About Us

Black History Commission of Arkansas

Dug-out canoe in a cypress swamp.
Dug-out canoe in a cypress swamp.

The Black History Commission of Arkansas, created by Act 1233 of 1991, is composed of seven (7) persons appointed by the Governor with the approval of the Senate. Meetings are held quarterly. Contact Wendy Richter, State Historian, for additional information.

The mission of the Black History Commission of Arkansas is to collect black historical materials for the Arkansas History Commission; to encourage research in Arkansas black history; and to cooperate with the Arkansas Department of Education in the development of African American historical materials for use in public schools.

The Committee is interested in letters, diaries, journals, business records, photographs, church and lodge records, personal memoirs and anything else of a documentary nature related to African American history in Arkansas. Please contact the Arkansas History Commission, if you have such materials to donate or lend for copying.

Persistence of the Spirit, directed by Ken Hubbell, was an interpretive study of the people and events that contributed to the black experience in Arkansas. It was developed in 1986-87 by a team of humanities scholars (including Patricia Washington McGraw, Carl H. Moneyhon, Ruth Polk Patterson, Grif Stockley, Orville W. Taylor, LeRoy T. Williams, and Nudie E. Williams with Tom Baskett Jr. as editor). Supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Public Projects and the Arkansas Humanities Council, the project included a permanent exhibit at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, traveling exhibits, booklets, classroom guides, and a 30-minute video documentary. The Arkansas History Commission supported the Persistence of the Spirit project by copying photographs and other images loaned for the project. A majority of the Persistence of the Spirit images are available online as part of the AHC Stage One Digitization Project.

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