African-American Heritage Trail
The history of the Arkansas Delta is rich with the heritage of the African-American families and communities that have populated the land for the past two centuries. The music, agricultural, Civil War, Civil Rights, and culinary heritage of the region carry the bold stamp of African Americans.
Many of the traditions of African Americans in the Arkansas Delta are not cataloged in museums. These traditions are carried through the music heard in churches and juke joints; the stories told on front porches and at family reunions; and the sense of interconnectedness and shared experiences of black families and communities in the Delta.
We invite you to join us on a journey into the African-American heritage flowing through the Arkansas Delta. Explore the music, stories, cuisine and land which define a people and their cumulative experiences. In many ways, it is this shared heritage that forms the soul of the black population in the Delta, and it is tied forever to the alluvial soil that is the lifeblood of this rich region.
Because so much of the African-American history and heritage in the Arkansas Delta is not tied directly to the built environment, get ready for a sensory experience: hear the music –gospel, jazz, blues; see the land and fields which brought slavery to the region and enabled the suppression of African Americans into present times; smell and taste the sweetbreads, greens, barbeque and fried chicken –there is nothing better!
Greyhound Bus Station
109 N. 5th Street, Blytheville
(Tours by appointment only, 870.763.2525)
The Blytheville Greyhound Bus Station was the transportation hub and social center of Blytheville for many years. As a major entry and departure point for locals and visitors, the Greyhound Bus Station saw soldiers off to service, musicians carrying the Delta blues northward, and African-American individuals and families fleeing racial strife and oppressive economic conditions in search of better paying jobs and better lives. This massive outmigration from the Arkansas Delta region forever altered the landscape of the Lower Mississippi River delta, its history and traditions. Of particular significance, the separate “Colored” waiting room in the Blytheville Greyhound Bus Station remains as structural evidence of Jim Crow and the de facto segregated society that gripped the Arkansas Delta for years.
The Wiley Center at Franklin Elementary School
South Franklin Street, Blytheville
(Tours by appointment only, 870.762.6128 or 870.740.1186)
The Wiley Center at Franklin Elementary School is a collection of African-American artifacts and memorabilia dating from the early 19th century through the late 20th century. Highlighting black businesses ad educators in Blytheville, The Wiley Center features local firsts and notables as well as interpreting regional and national themes in the African-American story.
African-American Cultural Center
1005 Logan Street, Jonesboro
870.932.6013
(Open by chance or appointment)
The African-American Cultural Center focuses on the heritage of African Americans in Jonesboro and Craighead County. Collections include portraits of influential and significant African Americans in Jonesboro and a central exhibit focusing on the first black high school in northeast Arkansas. The Cultural Center highlights the lives and achievements of African-American residents of the Delta, specifically the more urban experience of blacks in the county government seat of Jonesboro. A documentary video and special tours focus on African-American churches and schools in Craighead County.
Southern Tenant Farmers Museum
117 Main Street, Tyronza
870.487.2909
http://stfm.astate.edu
The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum tells the story of tenant farming and agricultural labor movements in the Mississippi River Delta by highlighting the creation of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union -- the first successful biracial agricultural union aimed at improving working conditions for all tenant farmers in the Delta. The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum is in the historic Mitchell-East Building in downtown Tyronza which housed the dry cleaning business of H. L. Mitchell and the service station of Clay East, two of the original organizers of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in 1934, and served as the first headquarters for the union. Established by eleven white and seven African-American farmers at Sunnyside School near Tyronza, the union grew into a national organization and was a forerunner of later labor and civil rights movements.
Museum exhibits focus on the farm labor movement in the South and the tenant farming and sharecropping system of agriculture. African-American union songwriter and poet John Handcox and early organizers and civil rights struggles are featured.
Judd Hill Plantation Cemetery
AR Hwy. 214, Poinsett County
www.juddhillplantation.org
Judd Hill Plantation began as a wedding gift from Judd Hill to his daughter, Mrs. Ester Hill Chapin, and her new husband, Sam Chapin. The Chapins created one of the largest, contiguous farms in Poinsett County. Combining row crops with a cattle operation, Judd Hill Plantation quickly became one of the premiere farms in Northeast Arkansas.
The work force on Judd Hill land consisted of three groups: sharecroppers, renters, and day, or wage, laborers. In 1934, sixty-eight families, all African Americans, tended plots of ground ranging from 5 to 40 acres and lived on the land. Today, the African-American cemetery on site has been restored and is maintained. Judd Hill reunions are held annually to raise awareness and funds for African-American students in Poinsett County.
Northern Ohio School at Parkin Archeological State Park
U.S. Highway 64 and Arkansas 184 North, Parkin
870.755.2500
www.arkansasstateparks.com/parkinarcheological
Visitors can tour the circa 1910 Northern Ohio School, a wood framed one-room schoolhouse for children in the Sawdust Hill community adjacent to the Parkin archeological site. The predominantly black community housed sawmill workers of the Northern Ohio Cooperage and Lumber Company.
As the 20th century dawned and northern timberlands were depleted, timber buyers looked to the dense forests in the South. Several sawmills opened in the Arkansas Delta, providing work for many people during a time when there were few jobs other than agriculture. Around 1910, the Northern Ohio Cooperage and Lumber Company opened in Parkin and over three-quarters of the sawmill workers were black men. The company constructed a wood-framed one-room schoolhouse for mill workers’ children and remained in service until 1948.
Twist
AR Hwy. 42, Cross County
It was in a juke joint in tiny Twist, home to blues music great Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett, that the legendary “Lucille” was born. When a fight broke out resulting in fire engulfing the juke joint, the evening’s entertainer, B.B. King, rushed back into the building to rescue his guitar from the flames. Learning afterwards that the fight was over a woman named Lucille, King named each of his guitars in her honor as a reminder of that night in Twist, Arkansas.
Anthonyville
AR Hwy. 147, Crittenden County
The Town of Anthonyville began as a black neighborhood established by the Salon Anthony family. Located just south of West Memphis and bordering the Mississippi River levee, little remains of the once bustling African-American community. Notable blues and jazz performer, Sandra Anthony Bray, is the daughter of founder Salon Anthony.
Paradise Gardens Cemetery
AR Hwy. 147, Edmondson
Albert King, one of the Arkansas Delta’s most successful blues musicians, is credited with influencing Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Robbie Robertson and Frank “Son” Seals among others. King is buried at Paradise Gardens Cemetery in Edmonson south of West Memphis.
Angel in the Field
AR Hwy. 149, Earle vicinity
This National Register-listed memorial marks the grave of George Berry Washington, a former slave who became one of Crittenden County’s eight largest landowners by the time of his death in 1928. Located north of Earle on Highway 149, “Angel in the Field” is the only remaining structure associated with Washington, and notes his success as an African-American landowner, farmer, businessman, and preacher. It is also the only example in Earle and all of Crittenden County of a sculptural funerary monument.
The 13-foot statue and a short wall surrounding it were erected as a memorial by his wife and two daughters. It is isolated in a cotton field about 100 feet from Highway 149 where it sits atop a 10-foot Indian mound. “Angel in the Field” earned the attention of regional painter Carroll Cloar – whose painting of the statue “Angel in the Thorn Patch” has been exhibited internationally.
St. Francis County Museum
603 Front Street, Forrest City
870.261.1744
www.sfcmuseum.org
The St. Francis County Museum in the historic Rush-Gates House features an exhibit on Scott Winfield Bond. Scott Bond, 1852-1933, was born into slavery in Mississippi and came to St. Francis County as a young boy. Bond first rented farmland in the vicinity of the town of Madison at age 22, continued to acquire land and steadily built his agribusiness venture into a fortune. He amassed some 4,000 acres, employed more than 400 families, and owned timber and milling operations, cattle ranches, and fruit orchards in the Arkansas Delta. Bond was the state's first black millionaire and a model entrepreneur and advocate for African-American education in the Arkansas Delta.
Scott Bond Family Plot
US Hwy. 70, west of 5th Street, Madison
The 1933 burial plot of Scott Winfield Bond is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Fargo Agricultural School Museum
Floyd Brown Drive, Fargo
870.734.1140
Begun by Tuskegee Institute graduate Floyd Brown with a purported $2.85, the Fargo Agricultural School was a private, residential high school for black youth in the Arkansas Delta. Established in 1919, the school served more than 200 students at its peak in the 1940s who lived, worked and studied on the 800-acre school and farm.
The Fargo Agricultural School offered “training for the head, hands and heart” and high school educations for hundreds of black youth at a time when the United States’ black population averaged five years or less of formal schooling. The curriculum of the school reflected the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute and African-American education advocate. All students participated in at least a half-day of academic studies—English, music, history, mathematics, and natural sciences. During the other half-day, girls studied childcare, family income management, food preparation, serving and preservation, and sewing, while the Fargo boys learned carpentry, electrical wiring, plumbing, and care of livestock and poultry. Floyd Brown made time each week to instruct Fargo students in practical reasoning skills, which he called his “Class in Common Sense.”
Central Delta Depot
100 West Cypress Street, Brinkley
870.589.2124
www.cddm.org
Louis Jordan was born in Brinkley in 1908 and rose to fame as a premier jazz musician during the 1930s and 1940s. Under his father’s tutelage, Jordan learned to play the clarinet, and began touring with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in the late 1920s. He gained international fame with his “jump blues” style and had hits such as “Is You or Is You Ain’t My Baby” and “Caldonia” with his Tympany Five band.
One of the most successful African-American musicians of the 20th century, Louis Jordan is often called “the father of rhythm and blues.” His biggest hit, “Choo Choo Ch’ Boogie,” sold two million records in 1946, and influenced artists from B.B. King to Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. Louis Jordan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2005.
Centennial Baptist Church
York and Columbia Streets, Helena-West Helena
(Under restoration - Not open to the public)
Centennial Baptist Church is nationally significant through its association with Dr. Elias Camp Morris, who served as pastor from 1879 until his death in 1922. The 1905 Gothic Revival church was designed by a member of Morris’s congregation, Henry James Price, a trained African-American architect, to replace an earlier building that the membership had outgrown. The brick structure was designed to seat 1,000 and became an instant landmark in the community. Dr. E.C. Morris is recognized for his efforts on the national level to further the religious, political, and social achievements of African Americans, and he served as president (1895-1922) of the National Baptist Convention, the largest African-American organization in the United States at the end of the 19th century. Centennial Baptist Church remains a symbol of those efforts in the heyday of Jim Crow in the American South. The building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a National Historic Landmark.
Delta Cultural Center
141 Cherry Street, Helena-West Helena
870.338.4351
www.deltaculturalcenter.org
The Delta Cultural Center, located in historic downtown Helena, interprets the history of the Arkansas Delta. Exhibits, educational programs, annual events and guided tours tell the story of the region’s rich heritage of sights, sounds, people and events. From its blues music to the mighty river that runs through it, the Arkansas Delta story unfolds within this unique Helena landmark and its multiple locations – the Depot, Visitors Center, Moore-Hornor House and Temple Beth El facility.
The Visitors Center, located one block north of the Depot, features the “Delta Sounds” music exhibit and a daily live broadcast of the legendary “King Biscuit Time” radio hour – the longest running blues radio program in the country. Here are the stories of legendary musicians with roots in the Arkansas Delta: blues legends Sonny Boy Williamson, Louis Jordan, Robert Lockwood, Jr., James Cotton, Robert Nighthawk and Albert King.
Gospel music is a true art form in the Arkansas Delta - touching lives regardless of age, race and background. Tell It! Sing It! Shout It! highlights the sacred music of the Arkansas Delta and the performers who gained recognition in the genre. The exhibit features the stories of such gospel greats as Helena-born Roberta Martin, who formed the Roberta Martin Singers and became a dominant force in gospel music for more than 35 years.
Dixon Cemetery
Phillips Co. Road 239/Great River Road, Helena-West Helena
The focal point of the cemetery is a large, imposing obelisk-type monument marking the grave of the Rev. Elijah Camp Morris, D.D. Morris was the pastor of Centennial Baptist Church in Helena, founder of Arkansas Baptist College, founder and publisher of the Baptist Vanguard, and president of the National Baptist Convention. Members of his family, as well as other African-American families, are buried here. Among these are the influential African-American families of Adams, Anderson, Clark, Cooper, and Drew.
Elaine
AR Hwy. 44 at AR Hwy. 20/Great River Road, Phillips County
Elaine is the site of the 1919 race riot which began during an African-American sharecroppers meeting at Hoop Spur Church to discuss joining the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America to campaign for better wages and working conditions for tenant farmers. Though accounts of who fired the first shots conflict, a shootout in front of the church on the night of September 30, 1919, between armed black guards around the church and three individuals whose vehicle was parked in front of the church resulted in the death of one white man, and the wounding of Phillips County’s white deputy sheriff.
What ensued has been called one of the earliest events in the American Civil Rights movement. Mob-violence threatened and tensions rose quickly. Although the exact number is unknown, estimates of the number of African Americans killed by whites range into the hundreds. Five white people lost their lives. The first twelve (of an estimated 265 arrested and detained) black men given trials had been convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The “Elaine Twelve,” as they would become known, contested the convictions with the help of Arkansas’ leading African-American attorney, Scipio A. Jones. Six of the twelve were eventually freed by the Arkansas Supreme Court, and the remaining six defendants were granted a new hearing and were eventually relieved of the associated sentences.
Lake View
AR Hwy. 44/Great River Road, Phillips County
The town of Lake View was created as a program of the federal Resettlement Authority under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program in response to the Great Depression. Lake View was an early resettlement colony specifically for African-American farm families during the Depression. The purpose of the resettlement program was to give farm tenant families and even small farm owners a chance to get back on their feet and to earn an income sufficient for a decent standard of living. Very little evidence of the New Deal-era resettlement exists today.
Magnolia Cemetery
Phillips Co. Road 239/Great River Road, Helena-West Helena
Magnolia Cemetery, an African-American cemetery, dates back to 1850. Memorials and burials include four early black legislators who served Arkansas —William H. Grey, Jacob N. Donohoo, Abraham H. Miller, and Henry B. Robinson. The cemetery has a large number of fraternal headstones, including the Royal Circle of Friends, which was started in 1909 in Helena.
Rogerline Johnson Photography Studio
401 Columbia Street, Helena-West Helena
Rogerline Johnson, a well-known African-American photographer and entrepreneur, worked in Helena and the surrounding Arkansas Delta during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. Johnson was an integral part of Helena’s civic, economic, cultural and political life. His interest in the community is reflected in his photographs of local people engaged in social, religious and educational events. His archives contain 25,000 black and white negatives taken between 1952 and 1971 that offer a comprehensive view of African-American life in Arkansas delta towns such as Helena, West Helena, Lake View, Elaine and Marianna.
Now deceased, Johnson’s son carries on his legacy and photography studio in its original location. A traveling exhibit of his work has been featured around the Arkansas Delta and is available on display and for purchase at Johnson’s Studio in downtown Helena.
Immanuel High School
68 Immanuel Road, Almyra
Immanuel High School served the communities of Immanuel and Almyra for more than six decades in educating African-American students. The Immanuel High School building is one of two buildings left standing on property that was purchased by African Americans for the sole purpose of educating their children during the Jim Crow era in the South. The history of this school spans a time of approximately 85 years. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Pickens Baptist Church
Desha County Museum, U.S Highway 54 East, Dumas
870.382.4222
Pickens Baptist Church, former home to the Pickens Plantation African-American congregation, now resides on the grounds of the Desha County Museum. An excellent example of vernacular Arkansas Delta architecture, Pickens Baptist Church has a rich gospel music heritage and still hosts special events and performances.
John Johnson Cultural and Educational Museum
Courthouse Square, President Street & Morningstar Avenue, Arkansas City
870.877.2426
(Call or visit the Desha County Courthouse for tours)
John H. Johnson was born in 1918 in rural Arkansas City as the grandson of slaves. Convinced that the rural Arkansas Delta could not provide the opportunity she envisioned for her young son, Johnson’s mother took him to Chicago in 1933, part of an estimated 40,000 Southern blacks who migrated North during the 1930s in search of better opportunities.
Johnson was the founder, publisher, chairman and CEO of the Johnson Publishing Company Inc., Chicago, Ill., the largest black-owned publishing company in the world featuring Ebony and JET magazines. Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. also owns Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the number one makeup and skin care company for women of color around the world.
The John H. Johnson Cultural and Educational Museum, a project of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, is housed in a recreation of the original Johnson house in Arkansas City, and interprets the life and influences of the region on John Johnson and his future media empire.
Selma Rosenwald School
Selma Collins Road, Selma
870.367.6349
(No set hours, call to visit)
As one of the more than 5,000 Rosenwald Schools built between 1917 and 1932 in the rural South, Selma’s Rosenwald School is one of few remaining examples of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington’s commitment to improving educational opportunities for blacks in Arkansas.
Built in 1924-25 with a total construction cost of $2,275, the Selma Rosenwald School served rural Drew County African-American students until consolidation with the Drew Country Central Schools in 1964. The school was built as a “two-teacher” plan based on designs provided by the Julius Rosenwald Fund and housed the first through tenth grade classes. There was also an “industrial room” inset near the front for home economics classes or trade skills programs.
Time and weather were not kind to the Selma Rosenwald School building after it ceased to serve as an educational facility in the mid-1960s. Efforts are underway by alumni and locals to restore the school to its original appearance, with plans to interpret the African-American experience in Drew County and the larger Arkansas Delta. A trophy case of athletic awards still sits in the industrial room area, alongside a 1924 photograph of the first class to attend Selma Rosenwald School.
Chicot County Training School
Hazel & North School Streets, Dermott
The Chicot County Training School is a 1929 Craftsman-style structure built with assistance of the Rosenwald Fund. It is significant as a part of Julius Rosenwald's legacy as the foremost benefactor to Negro education in the South, and as the only surviving Rosenwald School in Chicot County. The building was last used as a public school in1975, when the campus was the city’s elementary and high school. After the building was no longer used as a public school, it was acquired by the Morris-Booker Memorial College Board. The National Register-listed building is still owned by the Morris-Booker Memorial College Board and has returned to educational use as a Head Start facility.
Lakeport Plantation
U.S Highway 82 at Arkansas Highway 142, Lake Village vicinity
870.265.6031
http://lakeport.astate.edu
The Lakeport Plantation house, built circa 1859, is one of Arkansas' premiere historic structures and the only remaining Arkansas plantation home on the Mississippi River. It was built by enslaved laborers for the Lycurgus Johnson family, part of a political dynasty that extended from Virginia to Kentucky to Arkansas. Additionally, the plantation is representative of the westernmost expansion of the antebellum slave-based economy. Lakeport Plantation has remained in continuous cotton production since the1830s when enslaved workers carved it from the heavily forested Arkansas frontier.
The plantation provides complete documentation of agricultural development in the region and the accompanying changes in the African-American experience in the delta – from frontier and plantation slavery, to sharecropper and tenant farmer systems, to agricultural mechanization and the resulting mass exodus of African Americans to factories in the North, to the more recent large-scale corporate farming.
The mission of the Lakeport Plantation is to research and interpret the people and cultures that shaped plantation life in the Mississippi River Delta, focusing on the Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Lakeport’s restoration and interpretation focus on the lifestyles and relationships between the people who lived and worked at Lakeport – as slaves and masters, as tenant farmers and land owners. Exhibits and programs showcase the pivotal role of African Americans in the agricultural development of the region and in shaping the culture that exists today.
Lakeport African-American Cemeteries
AR Hwy. 142, Lake Village vicinity
The African-American cemeteries at Lakeport – Old Lakeport Cemetery, Lakeport Cemetery and Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery – represent the enslaved and freed laborers working and living on the Mississippi River plantations of Lakeport, Ford and Redleaf dating as far back as the 1890s. The graveyards and grave decorations offer a unique glimpse of traditional African burial rituals and traditions, and have been maintained by the ancestors of those interred for more than 120 years. Each of the Lakeport cemeteries tells a distinctive story and records family history and genealogy dating from slavery to the present. Archeological work and preservation of grave markers continues at the three sites.
New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery
Historic Section, St. Mary’s Street, Lake Village
As the community of Lake Village grew, particularly after the Civil War, New Hope Baptist became the central church for Lake Village’s black community and its cemetery the principal burial site for its deceased. The church continued to serve throughout the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, and it continues to serve an almost exclusively black congregation today. The historic section of the New Hope Baptist Church cemetery, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is the remaining historic resource most directly associated with Lake Village’s historic black community, and, in fact, the only known resource of its kind.
Harden Family Cemetery
Harden Road at AR Hwy. 159, Jennie
The Harden Family Cemetery is associated with early settlement in the Jennie vicinity of Chicot County. Members of the Harden Family were prominent early African-American settlers in the Jennie area and involved in many aspects of Jennie community life. The cemetery, listed in the National Register, represents the most significant remaining site associated with the Harden family and includes burials dating back to 1892.
This site is paid for with a combination of state funds, private regional association funds, and a National Scenic Byway grant.