In my hurried search for documentation to sustain a weekly column on local history I sometimes run out of time while still lacking key information, forcing me to alter my schedule. Sometimes, however, I have the opposite challenge -- deciding what to leave out of a story. Today I am addressing some of those interesting features I was unable to include in recent columns.
During the past year or so, I have tried to include more columns on our counties. Each county is distinctive, and each has a history that can differ radically from others. And how effectively that history has been recorded and interpreted to the public can also vary greatly.
Last Sunday's column on Scott County could not have been told without a remarkable dynasty of historians named Goodner. My friend Wes Goodner of Little Rock is the third generation of Scott County historians who have worked to collect and share the history of Waldron and Scott County.
Wes Goodner has written extensively on Scott County subjects for the Butler Center's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. His grandfather, the late Norman D. Goodner, wrote A History of Scott County, Arkansas (1941); A Scott County Scrapbook (1982), and Scott County Days Gone By (1983). Wes' father, Charles E. Goodner, published Scott County in Retrospect (1976).
Space limitations kept me from mentioning that Scott County was briefly home to one of the greats of American athletic history. Reece "Goose" Tatum played one summer for a baseball team in Forester.
Some confusion exists as to where Tatum was born -- El Dorado or Hermitage -- as well as when -- either May 3 or 31, 1921. It was during his summer in Forester that Tatum acquired the nickname "Goose." Eventually Tatum left baseball and became a major comedic force on the Harlem Globetrotters professional basketball team. He died in 1967 and was admitted to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1974.
In my Scott County column I mentioned the role played by the Arkansas militia in policing the county in what was known as the Waldron War following the Reconstruction period. By 1878, seven companies of militia were maintaining the peace in Scott County. I did not have space to report the widespread opposition throughout the state to using militia forces in Scott County and elsewhere.
I suspect much of the distrust of the militia was due to the declaration of martial law during Reconstruction. Gov. Powell Clayton in 1869 took the dramatic step of putting 19 counties under military control in a generally successful effort to destroy the newly formed and very violent Ku Klux Klan.
Also, during the Brooks-Baxter War which ended Reconstruction in Arkansas, the militia for both sides incurred large costs, forcing the Legislature in 1874 and 1875 to issue bonds to pay citizens who suffered losses during the confrontation, and which increased taxes.
Legislators soon took their wrath out on the militia by cutting its already small appropriation. In March 1876, a shipment of arms arrived in Little Rock from Springfield, Mass., but the state adjutant general was unable to accept delivery since the militia could not afford the freight charges. The 1877 Legislature budgeted only $1,000 for the state militia.
With no funds to pay a professional adjutant general, the duties were taken over by the governor's secretary, a practice which continued for several years. The state stopped publishing annual reports, and the state militia did not send its annual "return" census to the War Department between 1878 and 1884. By June 1878, Arkansas had only five uniformed militia companies, though a few additional companies existed informally.
Gov. William R. Miller was roundly criticized for sending militia forces to Scott County. In February 1877, with both locals and legislators complaining, Gov. Miller issued a long letter to the citizens of Scott County defending his actions, and rightly pointing out that the sheriff and several other leaders in Scott County had requested state assistance since they "had been powerless to enforce the law and preserve the peace."
Finally, the 1879 Legislature adopted a bill to abolish the position of adjutant general. Gov. Miller, who was a withdrawn and reticent conservative, uncharacteristically vetoed the bill, but the Legislature quickly overrode the veto. For the next 15 years the state militia existed mostly on paper, with all remaining companies operating on a strictly volunteer basis.
Finally, in 1893 the U.S. War Department stationed a full-time officer in Arkansas to reorganize the militia. But even with this help from the federal government, Arkansas legislators still refused to fund the militia. It would take the Spanish-American War of 1898 to finally force the Legislature to appropriate funds for it.
Even after a lifetime of reading about and traveling the state, I must admit I knew little about Lincoln County when I began my research for a column on that Reconstruction-era county south of Pine Bluff and best known as the home of the main state prisons. Lurking among my discoveries was Joseph Carrol Hardin, who deserves public recognition.
In 1960 Joe Hardin, a prosperous farmer from Grady in the eastern flatlands of Lincoln County, was brave enough to challenge the re-election of Gov. Orval Faubus, who was riding high and consolidating his political machine in the aftermath of the 1957 integration crisis.
Historian Brooke Greenberg summarizes Hardin's life succinctly: "Hardin represented Lincoln County in the state Legislature from 1931 to 1933. He served as state commissioner of revenue under Governor Homer Adkins from 1941 to 1942. Hardin was president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation from 1948 until 1955, when Witt Stephens appointed him vice president and general manager of Arkansas operations at Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company. Hardin left ARKLA in 1959 to become president of the Arkansas Plant Food Corporation. Hardin farmed his 1,000-acre family farm at Grady throughout his lifetime."
Hardin incurred the wrath of Faubus in 1959 when he and numerous other stout-hearted Little Rock leaders, including the Chamber of Commerce, sought to recall three Faubus-allied Little Rock School Board members who had begun a purge of teachers and administrators suspected of being integrationists. Gov. Faubus in television addresses singled out Hardin for special condemnation.
From a vantage point six decades later, it is difficult to comprehend how popular Faubus was following the 1957 crisis. That popularity enabled him to win a third term in 1958 -- only the second governor in Arkansas history to be elected more than twice. The States' Rights Party nominated Faubus for president in 1960, though he claimed to remain a Democrat.
Hardin was one of three candidates opposing Faubus in the July 1960 Democratic primary. Hardin claimed to be a segregationist "but without the bombs and violence." Nevertheless, he supported "the right of the Negro to vote." He opposed Faubus' proposed Constitutional Amendment 52, which would have allowed school districts to dissolve their schools and provide tuition grants for use at private schools.
Hardin, who had served on the UA Board of Trustees, campaigned on the need to revitalize the state medical school. He also promoted economic development. Despite several endorsements, Hardin came in second with 66,499 votes to 238,997 for Faubus.
He went home and continued his career in agriculture. But he found time to promote UAMS, the Arkansas River Basin Development Association and many other public causes. He was admitted to the Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1988. Hardin died March 6, 1992.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
NAN Profiles on 04/05/2020