CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas

06/12/2026

Photo Friday!

Arkansas's 190th birthday is coming up on Monday!

Pictured here is singer-songwriter Charlie Rich ("the Silver Fox") performing at Arkansas’s 150th birthday celebration, hosted by Senator David Pryor in Washington DC; 1986.

Rich, a native of C**t in St. Francis County, died on July 25, 1995, and was one of the inaugural members inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in 1996. Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/charlie-rich-2519/ and browse thousands more images here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/

06/12/2026

TONIGHT, 6-8!!!!! 🎂🥂

Come celebrate with us on Friday! 🥳🎂🥂

The EOA is celebrating its 20-year anniversary, joining the 2nd Friday Art Night activities at the Central Arkansas Library System's Main Library in Little Rock this Friday, 6-8 p.m. https://events.cals.org/event/16238083

We will have drinks, cake, and screen-printing of the EOA's anniversary logo and other designs. Join us!

06/10/2026

EOA Minute... Lightning Bug

Lightning Bug (1970) is the first of Donald Harington’s novels set in Stay More, the fictional Ozark town that provides a setting for all twelve of the subsequent novels that he would publish before his death in 2009. The novel introduces the reader to Latha Bourne, the “demigoddess” of Stay More, the undying muse who reappears throughout his work as an embodiment of beauty and spiritual freedom.

Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/lightning-bug-14797/

📷: Courtesy of Harcourt Books

06/10/2026

The celebrations for the Arkansas Centennial began on this day in 1936. President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Arkansas, including stops in Hot Springs and Malvern, and made a twenty-five-minute speech before 30,000 spectators at Fair Park in Little Rock to mark the occasion. Large crowds met the president everywhere he went until he departed for Texas to participate in celebrations honoring that state’s 100th anniversary of independence from Mexico. On June 15, Arkansas’s actual birthday, the U.S. government issued a postage stamp commemorating Arkansas statehood.

Arkansas’s centennial preparations launched early, expanded rapidly to a galaxy committee, descended into financial uncertainties, burst into various ...

06/09/2026

Come celebrate with us on Friday! 🥳🎂🥂

The EOA is celebrating its 20-year anniversary, joining the 2nd Friday Art Night activities at the Central Arkansas Library System's Main Library in Little Rock this Friday, 6-8 p.m. https://events.cals.org/event/16238083

We will have drinks, cake, and screen-printing of the EOA's anniversary logo and other designs. Join us!

06/09/2026

On this day 100 years ago, blues musician CeDell Davis was born in Helena (Phillips County).

As a recording artist, Davis helped bring blues from its rural Southern roots into the twenty-first century. Because of childhood polio, he learned to play his guitar upside down, using a butter knife as a slide while performing the traditional Delta blues he learned growing up in Helena. In 1957, Davis was badly injured in a stampede at a St. Louis tavern, crippling him even further and confining him to a wheelchair. Although he was a longtime professional musician, recordings of his music were not available until 1983. Following that, he recorded several albums and became a favorite with a new generation of blues fans. In 1994, he released his first solo album, Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong. He remained active in music until the end of his life; members of rock bands R.E.M. and Screaming Trees appeared on his 2002 release, Lightning Struck the Pine. He died in 2017. Read more at https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/ellis-cedell-davis-3613/

06/08/2026

New entry: Jesse James (1847–1882)

Jesse James was a Confederate soldier, outlaw, and folk hero from Missouri. While he never lived in Arkansas, he did commit high-profile crimes in the state. Because of his legendary status in Wild West lore, his reputed exploits in Arkansas have elicited ongoing comment and speculation among modern observers.

Jesse James was a Confederate soldier, outlaw, and folk hero from Missouri. While he never lived in Arkansas, he did commit high-profile crimes in the ...

06/08/2026

New entry: John L. Logan (1833–1871)

Confederate colonel John Leroy Logan, a pharmacist and merchant from Camden (Ouachita County), served during the Civil War as a company and regimental commander in the Eleventh Arkansas Infantry and Eleventh and Seventeenth Consolidated Arkansas Mounted Infantry. He later commanded cavalry brigades in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas until the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department in May 1865.

Confederate colonel John Leroy Logan, a pharmacist and merchant from Camden (Ouachita County), served during the Civil War as a company and regimental ...

06/05/2026

Photo Friday!

Pictured here is Robert Loyd (in uniform), protesting discrimination bill HB 1228 on the steps of the state capitol; 2015.

Loyd—along with his husband, John Schenck—was an activist for LGBTQ+ rights in Arkansas. He was also a business owner and a veteran of the Vietnam War. Loyd and Schenck co-founded Conway’s Pride Parade and were plaintiffs in Wright v. Arkansas, a challenge to the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

On June 26, 2015, with a 5–4 ruling in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that states cannot ban gay marriage, legalizing it nationwide (and thereby closing the Wright case). Loyd and Schenck received their marriage license at the Faulkner County clerk’s office that same day, the first same-sex couple in the county to do so. The couple married in Conway on August 22, 2015.

Loyd died suddenly of a heart attack on December 30, 2015. The 2016 Conway Pride parade was dedicated to his memory.

Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/robert-loyd-9405/

06/03/2026

EOA Minute... Handywagon

The Handywagon, built in 1964 for the Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company (Arkla), was intended as an economical vehicle for use by the company’s appliance servicers, meter readers, collectors, and meter setters. The initial run was for 100, at a per-wagon cost of $1,450; ninety-seven were made at a rate of one per day. The first Handywagons went into use in May 1964 as test models and were a success. However, they were ultimately deemed too expensive to produce and discontinued. There are currently three known Handywagons in existence. The Grant County Museum has one, Arkla has one, and the other is in the Van Doorne Automobielfabrieken Museum in Endihoven, Holland. Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/handywagon-5531/

📷: Courtesy of Ray Thornton