, Arkansas.

Mibu was among 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Signed on February 19, 1942, the order granted the United States government authority to relocate both citizens and non-citizens based on the fear that anyone with Japanese ancestry was a potential spy or saboteur.

In all, ten relocation centers were constructed across the country. Arkansas was the site of two internment camps, the Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County and the Jerome Relocation Center. The two camps held 16,000 internees from September 18, 1942, until November 30, 1945.

The video interviews are a part of CAHC’s collection, Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WWII Arkansas. The Life Interrupted project premiered in 2004 as part of a joint effort by UALR’s Master’s in Public History Program and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. The interviews featured in the collection were filmed during the creation of the documentary, “Time of Fear.”

Each month, CAHC will release a new clip from 35 hours of interview footage, leading up to the opening of an exhibit on Japanese American internment in Arkansas in September 2014. The interviews include accounts from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated at the Jerome and Rohwer internment camps, narratives from Arkansans who lived near or worked at the camps, and perspectives from scholars on this period in history.

The 25-minute program will air beginning Saturday, Jan. 5, on BBC World Service and cover Cash’s 1969 appearance at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.

That performance, while not as popular as Cash’s Folsom or San Quentin concerts, was remarkable in its own right because it unofficially set in motion prison reform in Arkansas, Woodward wrote.

London natives Jo Wheeler and Danny Robins visited the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture to research the concert. During their visit, they interviewed Woodward; Deborah Baldwin, associate provost of the center and the dean of the UALR College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; and Dr. John Kirk, Donaghey professor and chair of the UALR history department.

Kirk, who is currently working on a biography of Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, a politician instrumental to prison reform in Arkansas, noted that, “The BBC radio documentary illustrates the international interest in many aspects of Arkansas history.”

British-born Kirk arrived at UALR from the University of London in 2010 and is one of the most prolific writers on the state’s civil rights history.

Wheeler and Robins were inspired to visit Arkansas after reading “When I Get Out of Cummins,” an article published by Woodward in conjunction with the 2012 Winthrop Rockefeller Centennial Celebration.

Woodward’s article outlines prison-reform efforts by Cash and then-Gov. Rockefeller. At the time of the concert, conditions at Arkansas prisons were deplorable, with rampant corruption, abuse, malnourishment, and sanitation problems. In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the entire Arkansas prison system unconstitutional.

The singer known as the Man in Black was so deeply moved by his visit to Cummins that he gave $5,000 toward the construction of a chapel there. Rockefeller gave $10,000, Woodward wrote.

“Johnny Cash and the Forgotten Prison Blues” will air on BBC Radio 4 at 10 a.m. Monday, Jan. 7. The program also will run four times on BBC World Service:

• 3:05 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 5
• 8:05 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 6
• 2:05 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 6
• 8:05 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 6

The UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture, located in the Arkansas Studies Institute, offers a collection of resources, including significant papers of governors Carl Bailey, Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, Frank White, and Jim Guy Tucker. In total, the collections comprise about 10,000 linear feet, 70,000 images, and approximately 8,000 books.

Inouye, Congress’ most senior member, died Dec. 18 from a respiratory illness. He was 88.

The center was already in the process of digitizing Inouye’s talk. In 2004, he was interviewed for the documentary Time of Fear, which shared the stories of Japanese-Americans who were interned in Arkansas during World War II. In the hour-long interview, Inouye describes his shock at seeing the Rohwer internment camp during a visit there as a soldier of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

His interview is a part of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s collection Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WWII Arkansas.

The Life Interrupted project originally premiered in 2004 as part of a joint effort by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Public History Program and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.  Their mission was to build up the archives of documents and artifacts related to internment, raise money for conservation efforts at the two internment camps in Arkansas – Rohwer and Jerome – and to create and distribute curriculum materials.

The collection is currently being processed by center archivist Shannon Lausch and is set to open in 2013.

The staff at the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) are celebrating Digital Archives Month. The group hopes that by celebrating they can bring attention to problems of which many people are not aware.

For example, what happens to information recorded on formats like film and video tapes as these formats become obsolete? Questions like these are important for archivists and historians alike to consider.

Chad Garret, Director of Technology for the center sites an important issue for archives: “How do you handle born digital formats in an archive?”  For example, after ten years the information on a video tape will degrade and can ultimately be lost forever. Shannon Laush, an Archivist for the center added, “We want to bring attention to the fact that we have old formats and we want to preserve them while they are still readable.”

By keeping up with what formats an archive has and by staying on top of technology, preservation is possible. UALR’s CAHC are doing just that.

Governor Mike Beebe has declared the 21 through the 27 of October as Arkansas Archives Week,  and the folks at the center are working hard to get people involved.

The UALR CAHC, and the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System, are sponsoring and essay contest: Find It In The Archives. The winner will get to have lunch with an archivist from the center as well as be entered in the national competition. Submissions of the 400 word essays are being taken until October 31. They can be submitted electronically or by snail mail.

Also, the staff at the CAHC have created a YouTube series that will provide information to questions such as the ones mentioned above. To watch the video visit the center’s YouTube channel labeled UALR CAHC. For more information on the essay contest visit: http://arstudies.com/i-found-it-in-the-archives/.

Becca Bona writes for the Daily Record, the Daily Newspaper of Law and Business Information.  This article originally appeared on Friday, October 26, 2012.

“The papers are unique in that they provide an excellent representation of all aspects of Jim Guy Tucker’s public life as attorney general, congressman, lieutenant governor, and governor,” said Dr. Colin Woodward, an archivist at the UALR center.

Once Tucker’s papers are processed, his papers will be the largest collection held at the UALR center, which also holds the gubernatorial papers of Arkansas governors Carl Bailey, Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, and Frank White.

Those papers and President Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial papers held by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, are all housed in downtown Little Rock at the Arkansas Studies Institute, a collaboration between UALR and the Central Arkansas Library System.

UALR’s acquisition of the Tucker collection includes personal and professional papers containing approximately 540 linear feet of materials from every phase of Tucker’s political career.

“We are delighted Gov. Tucker entrusted his papers to us,” said Dr. Deborah Baldwin, associate provost of the center and dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “The collection will provide a significant contribution to the study of Arkansas and its politics during the late 20th century.”

Born in Oklahoma in 1943, Tucker moved to Arkansas with his family as a young boy. He attended secondary school in Little Rock before graduating and enrolling at Harvard University, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree. Tucker married Betty Allen in 1975.

After a medical discharge from the Marine Corp officer training, Tucker entered South Vietnam in 1965 as an accredited freelance war correspondent. He later published “Arkansas Men at War,” a collection of interviews with troops from the state that he followed into combat.

After serving as Arkansas attorney general and representing Arkansas’ Second District in Congress, he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1978, narrowly losing the Democratic primary to David Pryor, then the sitting governor.

A consistent inter-party rival of Bill Clinton, Tucker briefly ran for governor in 1990, but when Clinton decided to go for a fifth term, Tucker ran for and won election as lieutenant governor. He became governor when Clinton became president.

Tucker’s donation to UALR also includes childhood photographs and items documenting the history of the Tucker family, which has deep roots in Arkansas.

Among the early 20th century papers are those of Guy Beckwith Tucker, who was a marshal in El Dorado, Ark., and Tucker’s father, James Guy Sr., who served along the U.S. southern border during the Mexican Revolution before heading to France during World War I.

In-depth work has already been done on the Tucker Papers, but the project, led by CAHC archivist Woodward, could take several years to complete.

The ASI, which houses the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture and The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, is the largest facility in the state dedicated to the study for Arkansas history and culture.Through its connection to the university, the archives benefit from the rigorous scholarship of UALR faculty, creating a valuable resource for students, researchers, stakeholders, and the general public.

The research room at ASI is available from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information, contact Woodward at 501-320-5780.