- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture Launches Online Exhibit Commemorating Arkansas’s First African American Optometrist

John Hill — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 14:34:34 +0000

The Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has launched a new online exhibit exploring the life and achievements of Dr. William Townsend, a civil rights leader in Arkansas who was the first African American licensed to practice optometry in the state. The exhibit, “Dr. William H. Townsend: Optometrist, Civil Rights Leader, State Representative,” follows Townsend’s career and public service highlights and is available . Townsend, who passed away in 2005, was known as a trailblazer and is honored on the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail. He was the first African American licensed to practice optometry in Arkansas, one of the first African Americans to serve in the Arkansas House of Representatives since the 1890s, and the first African American to chair the Aging and Legislative Affairs Committee. “Dr. Townsend has a prominent role in politics and the professions in Arkansas,” said Dr. Deborah Baldwin, CAHC director and principal investigator on the grant. “He is a good example in the City of Little Rock of an African American who contributed in a variety of arenas. We have records relating to his service as a legislator and his time as an optician. This is one of our collections that we envisioned would capture the public interest.” The exhibit is funded by an African American History and Culture Grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, which provides funding for nonprofit organizations who wish to research, document, preserve, and interpret the state’s African American history and culture. Townsend was born July 30, 1914, in West Point, Mississippi, but grew up in Earle, Arkansas. After high school, he joined the army during World War II. While he was on duty, he studied at Nottingham University in England. After the war, Townsend became a student at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. In 1950, he graduated from the Northern Illinois College of Optometry. He opened an optometrist clinic in Little Rock not long after graduating. Townsend was very active in Arkansas politics. During the 1950s, he was a founding member and served as the president of the Council of Human Relations. This council helped to desegregate public schools and businesses in the state. He was also a member of the Council of Community Affairs, which was formed in 1961 by a group of black medical professionals. They facilitated the peaceful desegregation of downtown Little Rock in 1963. In 1966, Townsend served as the chairman of the Arkansas Voter Project, a statewide voter registration initiative run under the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project. In 1972, Townsend was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives for the first of 12 terms. CAHC archivists Adrienne Jones and Cody Besett, Laura McClellan, CAHC assistant director, and Dr. Nathan Marvin, assistant professor of history at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, all contributed to the project.

‘History Alive, Virtually’ Project Provides Online Education Materials for Arkansas’s K-12 Teachers

John Hill — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 20:32:45 +0000

Ever since COVID-19 started, schools across the country have pivoted back and forth between in-person and virtual learning, leaving educators with a need to find reliable online teaching resources for their students. The ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) came up with a solution for this problem by launching the “!” project, a curated set of collections created especially for use by K-12 teachers in Arkansas and their students. Since the project’s launch on July 1, 2021, the website has been visited more than 3,000 times. “K-12 teachers have had to adapt quickly to technology that allows them to teach students remotely in the time of COVID-19,” said Dr. Deborah Baldwin, associate provost and CAHC director. “This project illustrates how research materials can be made accessible in a manner that allows scholars, students, and community members to explore an array of research questions and to illustrate how archives can be used to really enliven a classroom. It’s�� been a good experience for us, and I think a really helpful product for teachers.” The Center for Arkansas History and Culture has curated digitized primary sources and arranged them into 10 themed virtual collections, which contain educational exercises that can be used in face-to-face, virtual, or hybrid classrooms. Every exercise highlights a historical issue that is investigated through the analysis of a primary source or a small set of primary sources. The exercises are complete activities aligned with Arkansas Social Studies Standards and include short introductory sections, links to additional resources, and a set of downloadable handouts for use in the classroom. Additionally, a comprehensive list of CAHC’s digitized primary sources has been compiled and made searchable for easy reference. The project also included a workshop for educators, a contribution of additional digitized items to the public catalog, and a series of curriculum guides designed to meet state social studies frameworks. Baldwin served as the project’s principal investigator, while Laura McClellan, CAHC assistant director, served as the project manager. Additional staff who worked on the project include Dr. Marta Cieslak, a humanities scholar who curated sources and created educational activities; Elise Tanner, director of digital projects and initiatives at CAHC who designed and developed the project’s website; and Cody Besett, student success archivist, who oversaw the creation of a comprehensive list of digitized primary sources and supervised a team of student researchers. The student researchers who contributed toward the project include graduate assistants Lauren Fontaine, A.J. Box, Brittany Fugate, and Harrison Mitchell, as well as Scott Bradshaw, an undergraduate intern. Arkansas teachers were also involved in the creation of “History Alive, Virtually!” CAHC staff worked with a teacher advisory group that was involved in every step of the project – from reviewing the grant application to helping choose themes and documents for the project’s collections to testing out educational materials. “Everything was consolidated with teachers,” Cieslak said. “The most helpful feedback we received is that the teachers would take the exercises we designed into the classroom and have a test run with their students. It was wonderful to hear that the students had a positive experience with our exercises. The website offers 56 different exercises that showcase a variety of sources and address various levels of expertise ranging from history students to seasoned historians interested in deepening their knowledge.” The project is supported by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, which is funded through the CARES Act for COVID-19 relief and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock receives grant to commemorate history of Arkansas civil rights leader William Townsend

John Hill — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 15:23:48 +0000

The Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received a grant to explore the cultural and political sphere of Dr. William Townsend, an Arkansas civil rights leader and the first African American licensed to practice optometry in the state. The Arkansas Humanities Council awarded the CAHC an African American History and Culture Grant, which provides funding for nonprofit organizations who wish to research, document, preserve, and interpret the state’s African American history and culture. The $3,799 grant for the project, “Exploring Cultural and Political Spheres: Dr. William H. Townsend, Arkansas Professional and Civil Rights Leader,” will fund the center’s efforts to digitize Townsend’s papers and create a character collection and social media posts highlighting the Townsend papers. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Downtown will also host an exhibit on Townsend in February 2022 to celebrate Black History Month. “Dr. Townsend has a prominent role in politics and the professions in Arkansas,” said Dr. Deborah Baldwin, CAHC director and principal investigator on the grant. “He is a good example in the City of Little Rock of an African American who contributed in a variety of arenas. We have records relating to his service as a legislator and his time as an optician. This is one of our collections that we envisioned would capture the public interest.” Archivists Adrienne Jones and Cody Besett, Laura McClellan, CAHC assistant director, and Dr. Nathan Marvin, assistant professor of history, will take part in the project. Townsend, who passed away in 2005, was known as a trailblazer and is honored on the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail. He was the first African American licensed to practice optometry in Arkansas, one of the first African Americans to serve in the Arkansas House of Representatives since the 1890s, and the first African American to chair the Aging and Legislative Affairs Committee. Townsend was born July 30, 1914, in West Point, Mississippi, but grew up in Earle, Arkansas. After high school, he joined the army during World War II. While he was on duty, he studied at Nottingham University in England. After the war, Townsend became a student at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. In 1950, he graduated from the Northern Illinois College of Optometry. He opened an optometrist clinic in Little Rock not long after graduating. Townsend was very active in Arkansas politics. During the 1950s, he was a founding member and served as the president of the Council of Human Relations. This council helped to desegregate public schools and businesses in the state. He was also a member of the Council of Community Affairs, which was formed in 1961 by a group of black medical professionals. They facilitated the peaceful desegregation of downtown Little Rock in 1963. In 1966, Townsend served as the chairman of the Arkansas Voter Project, a statewide voter registration initiative run under the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project. In 1972, Townsend was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives for the first of 12 terms.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture receives grant to digitize historic materials

John Hill — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 13:40:02 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) has received a $14,950 grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council to make digitized records accessible to educators who are teaching virtually next year. “History Alive: Virtually!” is a five-part project that will generate a list of digitized holdings for the public, increase the number of items accessible digitally, create virtual collections, design curriculum guides, and provide workshops for educators on how to use the new materials. “We anticipate a lot of teachers will be teaching online this fall, so we applied to complete a project where we make an index of items that are already digitized in our collections,” said Laura McClellan, assistant director of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture. The center will create 10 virtual collections with particular themes, such as civil rights or health. CAHC project staff will work with Arkansas teachers to develop workshops that help them locate digitized primary source material and advance technical skills. CAHC will also create a series of curriculum guides designed to meet state social studies frameworks. The grant money, which is funded through the CARES Act for COVID-19 relief, will be used to hire a historian and a graduate assistant to help with the project, which will be completed by March 31, 2021. This work will involve licensed K-12 teachers, CAHC staff, and ��Vlog��ý Little Rock history faculty. “This project is very timely,” McClellan said. “K-12 teachers and college educators have had to adapt quickly to technology that allows them to teach students remotely. We will be sharing resources with those who need them the most.” In the upper right photo, Lauren Fontaine, a graduate assistant, works in the Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

Holzer to give lecture on historic Arkansas composers through Celebrate! Maya Project

John Hill — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 14:10:10 +0000

Dr. Linda Holzer, professor of music at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will present a lecture-recital in honor of Arkansas composers Florence Price and William Grant Still. The free online presentation will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, via Zoom. Holzer will participate in a new lecture series by the . The Build A Better World Through the Arts & Literature lecture series, produced in partnership with the Arkansas Humanities Council, will include a musician, artist, historian and writer, and poet from diverse arts and literary backgrounds whose life journeys and contributions closely mirror Maya Angelou’s philosophy of community building through arts and literature. “It’s important to me that Arkansans are aware of the incredible stature of these two composers, nationally and internationally,” Holzer said. “The Celebrate! Maya project has given me this opportunity to shine a spotlight on these great composers. We want to make Florence Price and William Grant Still household names in their native city. I would love to see the day when everyone in Arkansas knows who Florence Price and William Grant Still are.” Price is a Little Rock native who became the first African-American woman composer to have a symphonic composition performed by a major American orchestra, and was one of the first African-American classical composers to gain international attention. After her first symphony received its world premiere by the Chicago Symphony, she was commissioned by Britain’s famed Sir John Barbirolli for orchestral work.

Florence Price

William Grant Still

Still, born in Mississippi, moved in infancy to Little Rock with his mother after his father’s tragic death from typhoid. He graduated as valedictorian of M.W. Gibbs High School in 1911. During his successful musical career, Still conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other orchestras and earned two Guggenheim Fellowships and honorary doctorates from Oberlin College and Pepperdine University. “Both Florence Price and William Grant Still lived through the terrible 1918 flu epidemic,” Holzer said. “They overcame and never stopped accomplishing impressive things, so we can all take a lesson from that. They are tremendous models and sources of inspiration to build a better world. They should be a point of pride for all Arkansans.” The lecture will be archived for use as a lesson guide in Arkansas schools. All recorded documents will be saved to Celebrate! Maya Project and Arkansas Humanities Council archives and made available to the public. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit to register for the lecture, and you will receive a Zoom link to the online event. Each lecture will include a question and answer session and discussion portion for attendees.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock releases virtual exhibit to commemorate history of Elaine Massacre

John Hill — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 14:31:15 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture has launched a virtual exhibit to commemorate the 1919 Elaine Massacre, the deadliest racial conflict in Arkansas history. The exhibit, “,” is an interactive experience based on historical resources, including photographs, scholarly essays, and educational resources that can be used by historians, teachers, and students. “The Elaine project took well over a year to create,” said Dr. Deborah Baldwin, director of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture. “The 100th anniversary of the Elaine Massacre and the Red Summer took place last year, and we worked collaboratively with a variety of people at the university, the city of Little Rock, and partnering institutions to tell the history of Elaine Massacre and racial violence in Arkansas.” Scholarly essays written by professors and historians shed light on racial violence in Arkansas and the world, sharecropping, black labor organization, a comparison of white and black newspaper coverage of the conflict, the exodus of the black population from Phillips County, and the implications of the Moore vs. Dempsey Supreme Court ruling in 1923. The landmark ruling freed the Elaine 12, a dozen sharecroppers who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death by an all-white jury following the Elaine Massacre. In order to explore the effects of racial violence Arkansas during the 19th century, the exhibit includes a map that shows incidents of racial violence in the state from 1904 to the present. Racial conflict in the early 20th century, Jim Crow laws, and a lack of economic opportunities caused many black Arkansans to flee the state to cities in the north. A second interactive map shows how the Great Migration caused a sharp decrease in the state’s black population between 1910 and 1980. In 1910, black people consisted of 28.1 percent of the state’s population, which dropped to 16.3 percent in 1980. Pulaski County’s 1910 black population of 40.9 percent dropped to 23.9 percent by 1980. “What the center does best is to use primary source materials, mapping, and other educational materials and put them together in a fashion that gives people a good scope of the issue,” Baldwin said. “We do it well, and we do it via web exhibits that are very accessible to the general public, students, teachers, researchers, and historians.” An unprecedented number of racial violence against black people occurred across the country during 1919, leading the violence to be called the Red Summer. The Elaine Massacre began on Sept. 30, 1919, when a group of law enforcement officers interrupted a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union at a church in Hoop Spur, near Elaine. “The union’s goals were to help members obtain fair wages and treatment within the sharecropping system,” said Brian Mitchell, assistant professor of history at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock who was one of the contributors to the exhibit. “The black farmers who joined the union believed that by combining their financial resources, they could afford to hire legal representation and sue their plantation owners for stolen wages and spurious accounting of their debts.” Black sharecroppers met to discuss unionizing. In the confrontation, one of the officers was killed and a second wounded. Local telegraph operators contacted law enforcement in neighboring towns and the governor’s office. A mob of hundreds of white men poured into the county to suppress an alleged black revolt. At the end of the violence, five white men and an unknown number of black people were dead, though the number is estimated to be in the hundreds. The virtual exhibit was made in partnership with the Arkansas Humanities Council and funded by a grant from the Democracy and the Informed Citizen Initiative by the Federation of State Humanities Council and a grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock digitizes historic railroad maps

Janea Snyder — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 20:24:03 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Center for Arkansas History and Culture has completed the digitization of more than 100 historic railroad maps that are now available��online. The maps, created in 1917 and 1918, document the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad (SLIMS) and the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac) in Arkansas. They trace the railroad from MoArk, Arkansas, to Texarkana, Arkansas. The maps not only depict train tracks mile by mile but also note land, bridges, and buildings owned by the railroad companies. Researchers can find existing and long-gone structures, including the Malvern Roundhouse, the North Little Rock Iron Mountain Shops, the Little Rock Oil and Compress plant, and the Newport Van Noy Hotel. “These large, unique maps include details that give us insight into Arkansas’s economic and cultural networks,” said Deborah J. Baldwin, associate provost of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Collections and Archives. “This level of detail provides a rich portrait of where and how Arkansas towns developed in the early 20th century.” The Center for Arkansas History and Culture received the maps as a gift from Union Pacific in 2017. Union Pacific had inherited the drawings from its predecessor, the Missouri Pacific Railroad. The Cairo and Fulton Railroad Company built the original mapped railroad lines in 1871. In 1917, the Cairo and Fulton Railroad Company merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad. The maps were originally created for the federal government’s Interstate Commerce Commission as a means to determine the value of each railroad company. This value statement was used to determine what companies could charge for passenger and freight rates. The fragile maps were brittle from age, and their sheer size – 4.5 feet by 2 feet – made them easy to tear, so the Center for Arkansas History and Culture made immediate plans to digitize them. With funding from the and the , the CAHC sent the drawings to a vendor equipped with large-format scanners. The digitization project, now complete, gives researchers online access to the maps anytime. Researchers can even zoom-in to view fine details that are not easily seen on the physical maps. The original maps will remain at the Center for Arkansas History and Culture. Photo above right: This North Little Rock map is one of several historic railroad maps available online through University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

Center for Arkansas History and Culture Wins Grant to Process and Digitize Arkansas Railroad and City Maps

��Vlog��ý Little Rock — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:48:53 +0000

The University of Arkansas for Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture has received nearly $6,000 from the Arkansas Humanities Council to assess, digitalize, and catalog early railway line and city maps created from 1917 to 1918.�� The $5,874 grant, entitled “Tie-ing Arkansas Together,” will process and digitize 133 oversized railway maps associated with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad and the Missouri Pacific Railroad. The rail line associated with this project traveled from MoArk, Arkansas, to Texarkana, Arkansas. These maps show a unique history of Arkansas towns and businesses in the early 20th century, since they document the location of buildings and other constructed elements as well as railway lines. This project is associated with a larger endeavor to preserve and showcase material on the railroads’ influence on Arkansas settlement patterns and their influence on culture and society. The center’s goal is to provide resources to educate the public on the importance of political decisions related to city development. “Understanding the development of the railroad provides a deeper understanding of how people lived and interacted through the structures they built,” the grant states. Once completed, the digitized maps will be available on the center’s online catalog for the general public to view. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Philosophy Department to host Arkansas High School Ethics Bowl Jan. 27

Janea Snyder — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 16:22:00 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Department of Philosophy has received a $1,622 grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council to host the sixth annual Arkansas High School Ethics Bowl. The event enhances critical thinking skills in high school students and helps them engage in important ethical dialogues. The event will also benefit teachers who seek to incorporate ethical reasoning into their lesson plans. The Arkansas High School Ethics Bowl is led by Drs. Jana McAuliffe and Michael Norton in the Department of Philosophy. Together, they will plan, advertise, oversee, and help evaluate the Ethics Bowl. This event allows students to participate in team-based ethical reasoning, persuasion, and communication. “Competing in the Ethics Bowl requires students to develop arguments that support what they believe to be right and practice disagreeing in ways that are thoughtful and productive,” McAuliffe said. The 2018 Arkansas High School Ethics Bowl will be held Saturday, Jan. 27, in the Reynolds Center for Business and Economic Development on the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock campus. “The High School Ethics Bowl is a unique event that brings together some of the brightest, most impressive students from across Arkansas, and our department is pleased to have the opportunity to organize it each year,” Norton said. The winner will be eligible to compete in the National High School Ethics Bowl. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Upper right photo: Students from Little Rock Central High School won the 2017 Arkansas High School Ethics Bowl and represented Arkansas at the National Bowl. Contributing Writer/ Lydia Perry, Editor, Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

��Vlog��ý Little Rock professor receives $50,000 for public radio program

Ajani Oyindamola — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:16:59 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has received a $50,000 commitment to create a partnership to continue a K��Vlog��ýR public radio show dedicated to humanities and literary arts in the South.�� The Arkansas Humanities Council signed a memorandum of understanding to award J. Bradley Minnick, associate professor in the Department of English, $10,000 a year for the next five years to continue the.�� “We want to highlight the intellectual work of the South, specifically the Arkansas and Mid-South region to share our rich tradition, history, and cultural production in our community,” Minnick said. Minnick is the executive producer and host of “Arts & Letters,” which airs at 7 p.m. on the second and fourth Fridays of the month on K��Vlog��ýR to an audience of 8,000 to 12,000 listeners and is available for download as a podcast on artsandlettersradio.org, NPR, NPR One, Player FM, and iTunes. Now in its fourth season, “Arts & Letters” has aired more than 30 episodes. Episodes cover a wide range of arts and humanities topics from the to the search for in downtown Little Rock to the . The program also highlights the musical talents of central Arkansas and regional artists, who share their music. Minnick completes special four-minute episodes “Arts & Letters Shorts,” which highlight contributing musicians. In the upcoming season, viewers can look forward to an episode on spirit possession in the Arkansas Delta region as well a program about ��

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture Launches Online Exhibit Commemorating Arkansas’s First African American Optometrist

‘History Alive, Virtually’ Project Provides Online Education Materials for Arkansas’s K-12 Teachers

����Vlog��ý Little Rock receives grant to commemorate history of Arkansas civil rights leader William Townsend

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture receives grant to digitize historic materials