Fourteen names will be added this week to the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail, a project of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Institute on Race and Ethnicity.

 The unveiling of the latest plaques on the trail will take place at 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, at the corner of Scott and East Markham streets in downtown Little Rock. The event is free and open to the public.

This year’s theme is “Politics and Law” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Institute on Race and Ethnicity started the trail in 2011 “to acknowledge the sacrifices and achievements made by those who have fought for racial justice in our state.”

Each honoree is recognized with a 12-inch bronze marker. The trail of plaques stretches from the Old State House to the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and eventually will extend to the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park and other points throughout the downtown Little Rock corridor.

This year, the unveiling ceremony also will launch the Southern Historical Association (SHA) conference in Little Rock, which is expected to bring 1,200 historians to the city. Dr. John Kirk is the director of the Institute on Race and Ethnicity and is serving as the local arrangements chair for the regional conference.

 The 2015 honorees for the Heritage Trail are:

• Annie Mae Bankhead, originally from Brooksville, Miss., who was a community activist in Pulaski County’s black College Station neighborhood

• Wiley A. Branton Sr., a Pine Bluff attorney who was head of the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project in the 1960s

• Irma Hunter Brown, originally from Tampa, Fla., who was the first black woman elected to the Arkansas General Assembly

• Charles E. Bussey, originally from Stamps, who was leader of the Veterans Good Government Association and became Little Rock’s first black mayor in 1980

• William Harold Flowers, originally from Stamps, a Pine Bluff-based attorney who laid the foundations for the Arkansas State Conference of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People branches

• Jeffrey Hawkins, originally from Ashley County, who was for decades the unofficial mayor of Little Rock’s black East End neighborhood

• Scipio Africanus Jones, originally from Smith Township in Dallas County, a leading black Republican who defended 12 prisoners for their role in the 1919 Elaine Race Riot

• Mahlon Adrian Martin, originally from Little Rock, who was its first black city manager

• Richard L. Mays Sr., originally from Little Rock, who was among the first black-elected members of the Arkansas General Assembly in the 20th century in 1972

• I.S. McClinton, originally from Faulkner County, who was head of the Arkansas Democratic Voters Association, a forerunner of today’s Black Democratic Caucus

• Judge Olly Neal, originally from New Hope Community, who was the first black district prosecuting attorney in Arkansas and later served on the Arkansas Court of Appeals

• Lottie Holt Shackelford, originally from Little Rock, who was the city’s first black woman mayor

• John W. Walker, originally from Hope, who for more than five decades has been involved in civil rights activism in the courts, most notably in school desegregation cases

• Professor Henry Wilkins, III, originally from Pine Bluff, who was among the first black-elected members of the Arkansas General Assembly in the 20th century in 1972