John A. Kirk - Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas: New Perspectives

The twelve essays in this collection grew out of the conference Race and Ethnicity: New Perspectives on the African American and Latina/o Experience in Arkansas, sponsored by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) History Department, the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC), the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), and the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

The conference was part of a Rockefeller Centennial Celebration to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, Arkansass first Republican governor since Reconstruction, who served two terms in office from 1967 to 1971. Rockefeller arrived in Arkansas in 1953 with an already established interest in race and ethnicity. The grandson of Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Winthrop spent early boyhood holidays at the African American Hampton Institute in Virginia and played an active role on the executive board of the National Urban League while living in New York. In Arkansas, he established a cattle-farming ranch atop Petit Jean Mountain just outside of Morrilton (about sixty miles northwest of the state capital of Little Rock) and put his old friend from New York, African American Jimmy Hudson, in charge as manager. As governor, Rockefeller played an important role in shaping better race relations within Arkansas and promoted a number of African Americans into state offices, including William Sonny Walker, the first state director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in the South. In the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination in 1968, Rockefeller was the only southern governor to hold a memorial service on the steps of the state capitol in tribute to the slain civil rights leader.

I am grateful to Deborah Baldwin, dean of the UALR College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and associate provost of CAHC, and to Winthrop Rockefeller Institutes Christy Carpenter, co-chair of the Winthrop Rockefeller Centennial Coalition Executive Committee, for conference funding. I also thank Bobby Roberts, head of CALS, and David Stricklin, head of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, fortheir support. CALS sponsored a conference plenary talk by Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, through its J. N. Heiskell Distinguished Lecturer series. Blackmon, an Arkansas native, provided the perfect launch for the conference, and I am delighted to acknowledge his contribution to proceedings. Two trusty assistants provided valuable help in coordinating conference logistics: Rebecca (Rivka) Kuperman, from the deans office, and Andrea Ringer, then a student in UALRs masters program in public history and now a successful graduate.

Four moderators chaired the four conference panels and kept people on time and in order. My thanks for their willingness to participate go to Adjoa Aiyetoro, inaugural director of the UALR Institute on Race and Ethnicity and associate professor of law at the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law; Ranko Shiraki Oliver, associate professor of law at the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law; David Stricklin, head of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies; and Sherece West-Scantlebury, president and CEO of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Jay Barth, M. E. and Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of Politics at Hendrix College, provided the conferences closing remarks. I am also thankful to the authors of the essays in this volume for giving up their time to attend the conference, lending their expertise, providing stimulating and convivial company throughout one long day and two evenings of conference activities, and having the staying power to make it through countless emails, suggestions, and queries from the editor as the conference collection came together.

Finally, the UALR Chancellors Committee on Race and Ethnicity warrants a mention. Since 2006 UALR chancellor Joel Anderson has led weekly Monday afternoon discussions during semesters about issues related to race and ethnicity in Arkansas, the South, and the nation. The voluntarily attended group is made up of faculty, staff, and students and represents an open forum for anyone in the university who wishes to attend. I became part of the committee when I arrived at UALR in 2010, and I have found it a useful and supportive sounding board for my own ideas and a valuable peer group to learn from. In 2011, UALRs Institute on Race and Ethnicity grew out of the committee to provide a more formal structure to, as its mission statement says, remember and understand the past, inform and engage the present, and shape and define the future on issues of racial and ethnic justice. Among its projects, theinstitute has established the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail in downtown Little Rock to publicly commemorate the many unsung civil rights heroes in the state. All of this is befitting of UALR, whose stated goal is to be keeper of the flame on race in the city, whose African American student population is the largest of any higher-education institution in the state, and which is located in a majority nonwhite state capital.