Death silenced several Arkansas historians in 2014. Today I am remembering some of these folks and bringing attention to their important contributions to Arkansas history.
The new year had barely begun when Olivetan Benedictine Sister Henrietta Hockle died on Jan. 2 at the Holy Angels Convent in Jonesboro. During her 86 years of life, Sister Henrietta accomplished much, including writing extensively on the history of Catholicism in Arkansas. She was a natural historian and a good writer, so her works have done a great deal to document Arkansas Catholic history. Her master's thesis, done at Arkansas State University, is a comprehensive history of Catholic schools in Arkansas. Her history of the Olivetan Benedictine Sisters in Jonesboro, titled Memories and Milestones, can still be acquired from the Order.
Walter L. Brown, one of the state's most important historians, died at his home in Fayetteville on Jan. 17. A native of Texas and a proud World War II veteran, Brown came to the University of Arkansas in 1954. Over the next four decades Brown contributed mightily to Arkansas history, especially as editor of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, the state's history journal.
Professor Brown's elementary-level Arkansas history textbook Our Arkansas was used in schools throughout the state for many years. His best work, however, was his outstanding 1997 biography of the great 19th-Century Arkansas poet-military commander-politician-Masonic leader, Albert Pike. The 610-page Life of Albert Pike, which is far more than a simple biography, can still be acquired from the University of Arkansas Press.
Brown should also be remembered for his determination to publish articles in the Quarterly documenting black life in Arkansas. His decision in 1960 to publish an article by a black man on the murderous Elaine race conflict of 1919 was the first step in overturning the traditional interpretation of the massacre as a "race riot."
Barbara B. Patty died on Feb. 21. Barbara is not well known in Arkansas history circles, but she certainly deserves to be remembered by all Arkansans who recognize the importance of history education in our schools. As the social studies coordinator in the Arkansas Department of Education in the 1990s, Barbara not only carried the flag for Arkansas history education, she was a ray of light in an otherwise disinterested and often antagonistic state education bureaucracy.
May brought news of the deaths of two people important to Arkansas history research and writing, Evalena Berry of Little Rock and Clyde Snow of Norman, Okla. Berry had a long career as the associate director of the Arkansas Education Association, but history enthusiasts also celebrate her work on the history of Heber Springs and Cleburne County. I wish every county history was as well written as Berry's Time and the River: A History of Cleburne County (1982).
Clyde Snow's death was bad news for Arkansas historiography. In an obituary, the New York Times called Snow "the father of a modern movement that has used forensic anthropology in human-rights drives against genocide, war crimes, and massacres . . ." They could have added that Snow definitively demonstrated that Arkansas Prison Superintendent Tom Murton had mistakenly dug up a pauper's graveyard in 1968 when searching for what he believed to be murdered prisoners. Murton's reckless charges resulted in his dismissal--and a great deal of bad publicity. "Hell in Arkansas" was a headline in Time magazine. Bobby Darin wrote a song about the "murders" titled "Long Line Rider."
Along with the late Burney McClerkin, a state Highway Department archaeologist, Snow systematically excavated the burial site, and they were able to account for the deaths using a combination of forensic and documentary evidence, including an old Corps of Engineers map clearly marking the burial site as a cemetery.
Not long after completing his work at the Cummins Unit, Snow got involved in several high-profile investigations of mass murder in Argentina, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia. Alas, he never got around to publishing his Cummins Unit findings. Thus, when the film Brubaker, which stars Robert Redford as the new warden of an Arkansas penitentiary who poses as an inmate to see firsthand how the prisoners are treated, was released in 1980 (parroting Murton's charges), I gritted my teeth.
More recently, when an entry on Brubaker was submitted to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, I used my position as editor-in-chief to modify the draft. It is exceedingly difficult to correct an historical myth--especially once it makes its way to the big screen.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 12/28/2014