Book Chapter by Blake Wintory
A Confused and Confusing Affair: Arkansas and Reconstruction, ed. by Mark Christ (Little Rock, AR: Butler Center Books, 2018)., 2018
This is an update of my 2006 article on Arkansas's African-American legislators during Reconstruc... more This is an update of my 2006 article on Arkansas's African-American legislators during Reconstruction and the Post-Reconstruction eras.
Papers by Blake Wintory
A Cry for Justice: Daniel Rudd and His Life in Black Catholicism, Journalism, and Activism, 1854-... more A Cry for Justice: Daniel Rudd and His Life in Black Catholicism, Journalism, and Activism, 1854-1933. By Gary B. Agee. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2011. Pp. xv, 236. Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index. $39.95.)Daniel A. Rudd, born into slavery in Kentucky, championed equality and justice for African Americans as the publisher of the American Catholic Tribune (1886-1897) and as the "chief architect" of the Negro Catholic Congress (1889-1894). Rudd's later career took him to Mississippi and Arkansas, where he worked in the delta's booming lumber industry. Living in Arkansas between 1912 and 1932, he found employment with Scott Bond in Madison (St. Francis County) and later with John Gammon, Sr., in Marion (Crittenden County). While working for Bond, Rudd co-authored Bond's biography, From Slavery to Wealth: The Life of Scott Bond (1917).The heart of this book is Agee's exposition of Rudd's American Cathol...
THE HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM (HAM) and the Central Arkansas Library in downtown Little Rock hoste... more THE HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM (HAM) and the Central Arkansas Library in downtown Little Rock hosted the seventieth annual conference of the Arkansas Historical Association, April 14-16, 2011. Dana Simmons and Jamie Brandon co-chaired the conference committee and coordinated local events. Blake Wintory served as program chair for a second year. With its theme, "A Gathering Storm: Arkansas Goes to War," the conference continued the AHA's gaze back at the Civil War. On Thursday evening, early arrivals gathered at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History for a reception hosted by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Friday morning, the trip downtown was slowed for many by the previous night's storms, which had left downed trees and flashing streetlights. At the HAM, the Department of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) hosted a reception with coffee and pastries. In HAM's Ottenheimer Theater, Bill Worthen, the museum's directo...
The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 2010
"So Big, This Little Place": The Founding of Tontitown, Arkansas, 1898-1917. By Susan Y... more "So Big, This Little Place": The Founding of Tontitown, Arkansas, 1898-1917. By Susan Young. (Tontitown, AR: Tontitown Historical Museum, 2009. Pp. ix, 177. Acknowledgments, preface, prologue, illustrations, maps, epilogue, notes, bibliography, genealogical register, index. $30.00.) Susan Young, outreach coordinator for the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, has produced an informative, well-researched, and amply illustrated community history of the first twenty years of Tontitown, an Italian settlement in Northwest Arkansas. This coincides with Catholic priest Father Pietro Bandini's years of leadership there. He led a group of Italian immigrants out of southeastern Arkansas, founded Tontitown, and served as its "spiritual and secular leader" until his death in 1917. In "So Big, This Little Place," Young builds on earlier scholarship and mines the collections at the Tontitown Historical Museum, Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, archives of the Diocese of Little Rock, and records at the Washington County Courthouse. Complementing the text are over 150 illustrations (pictures, maps, and documents), 158 footnotes, and a useful, but not exhaustive, bibliography. In the book's prologue and first chapter, "From Italy to Sunnyside, 1895-1897," Young places Tontitown's story in the context of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Italian immigration to the United States. Tontitown's origins lie in a plan by Austin Corbin, a New York businessman and owner of Sunnyside Plantation in southeastern Arkansas's Chicot County, to "colonize the idle lands of the South." In November 1895 and December 1896, seventy-three and sixty-six families arrived at the cotton plantation along the Mississippi River. Under contract, each family essentially became sharecroppers. For $2000, with 5 per cent annual interest, the families received 12 1/2 acres of land to farm cotton and sugar cane whose profits would pay off the debt over twenty-two years. Although most of the families came from a rural and farming background, the new settlers found the Arkansas Delta's heat, the mosquitoborne malaria, and living conditions at Sunnyside challenging at best. Soon after the arrival of the first families, Father Bandini, an Italian-born advocate for Italian immigrants, was sent to Sunnyside from New York City. Father Bandini, seeing the poor conditions at Sunnyside but receiving little support from Italian authorities, set up a committee to settle the immigrants in a more hospitable location. In early 1898, after visiting Northwest Arkansas the preceding November, Father Bandini and others began buying land west of Springdale. While many Italians stayed at Sunnyside and more came later, Young estimates that forty-four families made the move. The next two chapters, "Establishing a Community, 1898-1905" and "Becoming a Small Town, 1906-1908," move quickly as Young charts Tontitown's growth into a thriving community. While Young states the book "mirrors" the life of Father Bandini, the focus is rarely on him in these middle chapters. Here, Young treats the familiar themes of community life: building homes and a church, finding work in and outside the community, coping with early natural disasters, starting business enterprises, and planting apple orchards and the town's signature vineyards. Young also makes a case for Father Bandini's insistence on overcoming prejudice and making Tontitown an Italian-American community through U.S. citizenship, English language education, and service during the Spanish- American War and the World War I. The chapter, "Growth and Prosperity, 1909-1916," details Tontitown's maturation as it incorporated in 1909 and elected Father Bandini as the first mayor in 1910. …
ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY (ASU) and the city of Jonesboro hosted the Arkansas Historical Associat... more ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY (ASU) and the city of Jonesboro hosted the Arkansas Historical Association's sixty-ninth annual conference, April 15- 17, 2010. Susan Young chaired the Annual Conference committee, Joseph Key coordinated local arrangements, and Blake Wintory was the program chair. This years's theme, "Before the War: Antebellum Arkansas," piqued the interest of many attending the sessions at ASU's Student Union. On Thursday evening, April 15, the Jonesboro Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Advertising and Promotion Commission of Jonesboro hosted early arrivals at a reception at the chamber's offices. Guests were officially welcomed by Jonesboro's own Sen. Hattie Caraway (as portrayed by Nancy Hendricks). The next morning Arkansas Delta Byways provided conference registrants with coffee, juice, and pastries. Glen Jones, senior associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and research at ASU, officially welcomed guests to the campus. Clyde M...
ON APRIL 17, 1873, THE EASTERN ARKANSAS COUNTY OF LEE was created from parts of Phillips, St. Fra... more ON APRIL 17, 1873, THE EASTERN ARKANSAS COUNTY OF LEE was created from parts of Phillips, St. Francis, Monroe, and Crittenden Counties. Democratic planters and merchants around Marianna, the new county seat, had lobbied hard for the creation of the county, weathering strong opposition from politicians and newspaper editors in Helena. The proposed county had gone through a number of name changes before the state legislature finally chose to honor Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Ironically, the chief champion, supporter, and sponsor of the new Lee County was not a Democrat but an African-American (mulatto) Republican representative from Phillips County by the name of William Mines Furbush.1 His would be one of the most complicated, colorful, and revealing political careers in nineteenth-century Arkansas, yet when Furbush is remembered at all, his story comes freighted with error and myth.2 At the time Lee County was created, political power in Furbush's district (originally com...
The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Oct 1, 2011
The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Oct 1, 2010
Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 2006
A new version of this paper is available. See African American Legislators in the Arkansas Gener... more A new version of this paper is available. See African American Legislators in the Arkansas General Assembly, 1868-1893: Another Look in
A Confused and Confusing Affair: Arkansas and Reconstruction, ed. by Mark Christ (Little Rock, AR: Butler Center Books, 2018).
Other Media & Encyclopedia Articles by Blake Wintory
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, 2021
In Arkansas, between 1868 and 1893, at least eighty-seven African-American men were elected to an... more In Arkansas, between 1868 and 1893, at least eighty-seven African-American men were elected to and served in the Arkansas General Assembly. Reconstruction policies and amendments to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery, redefined citizenship to include freed slaves, and granted universal male suffrage regardless “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In Arkansas, these changes led to the election of Black men to state and local offices. These legislators and other officeholders were primarily elected from areas with large Black populations––Arkansas’s plantation regions in the east and southwest as well as urban areas like Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and Helena. Historians are still piecing together the lives of these men; nevertheless, research shows that the elected men were a diverse group. Many had been free, living in the North before the Civil War, while others were former slaves in Arkansas or nearby states. Leaders in their communities, most appear to have received an education and were capable, literate, and ambitious men. They came to prominence as educators and ministers, but their ranks also held former Union soldiers, newspaper editors, merchants, farmers, lawyers, and at least one doctor. ...more https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/african-american-legislators-nineteenth-century-13932/
Biographical Database of Black Women Suffragists, 2021
Louisa C. Butler, an African-American suffragist, was born Louisa C. Hatton about 1832 in Hagerst... more Louisa C. Butler, an African-American suffragist, was born Louisa C. Hatton about 1832 in Hagerstown, Washington County, Maryland. It is not clear if she was born free or enslaved. While free black individuals with the surname Hatton were living in the area, many families stretched across freedom and slavery. Louisa was the oldest of at least two siblings: Mary Jane (Hatton) Williams (born ca. 1835) and Richard W. Hatton (born ca. 1843). The 1880 U.S. Census lists Louisa’s parents as born in Maryland, while her sister’s record lists her father as born in England and mother born in Maryland. Later records suggest Louisa married a man with the surname Crawford in 1852, but little is known about this union. In 1858, at the port of Philadelphia, under the name Louisa C. Crawford, she registered her citizenship, listing her occupation as a ship stewardess. Philadelphia, a magnet for freedom seekers enslaved in western Maryland, was the location of her sister’s and brother’s marriages at the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in 1860 and 1865. There also seems to have been a maritime tradition in the family: Louisa’s brother and brother-in-law, Andrew G. Williams, served in the Union Navy during the Civil War....
Biographical Database of Black Women Suffragists, 2021
Eliza Julia (Brockett or Brackett) Shadd Anderson (ca. 1824-1898), born in what is now Alexandria... more Eliza Julia (Brockett or Brackett) Shadd Anderson (ca. 1824-1898), born in what is now Alexandria, Virginia, around 1824, was an African-American abolitionist and suffragist. Born in Alexandria, Eliza Brockett moved to Washington, D.C at a young age. An 1898 obituary, published in the Colored American, suggests she was born free, however little else is known about her early life. On March 28, 1842, she married Absolom W. Shadd in the city. Shadd, born
in Wilmington, Delaware in 1815, came from a family of free black business owners and activists. Absolom’s older half-brother, Abraham D. Shadd emerged in the 1830s as an important leader of free black communities in Delaware and Pennsylvania and was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Sometime in the late 1830s, Absolom opened a restaurant and hotel at the corner of 6th and Pennsylvania Avenue--the site of Beverly
Snow’s restaurant and Snow’s Riot in 1835. By 1850, the 34 year-old Abolom and 24 year-old Eliza, had two daughters Julia, 5, and Adelaide, 2...
The Heritage Foundation’s Franklin Grove Estate & Gardens derives its name from The Female Semina... more The Heritage Foundation’s Franklin Grove Estate & Gardens derives its name from The Female Seminary of the Franklin Grove, a secondary school founded on the grounds by the Rev. Canelm H. Hines and his wife Sarah around 1832. The Female Seminary was part of a wave of female academies that spread across the South as communities and families demanded education beyond the primary level for their daughters, sisters, and nieces.
Biographical Database of Black Women Suffragists, 2020
Josephine Lewis Parke Slade, a free-born African American woman, was a founding board manager of ... more Josephine Lewis Parke Slade, a free-born African American woman, was a founding board manager of the Universal Franchise Association in 1867. During the Civil War, she was active in freedmen’s relief organizations and worked in the White House alongside Elizabeth Keckley. Slade died in Chicot County, Arkansas in 1872 and was buried next to her husband, William Slade, at Columbian Harmony Cemetery in Washington, D.C. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C5075826
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Book Chapter by Blake Wintory
Papers by Blake Wintory
A Confused and Confusing Affair: Arkansas and Reconstruction, ed. by Mark Christ (Little Rock, AR: Butler Center Books, 2018).
Other Media & Encyclopedia Articles by Blake Wintory
in Wilmington, Delaware in 1815, came from a family of free black business owners and activists. Absolom’s older half-brother, Abraham D. Shadd emerged in the 1830s as an important leader of free black communities in Delaware and Pennsylvania and was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Sometime in the late 1830s, Absolom opened a restaurant and hotel at the corner of 6th and Pennsylvania Avenue--the site of Beverly
Snow’s restaurant and Snow’s Riot in 1835. By 1850, the 34 year-old Abolom and 24 year-old Eliza, had two daughters Julia, 5, and Adelaide, 2...
A Confused and Confusing Affair: Arkansas and Reconstruction, ed. by Mark Christ (Little Rock, AR: Butler Center Books, 2018).
in Wilmington, Delaware in 1815, came from a family of free black business owners and activists. Absolom’s older half-brother, Abraham D. Shadd emerged in the 1830s as an important leader of free black communities in Delaware and Pennsylvania and was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Sometime in the late 1830s, Absolom opened a restaurant and hotel at the corner of 6th and Pennsylvania Avenue--the site of Beverly
Snow’s restaurant and Snow’s Riot in 1835. By 1850, the 34 year-old Abolom and 24 year-old Eliza, had two daughters Julia, 5, and Adelaide, 2...
Samuel Epstein, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, was a merchant, planter and civic-leader in Lake Village and Chicot County in the early twentieth-century. Samuel Epstein was born to Menasha/Maynard and Malke Epstein on July 25, 1875 on a farm near Riga, Latvia, in the former Russian Empire. He was likely the second of five 1 children. After immigrating to the United States in the mid-1890s, he settled in Chicot County by 1900. In 1907 Epstein married Miss Becke Ruth Eisenberg, daughter of Russian immigrants, of Little Rock. Their marriage produced three daughters: Helen, Sylvia and Melyvn. Epstein's parents likely did not leave the anti-semitic violence and legal restrictions faced by Eastern European Jews, however at least five of their children did immigrate to the United States between 1891 and 1900. Dates vary, but Epstein likely arrived in New York City in May 1896. He traveled to Memphis, Tennessee and joined an older brother, Nathan, who immigrated in October 1891 with his wife Rosa. The brothers resided in or near the Pinch District, a growing immigrant neighborhood with a significant Jewish population. 2