CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas

09/11/2026

New entry: Dayveon

Director Amman Abbasi’s debut film and brutally honest coming-of-age story Dayveon (2017) follows the path of a teen boy’s summer in rural Arkansas as he falls in with a local gang and navigates the separation of family and gang life.

Director Amman Abbasi’s debut film and brutally honest coming-of-age story Dayveon (2017) follows the path of a teen boy’s summer in rural Arkansas as he ...

09/11/2026

Photo Friday!

Pictured here are wreaths being placed on headstones of service members during a “Wreaths Across America” event at Little Rock National Cemetery; December 15, 2018.

Little Rock National Cemetery is the largest national cemetery in Arkansas and the only one closed to new interments. The last active-duty burial was a man from Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) who was killed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 20, 1996. Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/little-rock-national-cemetery-6968/ and browse thousands more images here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/

09/10/2026

The EOA now has dozens of quizzes on all things Arkansas, including the latest one on women's history. Click below to find out how much YOU know!

09/08/2026

Happy 60th birthday to Star Trek!

Did you know Arkansas has a lot of connections to Star Trek? Follow the link and find out!

Happy Star Trek Day! Arkansas has lots of connections with Star Trek, whose original television series premiered on this day in 1966. The original series ...

09/07/2026

On this Labor Day, we spotlight the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (S**U), a federation of tenant farmers formed in July 1934 in Poinsett County with the immediate aim of reforming the crop-sharing system of sharecropping and tenant farming. The facts that the S**U was integrated, that women played a critical role in its organization and administration, and that fundamentalist church rituals and regional folkways were basic to the union’s operation dramatically foreshadowed the post-World War II civil rights era. The S**U's combination of evangelism, practicality, and purpose would provide an operational example for later civil rights and women’s movements, setting the stage for the next half of twentieth-century American life. The history of the union is preserved at the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum in Tyronza.

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (S**U) was a federation of tenant farmers formed in July 1934 in Poinsett County with the immediate aim of reforming ...

09/04/2026

Photo Friday!

Pictured here is Governor Bill Clinton wearing a hat and apron at an event promoting Arkansas beef, likely in 1983 when the Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 160 establishing the Arkansas Beef Council, a non-profit organization designed to “promote an understanding of the beef industry and maintain a positive marketing climate.”

The raising of beef cattle has been carried out in Arkansas since before the area became an American territory. Though beef cattle can be found in every county in Arkansas, the industry is largely centered in the northwestern counties of the state. As industry historian C. J. Brown writes, “The beef enterprise lends itself well to being combined with the poultry operations which have developed in those areas of the state.” According to the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, approximately 30,000 farms in the state produce beef cattle, and, in contrast to the poultry industry, a large percentage of these farms are family owned and operated.

Read more about the beef industry in Arkansas here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/beef-industry-4335/ And browse thousands of other images here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/

09/02/2026

EOA Minute... Head Pots

Head pots are a very rare and unique form of pre-historic Native American pottery found almost exclusively in northeast Arkansas and the adjacent bootheel region of Missouri. They are distinguished from other native North American pottery in that the entire vessel is molded into the general shape of a human head. Artistically, head pots vary from crude to remarkably lifelike representations. Most are somewhat smaller than the head of a normal adult, averaging about five to six inches in height. Head pots are associated with the Late Mississippian Period to the time of European contact, dating about 1400 to 1700. Read more here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/head-pots-571/

📷: Pictured here is a head pot from the Nodena Site near Wilson (Mississippi County), circa 1550; photo by Curtis Duncan, courtesy of the Arkansas State University Museum.

09/02/2026

New entry: Liberty Bell (Arkansas State Capitol Grounds)

Arkansas received a replica of the Liberty Bell in 1950 as part of a national savings bond drive; it later became the centerpiece of a monument on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol to commemorate the United States’ bicentennial.

Arkansas received a replica of the Liberty Bell in 1950 as part of a national savings bond drive; it later became the centerpiece of a monument on the ...

09/01/2026

New entry: Scull Cemetery

Signage at Scull Cemetery, located on Old Post Road north of Arkansas Post National Memorial in Arkansas County, makes a sweeping but unsubstantiated claim: “1778 / Oldest Cemetery in Arkansas.”

Signage at Scull Cemetery, located on Old Post Road north of Arkansas Post National Memorial in Arkansas County, makes a sweeping but unsubstantiated ...

09/01/2026

Yesterday was KABF's 42nd anniversary. 🎉

KABF radio station (FM 88.3) in Little Rock began broadcasting an eclectic mix of music, news, and community driven content in 1984. “The Voice of the People” has exposed Arkansans to genres rarely heard on commercial radio, given local artists radio airplay, and provided organizations and citizens with a means to reach a wide audience with their messages. The broadcast signal carries to most of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties, as well as some neighboring states, and reaches an estimated 50,000 listeners every week. KABF is one of only twelve non-commercial radio stations in the United States with the maximum allowed signal of 100,000 watts.

The KABF radio station (FM 88.3) in Little Rock (Pulaski County) began broadcasting an eclectic mix of music, news, and community driven content in 1984. ...