UALR’s Institute on Race and Ethnicity will add 14 plaques to the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail at a ceremony at 3 p.m. Nov. 12 at Scott and Markham Streets.
Begun in 2011, the trail honors those who’ve made significant contributions to civil rights in the state with bronze markers. It will eventually run from the Old Statehouse to the Clinton Library. This year’s theme will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the unveiling of plaques will coincide with a gathering of 1,200 historians at the Southern Historical Association conference.
I feel old. Over the years, I met most of those to be added to the trail.
Annie Mae Bankhead, who was a community activist in Pulaski County’s black College Station neighborhood
Wiley Branton, Sr., who was head of the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project in the 1960s
Charles Bussey, who was leader of the Veterans Good Government Association and became Little Rock’s first black mayor in 1980
William Harold Flowers, who laid the foundations for the Arkansas State Conference of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People branches
Jeffery Hawkins, who was for decades the unofficial mayor of Little Rock’s black East End neighborhood
Irma Hunter Brown, who was the first black woman elected to the Arkansas General Assembly
Scipio Africanus Jones, a leading black Republican who defended 12 prisoners for their role in the 1919 Elaine Race Riot
Mahlon Martin, who was the first black city manager of Little Rock
I.S. McClinton, who was head of the Arkansas Democratic Voters Association, a forerunner of today’s Black Democratic Caucus
Richard L. Mays and Henry Wilkins III, who were among the first blacks elected to the Arkansas General Assembly in the 20th century in 1972
Olly Neal, who was the first black district prosecuting attorney in Arkansas and later served on the Arkansas Court of Appeals
Lottie Shackelford, who was the first black woman mayor of Little Rock
John Walker, who for more than five decades has been involved in civil rights activism in the courts, most notably in school desegregation cases