When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, members of the national media descended on the state archives in Little Rock seeking all of the records from his first stint as Arkansas governor.
But there were none there.
The staff at the Arkansas History Commission -- the state's official archiving agency -- is using a $48,500 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to catch up on conserving and cataloging 16 backlogged gubernatorial collections and 22 other smaller collections to help increase the number of materials available to the public.
Clinton's papers won't be part of that collection, but the collections from three past governors -- Charles Hillman Brough (1917-21), Harvey Parnell (1928-33) and John E. Martineau (1927-28) -- can now be viewed, the commission announced last week. And more papers will be made available over the next year.
"What's happened through the years is when you've had limited funding and limited staff, you can only do so much ... so there's a backlog," said Richard Davies, executive director of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, which oversees the History Commission. "I often feel as a member of the [Natural and Cultural Resources Council], 'Good God, if we don't do this, then who will?' I have a soft spot for the History Commission, but they have a need and a responsibility to take care of these documents."
Arkansas is one of two states, along with Minnesota, that does not require state agencies or constitutional officers to archive their papers with a state archiving agency like the History Commission. Because there is no law, former governors can store or donate their papers wherever and to whom they see fit, said Lisa Speer, the commission's director.
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (1996-2007) donated his papers to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, his alma mater.
Clinton's presidential papers have been slowly released during the past year by the National Archives and Records Administration, but his gubernatorial papers are at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, which is part of the Central Arkansas Library System.
Because state law doesn't give the commission authority over old records, many of the documents are scattered across the state, boxed up in storage closets in dozens of county courthouses and numerous state buildings.
"I remember one of the former commission directors came walking down the hallway from the Capitol basement with this piece of paper in his hands, and he was just grinning," Davies said. "It turned out someone had found the Quapaw Treaty in a box in the secretary of state's office. It was dog-eared where the mice had chewed all the corners off."
In the treaty, signed in the early 1800s, the American Indian Quapaw tribe ceded its reservation lands in the Arkansas territory to the United States.
Speer said the document is now preserved in the state archive. She said there are thousands of other official documents from Arkansas history as well as some items from regular Arkansas families that are archived or soon to be archived.
As for the collections now available for perusing, Speer said anyone can ask to see them during regular business hours at the History Commission's office in the Big Mac building on the state Capitol grounds. A person must show a valid photo identification and sign up to receive a researcher number, which is good for life, she said.
Those interested in looking through the latest release of historical papers will find dozens of scrapbooks and photographs, and thousands of pages of historical documents ranging from official orders and correspondence to what Speer called "ephemera" -- items that weren't meant to last but that people ended up accumulating, such as invitations, postcards and notes.
Included in the dozens of archival boxes from the Parnell, Brough and Martineau terms are documents related to the Elaine Race Riot in Phillips County in 1919, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the long drought that followed. There are also family postcards from the Broughs, as well as a dozen scrapbooks containing everything from newspaper clippings to locks of hair.
Metro on 08/31/2014