John Carter Memorial Marker Dedication Ceremony (June 13, 2021)
To memorialize the life and the humanity of racialized terror lynching victim John Carter, a 22 year old Melaninated Arkansan believed to have been a resident of the community outside of the then Little Rock city limits known as "Pankey, Second Addition" (now Boyle Park), who was savagely murdered on May 4, 1927, by a white mob numbering over one thousand "unknown individuals," including members of local law enforcement, by several news and eyewitness accounts, the APJMM Pulaski County Community Remembrance Project worked with the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, to erect a permanent historical marker near the site of the lynching near the present-day intersection of 12th Street, Kanis Road, and Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock, Arkansas. This marker was the second of its kind to be erected in the State of Arkansas, following the first in Fayetteville, and the first of several to be placed in Pulaski County. The State of Arkansas has a total of 493 known, documented and confirmed racialized terror lynching sites. ARKANSAS PEACE & JUSTICE MEMORIAL MOVEMENT (APJMM) GOALS: The primary goal of APJMM is to memorialize the victims of historical racialized violence in the State of Arkansas through geographical and genealogical research, soil collections, historical marker placements, and descendant acknowledgment with conciliation. The secondary goal of APJMM is to promote community-wide engagement in the process through educational curricula, artistic expression and performance-based healing, intergenerational & interracial dialogues, and long-term truth and conciliation & racial justice activities.
Potluck & Poison Ivy: The Elaine Race Massacre of 1919
In partnership with Arkansas Peace & Justice Memorial Movement, Potluck & Poison Ivy and All Arts Access present this discussion featuring Dr. Brian Mitchell (UALR Dept. of History), Dr. Guy Lancaster (Editor, Encyclopedia of Arkansas) and Lisa Hicks-Gilbert (Elaine 12 Descendant). Music for this broadcast has been provided by Little Rock's famed vocalist and guitarist/keyboardist Joshua Asante of Amasa Hines and Velvet Kente. Joined by Hicks-Gilbert, Mitchell and Lancaster excavate what occurred in Phillips County during Arkansas' 1919 Elaine Massacres, one of the most horrific episodes of racial violence in US history.The conversation is prompted by author Grif Stockley's "Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacre of 1919." Lancaster and Mitchell offered further analysis, recently uncovered sources and additional scholarship to create the book's newly-released Second Edition.
Unearthing the Truth
Can a single personal letter detailing a brutal mass murder at an Arkansas black settlement in 1866 constitute history? Jacqueline Froelich of KUAF, 91.3 FM at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville interviews Dr. Richard Buckelew, Associate Professor of History & Social Science at Bethune-Cookman University, who is attempting to uncover a little-known 100 year old alleged mass lynching at Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Hidden History: Chicot County Massacre of 1871
News of the trouble in Arkansas would make headlines for months
School's Out
Reverend James L. Seawood remembers what happened to his elementary school after the last African American family was forced out of Sheridan, Arkansas, in the 1950s during the Jim Crow era. Directed by: Julie Zammarchi Executive Producers: Donna Galeno, Dave Isay, Lizzie Jacobs & Maya Millett Producers: Rachel Hartman & Daniel Sitts Audio Produced by: Michael Garofalo & Katie Simon Supervising Sound Recordist: Katie Brook Design: Tammy Kim & Julie Zammarchi Animation: Thomas Crew, Alexander Horan, Rebecca Raeder & Julia Zammarchi Production Interns: Felix Lopez & Nyantee Asherman Original Music: Joshua Abrams Music Performed by: Joshua Abrams, Hamid Drake, Marquis Hill, Emmett Kelly & Adam Thornburg Music Mixed by: Joshua Abrams & Neil Strauch Special Thanks: James Seawood & Sylvia Dalessandro In Partnership with POV NPR American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress Funding Provided by Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Graduate Student Speaker Series: Michael Anthony
Michael Anthony presents “Otherwise You Will Have to Suffer the Consequences”: The Catcher Race Riot of 1923, as part of the University of Arkansas Special Collections Graduate Student Speaker Series. With his presentation, Anthony explains exactly what occurred in Crawford County in December 1923 and reveals how this seemingly anomalous racial incident in one small town actually reflects much larger trends occurring inside Arkansas and the rest of the Jim Crow South during this same period.
"Death By Design" (The Secret Holocaust of Wrightsville, Arkansas) - Written/Dir. by: Randy Ferino
For more information please contact Randy Ferino at: nostalgicmusiq@gmail.com or ferino2006@gmail.com Death by Design is a play based on the true story of 69 African American Boys that attended The Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville, Arkansas in 1959 during a time of high and extreme racism. Do you know how it feels to cry out in agonizing pain for help, only for your words to be muted by a smothering black haze that strangles you from the inside out? The torture of gasping for air in a chamber deliberately sealed for you to meet your doom. Do you know how it would feel for your flesh to melt from your bones; to be liquefied into a memory intended to be forgotten? Death By Design is a Heartbreaking reenactment that opens up a portal in history allowing it’s audience to witness the camouflaged murder of 21 African American boys designed to kill all 69. This original stage production is registered and copyrighted under Nostalgic Musiq Productions LLP.
Any Place but Here: The 1860 Expulsion of Free Blacks from Arkansas by Dr. Brian Mitchell
Dr. Brian Mitchell of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock discusses “Any Place but Here: The 1860 Expulsion of Free Blacks from Arkansas” as the third and final speaker for a virtual symposium entitled "African American Migration in Arkansas, Where Did My People go?" presented by the Black History Commission of Arkansas and the Arkansas State Archives on Saturday, February 6, 2021 via Zoom. Black History Commissioner Ricky Lattimore provides introduction for the speaker. Tatyana Oyinloye, Arkansas State Archives' African American history coordinator, acts as facilitator and reads questions from viewers during a question and answer portion. This video also features Dr. Kenneth Barnes of the University of Central Arkansas during the question and answer portion. Finally, Carla Coleman, Chair of the Arkansas Black History Commission, and Dr. David Ware, Arkansas State Historian and Director of the Arkansas State Archives, provide closing remarks.
Black Political Engagement, Part 4: Dr. R.J. Hampton
Black Political Engagement in Arkansas, Part 4. Footage from 2.4.2017 symposium held at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, presented by the Black History Commission of Arkansas and the Arkansas State Archives. This final segment’s featured speaker is Dr. R.J. Hampton discussing his career in Arkansas’s political arena. Music: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music Edited by: Adrienne Jones, ASA Archival Technician
Panel Discussion after the film screening of "Ashes to Ashes" (November 13, 2020)
Arkansas Peace & Justice Memorial Movement (APJMM) partnered with the national office of Coming To The Table to present the film "Ashes to Ashes." Afterwards, Kwami Abdul-Bey moderated a panel discussion with Sheila Moss-Brown, Karen Branan, and Stephanie Harp. This was the first of two such sessions. (This is the first of two screenings/panel discussions.) FILM SYNOPSIS America has yet to heal from the trauma of its darkest era, and Winfred Rembert is living proof of that. Rembert, who lived on a plantation, joined the civil rights movement as a teen and was put to work on a chain gang, is a rare survivor of a lynching attempt. Decades later, he still carries the scars. “That lynching is on my back, and it’s dragging me down, even today,” he says. As he etches the history, bloodsoaked and cruel, into leatherwork, fellow artist Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker organizes a different kind of ceremony to search for healing. “It’s not just black history,” she says. “This is American history.”
Race, Rage, & Resistance - John Carter and Lonnie Dixon: Remembering 1927
Stephanie Harp is a writer and historian, based in Maine, whose family ties to Little Rock and elsewhere in Arkansas go back many generations. She holds a master’s degree in U.S. history, with research focused on lynching, specifically John Carter’s murder in 1927. Her work about the Carter lynching has appeared in the anthologies Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840–1950 (2018) and Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation (2019). In 2013, she organized and led the “Project 1927” presentation at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, and she has presented her work at “Without Sanctuary: A Conference on Lynching in the American South,” at the Arkansas Historical Association, and elsewhere. Kwami Abdul-Bey, a native of Little Rock, is a co-founder/co-convenor of the Arkansas Peace & Justice Memorial Movement (APJMM), along with his wife, Clarice. They are also the co-hosts of Jadestone Vintage Soul on KABF 88.3 FM Community Radio (with their five-year old son, Lorne). Abdul-Bey graduated from Little Rock Central High School in 1989 and attended the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is the grandnephew of Lonnie Dixon and the great-grandson of Frank Dixon, two individuals at the center of the 1927 lynching in Little Rock. He is the author of the award-winning and bestselling THE TABLES HAVE TURNED: A Street Guide to Guerrilla Lawfare (2001) and is currently an honors senior at Liberty University School of Law. In December 2020, Abdul-Bey was chosen by the Ford Motor Company as one of its ten national "Ford Freedom Heroes of COVID-19" for his founding of the acclaimed Shelter-in-Place Virtual Film Series in March 2020.