Alphonso Trent Mural, Fort Smith, Ark. Part of the 2016 Unexpected Project
Dr. Harry P. McDonald collection
McDonald wasn’t the first black doctor in Fort Smith, but he was the only black doctor for many decades. This collection covers his career and his role in the Civil Rights Movement in the area.
Dr. Angie Evans-Benham Collection
Benham was a junior at Van Buren in 1958 when the school began to integrate. Benham spoke out against angry parents in support of the black students. This collection has original letters from all over the world addressed to Benham.
Bass Reeves Collection
Reeves became the first black deputy west of the Mississippi, who was born into slavery in Arkansas. The collection consists of articles, copies of certificates, photographs, and records.
Alphonso Trent Collection
Trent was a jazz pianist and band leader from Fort Smith. The collection consists of articles, copies of certificates, photographs, and records.
Mame Stewart Josenberger
Josenberger was a Fort Smith resident, landowner, teacher, and activist, who was part of the women’s club movement. The collection consists of articles, copies of certificates, photographs, and records.
For more information about collections contact the Pebley Center https://library.uafs.edu/library/pebley-center
Blood in Their Eyes by
What actually occurred beginning October 1, 1919, in Phillips County, Arkansas, has been the subject of debate; there is no monument to the victims of the deadly conflict between black sharecroppers and white plantation owners, because the facts have never been sorted out. Over the course of five weeks, five whites, including a soldier, died; black
Race Relations in the Natural State by
In this book noted Arkansas historian Grif Stockley (""Blood in Their Eyes"", ""Daisy Bates"") presents a clear depiction of the struggles of race and class in Arkansas, using personal stories to give a deeper understanding of the price of racism in Arkansas. The last chapter explores the experiences of Hispanics in the state.
A Stranger and a Sojourner by
The extraordinary story of a pioneering African-American community leader is now told. After serving in the War of 1812, Peter Caulder, a free African-American settler in the Arkansas territory, has his life turned upside down on the eve of the Civil War.
The Long Shadow of Little Rock by
Recounts the 1957 incident in which nine black children were prevented from entering school.
Becoming a Mighty Voice by
American labor unions resemble private representative democracies, complete with formally constituted conventions and officer election procedures. Like other democratic institutions, unions have repeatedly experienced highly charged conflicts over the integration of ethnic minorities and women into leadership positions. In Becoming a Mighty Voice, Daniel B. Cornfield traces the 55-year history of the United Furniture Workers of America (UFWA), describing the emergence of new social groups into union leadership and the conditions that encouraged or inhibited those changes. This vivid case history explores leadership change during eras of union growth, stability, and decline, not simply during isolated episodes of factionalism. Cornfield demonstrates that despite the strong forces perpetuating existing union hierarchies, leadership turnover is just as likely as leadership stagnation. He also shows that factors external to the union may influence leadership chan≥ periods of turnover in the UFWA leadership reflected employer efforts to find cheap, non-union labor, as well as union efforts to unionize workers. When unions are threatened by intensified conflict with employers and when entrenched high status groups within the union are obliged to recruit members of lower socioeconomic status, then new social groups are likely to be integrated into union leadership. Becoming a Mighty Voice develops a theory of leadership change that will be of interest to many engaged in the labor, civil rights, and women's movements as well as to sociologists or historians of work, gender, and race, and to students of political and organizational behavior.
Redefining the Color Line by
This work looks at one of the most significant events in the struggle for black civil rights in America. In 1957 the Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas began integration. Resistance forced President Eisenhower to send federal troops to protect nine black students as they entered the school. It was some time earlier, in 1954, that the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional.
A Mob Intent on Death by
"The struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the world s powers and saw two of them first France, then the United States attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day. How did it happen? Tapping into newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and making full use of the published literature, distinguished scholar Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to lose their way in Vietnam. Embers of Waropens in 1919 at the Versailles Peace Conference, where a young Ho Chi Minh delivers a petition for Vietnamese independence to President Woodrow Wilson. It concludes in 1959, with a Viet Cong ambush on a U.S. outpost outside Saigon and the deaths of two American officers whose names would be the first to be carved into the black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In between come years of political, military, and diplomatic maneuvering and miscalculation, as le
Ruled by Race by
Winner of the 2010 Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the 2009 Ragsdale Award. From the Civil War to Reconstruction, the Redeemer period, Jim Crow, and the modern civil rights era to the present, Ruled by Race describes the ways that race has been at the center of much of the state's formation and image since its founding. Grif Stockley uses the work of published and unpublished historians and exhaustive primary source materials along with stories from authors as diverse as Maya Angelou and E. Lynn Harris to bring to life the voices of those who have both studied and lived the racial experience in Arkansas. Topics range from the well-known Little Rock Central High Crisis of 1957 to lesser-known events such as the Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 and the shocking yet sadly commonplace attitudes found in newspaper reports and speeches. Through the words of the most powerful Arkansans such as racist Arkansas Govenor Jeff Davis (1901-1906) to the least powerful, including an unflinching look at the narratives of former slaves, readers will come away with increased awareness of the ways that race continues to affect where Arkansans live, send their children to school, work, travel, shop, spend leisure time, worship, and choose their friends and life partners.
Dr. Harry P. McDonald, The Fort Smith Historical Society Journal Vol. 41, No. 2, September 2017 (available in the Pebley Center)
U.S. Marshall Bass Reeves