Additional support is provided by: Anne and Merritt Dyke
This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® program.
Plan your visit. Admission is always free.
John James Audubon, Printed by John T. Bowen, American Bison from The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (detail), 1845 - 1848, hand-colored lithograph on paper, 35 1⁄4 x 39 1⁄2 in., On loan from the Bank of America Collection.
A New Brain! Friday June 6 - 22 Weekend Theater
All Arkansas Beer, Wine & Spirits Friday, August 22 Argenta Plaza
Fall Margarita Fest Thursday, September 18 Argenta Plaza
Pig & Swig Thursday, November 6 Argenta Plaza
25 FIGHT LIKE A GIRL
Lessons in perseverance, body positivity and winning from the girls wrestling team at Little Rock Central High. By Matt Campbell
30 ‘MISSISSIPPI BLUE 42’
A sneak peek at the upcoming novel from Pope County’s golden boy. By Eli Cranor
34 PATTY PARTY
So many burgers, so little time.
44
ECHOES OF HISTORY
Historian David Levering Lewis recalls what it was like to be a Black child in Little Rock in the 1930s and '40s. By Frederick McKindra
9 THE FRONT
Q&A: Alan Elrod’s political vision. Aw, Snap!: North Little Rock's St. Joseph Center — before the fire.
Big Pic: Attorney General Tim Griffin serves lawsuits and looks.
15 THE TO-DO LIST
Mosaic Templars’ Juneteenth in Da Rock, SoMa Pride, Punch Brothers at The Hall, The Alters at Rev Room, “God of Carnage” at The Rep and more.
22 NEWS & POLITICS
The LEARNS Act includes a sticky provision that could set your third grader back a year.
By Mary Hennigan
61 CULTURE
Social justice pioneer Suzanne Pharr reflects on decades of feminist advocacy. By Stephanie Smittle
65 FOOD & DRINK
Onyx Coffee Lab expands at its own pace. By Brian Sorensen
72 CANNABIZ
Why did Gov. Sanders veto an uncontentious cannabis bill? By Griffin Coop
76 THE OBSERVER
Trading royal blue Boston for deep red Arkansas.
THE COVER: Photo by Sara Reeves. Art direction by Mandy Keener.
OLD SCHOOL: The founder of the Little Rock-based Women’s Project, Suzanne Pharr’s feminist organizing in Arkansas dates back decades.
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ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each month by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 150, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 3752985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 150, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $60 for one year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is $5, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $5.00 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.
RISING POLITICAL THINKER ALAN ELROD ON STATUS ANXIETY AND THE HEARTLAND.
Alan Elrod has a big brain for politics, and a big vision for the country. The prolific Bryant-based 36-year-old is an adjunct professor of politics and history at Arkansas State University-Beebe and the founder of The Pulaski Institution, a think tank focused on the threat of nationalism and overlooked regional dynamics in the larger political conversation. Through essays, conferences and policy research, Elrod is spotlighting some of the most urgent and complex issues facing the United States and the world. Elrod's bylines in outlets like Foreign Policy, The Bulwark, MSNBC and Liberal Currents add to his growing reputation in national intellectual circles, and we wanted to hear more.
What is The Pulaski Institution? We’re a nonprofit that is focused on researching and understanding the challenges to democracy and prosperity in heartland places — and what I mean by that is places away from the major centers of power and finance.
What do you think is misunderstood about the current political moment?
I believe very strongly that we are in a moment of complete change in terms of philosophical and political categories. I don’t even really think right and left are super applicable to this moment. They’ve been completely blown apart. I feel like there is a certain lethargy in a lot of the public conversations to acknowledge that.
FAVORITE FILM DIRECTOR? Paolo Sorrentino and his film “The Great Beauty.”
FAVORITE RESTAURANT? Nori Sushi and Hibachi in Bryant.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION? “The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality” by Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein.
IDEAL MEAL COMPANIONS? Stephen King, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Saini.
You talk a lot about status anxiety. What do you mean by that? I’m a pretty big believer that status anxiety is a more important factor in our politics right now than, say, economic anxiety. Economic anxiety is not unimportant: People can feel pinches in their finances. But status anxiety is much more social and relative. And what makes it particularly potent is anyone can feel status anxiety. You don’t have to be on the brink of poverty to feel it. People who are middle class can feel status anxiety about the idea that they may be slipping in their position, or that other people are doing better than them. Status anxiety can be felt by immigrants who come here and assimilate and then feel that newer arrivals are not going through the same process they went through. I don’t think Protestant Christians or men are persecuted, but they can feel it, because the loss of relative position can still trigger status anxiety. We even have evidence that a lot of people that participated in January 6 came from blue areas or exurbs outside blue areas. Status anxiety opens up this kaleidoscope of competition and is much closer to the kinds of problems that plague democracies in general, where people feel acutely when their cultural cachet or economic position relative to other groups is gaining or losing.
In an article for Liberal Currents, you wrote, “We have gone mad, and the consequence is that sanity now feels like a disorder.” Can you say more about that? I think it’s really important for people who look around and say, “This is crazy” — and by “this” I mean a lot of things, right? The trade wars, the treatment of migrants, the constant lying, the use of executive orders to illegally blow apart federal agencies. But I do think that there has been a tendency to normalize. I think plenty of people feel like the responsible thing to do is to not freak out, that the responsible thing to do is insist that this isn’t fascism or that Trump doesn’t mean it when he says he might annex another country. But we can’t deny reality. I do believe this is a fascistic administration. The people sounding the alarm, those are the people who are most rooted in reality. Denying it is the fantasy.
How do you think social media has impacted nationalism? Mostly badly. Social media is a great place for us to oversimplify our differences and then to sharpen them. We get really angry. We reduce people to the most combustible arguments that we might have with them, and then we just have those over and over.
You were adopted into an evangelical family. Do you believe those two factors are independent of where you ended up professionally? Oh no, I don’t think they’re independent at all. I think one thing is I probably have an evangelical attitude to the world in general, which is to say, I’m always a little bit trying to convert people to my thinking. And I think being adopted gives you a feel for how much of life is contingent. I’m lucky. I had wonderful parents. I had very little control over any of that and it all turned out pretty well for me. But if you don’t have a political outlook that at least appreciates that, to some degree, people end up where they are by chance and by forces so far beyond their control, then I don’t know how you can have a politics that speaks to this human experience.
Given that the present feels dark, is there anything that gives you hope in our country? Yeah, absolutely. People always give me hope. I can list the things that really worry me. On the other hand, there are people in the streets, there are people doing things in their communities. There are people who are signing up to run for office because they’ve realized that if they don't do it, who will, and that if you want a democracy that is responsive to your concerns, and that looks like and cares about your community, then the best way to get that is for you to go ahead and do it. The very thing that is tough about this moment, the very thing that is discouraging, is also the only place where our hope rests: and that’s America. —Dave Anderson
DAVE ANDERSON
CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Just a handful of weeks before a March wildfire torched the roof on the St. Joseph Center in North Little Rock, photographer Brian Chilson captured this foreboding scene on the farmstead grounds, somehow predicting the damage to come.
2025 ViPS AWARD
Little Rock School District volunteers were celebrated in April by ViPS at Mosaic Templars. Rachel Knox (top center) was recognized with the 2025 Jane Mendel Award
Teresa Knapp-Gordon ViPS Board President and Dr. Jermall Wright, LRSD Superintendent (bottom left) recognized volunteers for reporting over 700,000 service hoursproviding an economic impact worth $23 million to the district. LRSD Alumni Volunteer Award honoree was Darian Smith (bottom right).
ESQUIRE
SURREAL MOMENTS WITH ARKANSAS AG TIM GRIFFIN.
Intentionally or not, you have to admit that Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin can be pretty funny. Did he mean to give an impromptu standup routine that time he commandeered a state Capitol press conference to rail against wheelie-popping dirtbikes in the Chick-fil-A drive-thru? Was he aiming for laughs in his 2022 debate against challenger Jesse Gibson when he suggested permissive marijuana laws would leave Arkansas with a dearth of tech workers and a glut of dope-smoking poets?
Probably not, but who knows? Give Griffin credit for this, at least: For a politician with seemingly boundless ambition and ego, he’s able to make fun of himself from time to time.
Never shy about dressing for the occasion, Griffin posts loads of Facebook and Instagram photos in which he’s committed to the theme: sporting a beaver-emblazoned hard hat at the Bucee’s groundbreaking in Benton, clowning with the Grinch at a Christmas party and hobnobbing with a boll weevil at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. We also appreciated the time he announced he’d denied a citizen-initiated ballot measure in a suit he almost certainly stole from the Hamburglar. (OK, that one might have been an optical illusion.)
There's nothing funny about his attacks on transgender people or his grandstanding to block abortion rights. His thirsty pursuit of the governorship actually is pretty funny, but not in a ha-ha way. Gov. Sarah Sanders got the last laugh there.
Here, for your enjoyment, is a lookbook of Griffin’s wackiest snaps.
1. This yuletide photo has all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile. 2. Politician or the Hamburglar? You decide. 3. You can totally trust this man. 4. Benton's big beaver invasion earns the AG's approval. 5. A veteran himself, Griffin is often seen wearing these jaunty little caps. 6. He looks exactly the same now as he did then. 7. Hanging with Weezie the Weevil at UA Monticello. 8. A relentless mascot groupie, Griffin is seen here snuggling with Birchie Bear, the furry ambassador for a behavioral health program.
LET THE FEAST BEGIN!
‘KWAME BRATHWAITE: THE 1970S’
THROUGH SUNDAY 10/12. ARKANSAS MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. FREE.
You’d have to work hard to overstate the power of Kwame Brathwaite’s photography in 1970s America — or its tenacity in the visual lexicon of the interim decades, for that matter. Through the lens of a Hasselblad camera, the prolific photographer, who died in 2023, captured scores of iconic candids and scenes in progress — Roberta Flack backstage at the 1975 Grammys; Nina Simone clutching her mother at a humanitarian event in Washington, D.C.; a young George Foreman in patchwork overalls playing tug-of-war with his German Shepherd in 1974 Zaire. Maybe more importantly, Brathwaite created scenes himself, composing and shooting portrait studio stills that brought the “Black Is Beautiful” mantra into majestic technicolor on the printed page, depicting Black women in high Afrocentric fashion and rejecting the Eurocentric paradigm that informed mid-century American beauty ideals. This exhibit at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts — homed in on a particular period of Brathwaite’s seven-decades-long career in which he was traveling to Egypt, Tanzania and Kenya for the first time — includes never-before-seen images of singersongwriter Teddy Pendergrass and model-designer Carolee Prince. Check it out this month, or mark your calendar for July 31, when the museum will host a talk from the artist’s son, Kwame Brathwaite Jr., for which tickets are free and registration is required; see events.arkmfa.org for details. SS
BY DANIEL GREAR, BENJAMIN HARDY, OMAYA JONES, JENNIFER LENOW AND STEPHANIE SMITTLE
PUNCH BROTHERS
SUNDAY 6/15. THE HALL. 7:30 P.M. $39.50-$79.50.
If you think the skillful blending of pop sensibilities and sheer dexterity is handled well by Nickel Creek, let me turn you on to Punch Brothers, mandolin virtuoso and bandleader Chris Thile’s other major project. As comfortable cobbling together avant-gardeadjacent originals as they are putting a progressive bluegrass spin on musicians as varied as Radiohead, Norman Blake and Claude Debussy, the fleet-footed quintet is made up of some of the best players in the world: Chris Eldridge on guitar, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Paul Kowert on double bass and Brittany Haas on fiddle. Get tickets at littlerockhall.com. DG
MUTANTS OF THE MONSTER
THURSDAY 6/5-SATURDAY 6/7.
DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK. $80 WEEKEND PASSES; $25-$30 PER DAY.
When Stereogum reviewed the latest album by The Body — the experimental Portland, Oregon, duo made up of Little Rock natives Lee Buford and Chip King — the publication used the words “menacing,” “nauseating,” “villainous,” “explosive,” “guttural,” “volcanic” and “animalistic.” While not every band playing at this year’s Mutants of the Monster festival tests the boundaries of listenability with quite the same conviction, those adjectives should give you a good idea of the general tone to expect from a metal-heavy lineup that features — in addition to The Body (pictured at left) — Arkansas favorites Pallbearer and Rwake and national acts like Exhorder, Royal Thunder and Sunrot. Notable exceptions to the utter chaos include California singersongwriter Cinder Well and festival namesake Black Oak Arkansas (the final track on their third album is called “Mutants of the Monster”), which the Oxford American referred to as “the Rodney Dangerfields of rock.”
Founded in, well, Black Oak, Arkansas, in Craighead County by the now 77-year-old Jim “Dandy” Mangrum, the group became one of the “highest grossing live acts in the United States” during its heyday in the ’70s, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Get tickets at lastchancerecords.com. DG
JUNETEENTH
IN DA ROCK
SUNDAY 6/21. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER. 11 A.M.-7 P.M. FREE.
It’s hard to imagine a better place to celebrate Juneteenth — a long-running holiday commemorating the 160-yearold decision to abolish slavery — than West Ninth Street. Hosted by the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, Juneteenth in Da Rock will see the former site of a bustling Black business district reimagined into an all-day street festival featuring art and food vendors; a full block dedicated to family-friendly activities like a rock wall, inflatables and crafts; and live entertainment ranging from local musicians like Akeem Kemp and Nicky Parrish to Grammyrecognized artists like October London and Elle Varner. As always, the day will kick off at 7 a.m. with a 5K that routes runners past historically significant locales like Arkansas Baptist College, Philander Smith University, Little Rock Central High School and the home of Mifflin Gibbs, the first elected Black judge in the country. More information can be found at arkansasheritage.com/ juneteenth. DG
In 1996, “60 Minutes” ran a controversial interview with biochemist Jeffery Wigland in which he alleged that the company he’d been fired from, Brown & Williamson, engaged in intentional efforts not only to hide the negative health effects of tobacco, but also to make their cigarettes more addictive. This episode and the very complex series of events that led up to its airing are the subject of Michael Mann’s 1999 thriller “The Insider,” which stars Russell Crowe as Wigland, Christopher Plummer as television correspondent Mike Wallace, and Al Pacino as his CBS producer Lowell Bergman. While the intrigue surrounding the cover-up acts as a jumpingoff point for the narrative, the film goes much deeper, probing the legal and ethical limits of responsible journalism. Get tickets at riverdale10.com. OJ
SOMA PRIDE
SATURDAY 6/7. SOMA. 10:30 A.M.-5 P.M. FREE.
Pride is important all of the time, but it feels especially vital in the aftermath of the biennial legislative session in Arkansas, which always seems to find a new way to victimize queer people. Thanks to SoMa Pride, which comes four months before the longer-running Central Arkansas Pride, you won’t have to wait as long to bridge the chasm between legislative hell and a public celebration of all things gay. If you need more reason to attend than a parade, live performances from musicians and “drag royalty,” a kids’ zone and vendors slinging food and creative wares, get this: Legendary trans trailblazer and unlikely Little Rock resident Miss Major is the festival’s grand marshal! Last year’s inaugural festival welcomed 17,000 attendees; let’s see if we can outdo that. Also of note during Pride Month: Hairpins — a group that organizes events for “lesbians, queers, transgender and nonbinary individuals” — is hosting a ticketed dance party at Club Sway from 9 p.m.-1 a.m. June 7. And Little Rock Black Pride is hosting Pride in the Park at MacArthur Park from 1-7 p.m. June 8. SoMa Pride and Pride in the Park are free and don’t require a reservation. Tickets ($30-$35) for Hairpins Pride are available via a link on the @droppinghairpins Instagram page. DG
THE ANTLERS, OKKERVIL RIVER
SUNDAY 6/22. REV ROOM. 8 P.M. $30.
For those of you (i.e., me) who haven’t listened to much of the Antlers since the loss-and-madnesshaunted 2009 masterpiece “Hospice,” their latest album is quite a surprise. 2021’s “Green to Gold” swaps the fluorescent chill of a hospital room for woods and fields in afternoon sunlight, crickets and cicadas on a summer night; its 7-minute title track is a meditation on seasonal change. The throughline from then to now is frontman Peter Silberman’s unmistakable warble, emotive as ever. The Antlers play the Rev Room with fellow heart-on-the-sleeve indie stalwarts Okkervil River. Well, sort of. Both bands are really projects that revolve around a single artist — for Okkervil River, that’s master songwriter Will Sheff — and their current tour is a mashup of the two. Sheff and Silberman will each perform a “solo-ish” set separately, according to the Antlers’ website, then come together for a final set that mines both bands’ catalog for an “intimate and somewhat stripped-down” show. Get tickets at revroom.com. BH
PETER BEINART
SUNDAY 6/8. PULASKI HEIGHTS UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. 5 P.M. FREE.
Peter Beinart is among the most prominent and astute Jewish writers to speak out against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. To his credit, he often uses his position as an acclaimed author, professor and news commentator to amplify Palestinian voices. At first glance, then, it might seem odd, even hypocritical, for the focus of his latest book — “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning” — to be what the destruction of Gaza means for Jewish people like himself. But when you consider that this destruction has been justified in the name of Jewish safety, the book’s framing as a “reckoning” seems like an appropriate, even necessary, intervention. And with the Trump administration’s cynical weaponization of anti-Semitism to implement authoritarian measures here in the United States, it couldn’t be more timely. Despite its title, his most recent book — and certainly his talk on June 8 — is not intended for an exclusively Jewish audience. JL
Is it peculiar that the Arkansas Repertory Theatre is putting on French playwright Yazmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” just three months after it was staged at The Weekend Theater? Perhaps. But it’s also a unique opportunity for local drama buffs to see a play that isn’t a well-trodden classic interpreted twice in close succession by members of the same theater community. Set entirely in a living room, “God of Carnage” gathers two sets of well-to-do parents to talk through an off-stage fight on the playground between their 11-year-old sons, one of whom has had his front teeth knocked out. The discussion starts in a well-mannered place and ends up somewhere much less civilized. Supposedly, there’s a lot of yelling. Still, from what I can tell, “God of Carnage” is at least physically tamer than the image of divine violence its title conjures, making me wonder just how heated the conversation gets. Should I be embarrassed that I’m excited to find out? Get tickets at therep.org. DG
SHERVIN_LAINEZ
BRIDGE ST. LIVE! Every Thursday
THIRD GRADE BARRICADE
A
LEARNS ACT REQUIREMENT THAT
KICKS
IN FOR THE UPCOMING SCHOOL YEAR WILL REQUIRE THIRD GRADERS TO DEMONSTRATE READING PROFICIENCY, OR ELSE.
BY MARY HENNIGAN
AArkansas students entering the third grade at public schools and open-enrollment charter schools this fall will be the first cohort to be retained if they don’t meet literacy expectations, a policy established by the 2023 LEARNS Act.
“By the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year, if a public school student has not met the third grade reading standard, as defined by the state board, or the student does not have a good-cause exemption, as provided under this subsection, the student shall not be promoted to fourth grade,” the law states.
This new requirement could have extreme implications, considering a 2024 assessment showed that only about 36% of the state’s third graders could read proficiently.
Would the state of Arkansas really require all but 36% of the state’s public school third graders to be held back? It’s currently unclear.
State education officials haven’t yet set the new literacy standard by which third grade reading will be measured for the 2025-26 academic year.
Kimberly Mundell, spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Education, didn’t answer specific questions about how the policy would play out.
“The law affects this school year’s second-graders, who will be third graders next year,” Mundell said. “More information and details will be provided in the future.”
READ IT OR WEEP: Third graders in Arkansas public schools won’t advance to the fourth grade if they fail to meet yet-to-beestablished literacy standards.
The LEARNS Act — a 2023 law that overhauled K-12 education with increased teacher pay, a controversial school voucher system and new volunteer requirements for public school students — tasked the State Board of Education with establishing the literacy standard for third-graders.
Alisha Price, associate legal counsel for the state education department, said the nine-member board hasn’t yet crafted rules related to the literacy requirements, but it will be discussed this year.
“These rules have not started the drafting process, but will soon,” Price said. “It usually takes a few months to go on a board agenda for approval, then public comment, but I do not yet have an estimate on that date.”
As with other requirements set by the Arkansas LEARNS Act, mandatory retention for third graders who fail to meet reading standards applies only in public schools. Private school and homeschool students are exempt.
Annual comprehensive testing typically occurs in April and May, near the end of the academic year. While the standard for next year isn’t set, data from an existing assessment — the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System (ATLAS) — showed that most third graders had not achieved proficiency, and had only a basic literacy understanding in 2024.
ATLAS replaced the ACT Aspire assessment used from third to 10th grade from 2016
through 2023. Last year was the first time school districts used ATLAS. State education officials have said the assessment created a new baseline that should not be compared to previous methods.
Of 250 public school districts included in state ATLAS data, a dozen reported that at least half of their third graders tested at the lowest level for reading — meaning students showed limited skills. Low reading scores also typically correlated with low English language arts scores, another component of literacy testing within ATLAS.
Among the lower performers was Blytheville School District in Mississippi County, where 70% of its 109 third grade students showed a limited understanding of reading, and another 26% showed a basic understanding. According to last year’s state ATLAS data, only about five Blytheville third graders could read proficiently. The same data was reported for the school’s English language arts scores.
In May, Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said he intended to recommend to members of the State Board of Education that Blytheville School District should receive the highest level of state support due to declining enrollment and administrative challenges, the Arkansas Advocate reported.
Little Rock School District, which had the highest number of third graders in the state in 2024 — more than 1,500 — reported one in three children had only limited reading skills
last year. The district’s English language arts scores matched within a few percentage points of its reading results. How those figures will compare to the new literacy standards remains to be seen.
States have authority over day-to-day operations and curriculum standards in schools, making apples-to-apples comparisons among states tricky. Though that process leads to varying standards nationwide, the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as “the nation’s report card” — tracks average reading scores and how they change over time. These national reports focus on fourth grade reading attainment, rather than third grade.
The congressionally mandated program within the U.S. Department of Education reported that no states saw improvements in reading scores among fourth graders from 2019 to 2022, and Arkansas students’ average scores decreased by 3 points. The state’s decrease was on par with the national trend among all public school fourth graders.
While the literacy standard that the State Board of Education has been tasked to establish will apply to most third graders in public schools, there are some exceptions.
The education board has already adopted rules outlined in the LEARNS Act to set goodcause exemptions for promotion to the fourth grade, such as limited English proficiency students and those with individualized education programs or 504 plans. Other exemptions include students who were previously held back, kids on an intensive literacy intervention program or those who have received a special education referral.
According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 16% of Arkansas K-12 public school students have a learning disability. Dyslexia is among the most common learning disabilities, and state law requires school districts to screen each student in kindergarten through third grade for dyslexia, then provide appropriate resources for their academic success.
The State Board of Education further describes the third grade retention policy under the Right to Read Act, which outlines what public school districts or open-enrollment charter schools should provide for students who don’t meet the reading standard or are promoted with good-cause exemptions.
The literacy improvement plan extends beyond the classroom and into students’ homes.
According to the rules, schools must provide 90 minutes of evidence-based literacy instruction each school day, assign the students to a high-performing teacher and send legal guardians a “read-at-home” plan.
Students will also be given priority to receive a literacy tutoring grant and have the option to participate in additional programming.
ALL THE SINGLET LADIES
LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL HIGH’S GIRLS WRESTLING TEAM DOMINATES THE STATE.
BY MATT CAMPBELL
PUT SOME RINGS ON IT:
Senior co-captain Ar’Kiya “Tonka” Taylor, a twotime state champion and one-time state runner up at 235 pounds, shows off some of the hardware she’s earned.
THEshiny new field house glistens in the mid-May sun, looming over the south endzone of Earl Quigley Stadium. Juxtaposed against the nearly 90-year-old football stadium, the sleekly modern steel-and-glass athletic facility seems out of place, like someone strapped a jet engine to the Wright Brothers’ plane.
Inside the field house, on the southeast corner of the second floor, Little Rock Central High School’s girls wrestling team is wrapping up practice.
Pairs of wrestlers grapple and roll around with one another as Butler and assistant coach Adam Cline watch, correct and teach. A lesser team might be taking it easy by now. After all, these girls won a state championship back in April, the first team wrestling title for either boys or girls wrestling at Central, as well as the first team title for the Little Rock School District. Still, business isn’t finished: The national tournament in Fargo, North Dakota, is in July, and every day between now and then is a chance to get a little better.
It’s not just the coaches saying that, either. The entire team has bought in. In the process, they’ve quietly become the best high school team in Arkansas that no one is talking about.
Most of the top girls wrestling teams in the U.S. fall into one of three broad demographics: the primarily white teams from East Coast private schools, the primarily white teams from upper Midwest states where wrestling has a long history, and the teams from places like Oklahoma and New Mexico, where wrestling has deep roots in Native American culture that is reflected on the teams’ rosters.
The Central girls wrestling team does not look like any of these groups. Among their primary wrestlers in each of the 14 weight classes, seven are Black, two are biracial, two are Latina, one is Indian and two are white.
The Central team dominated the state tournament this year, winning by a massive 40.5 points over second-place Rogers High School. (For context, Rogers finished 3 points ahead of third-place Cabot. The scoring system defies easy description, especially in individual matches, but broadly speaking: a team scores between 3 and 6 points for winning an individual match, based on how the match was
won, and those scores are tallied — minus any points deducted for penalties — to calculate the team’s final score.)
In addition to the team title, three girls won individual state titles in 2025, and another six came in second or third in their weight classes. Central is currently ranked 48th nationally, the only team (boys or girls) from Arkansas in the top 50. (Searcy High School’s girls made the list as an honorable mention, but were unranked.)
Central’s girls are aware their team doesn’t fit the usual mold. More than that, they are proud of it.
Getting more Black girls into wrestling “has been my goal since ninth grade,” said senior co-captain Ar’kiya “Tonka” Taylor, two-time state champion at 235 pounds and three-time all-state wrestler.
“When I first started wrestling … there were not that many Black girls,” Taylor said. “And I kept trying to get people! Like, ‘Everybody, just join the wrestling team!’ So, looking at the team from ninth grade to now, I’m glad that we have mixed races. When we go to different meets, our lineup is so different from everybody else. We stand out more.”
“I think we represent Central’s student body very well,” senior co-captain Alexandra Prock added. She finished third in the state tournament this year at 170 pounds and, along with Taylor, is one of only two girls to eclipse 100 career victories at Central.
“I was trying to tell Markita (Harper), when we go to wrestling matches and stuff, there’s not going to be a lot of Black people,” Taylor said. “There’s just not.”
Sophomore Markita Harper, state champ at 190 pounds, wasn’t surprised that Central didn’t look like the other teams.
“I feel like, of course our team will be so mixed, because we go to Central,” Harper said. “I don’t mean that in a bad way!” she added. “Just that Central is so mixed — not just Black and white, but other races, too. It’s diverse. So when people hear Central, they should expect a diverse team. They shouldn’t expect the team to be fully white.”
It would be cliché to say coaches Butler and Cline bleed black and gold. It would also be an understatement; their shared connections to Central High School and the wrestling program run much deeper than that.
Both were juniors at Central in 2006 when the school announced it would be one of the
first schools in the state — and one of only a handful outside of Northwest Arkansas — to add wrestling as a sport. Even if he was initially alone in his reaction, Butler was thrilled.
“When I was in seventh grade, a teacher at Horace Mann Middle School taught judo as a varsity sport, and my friend was like, ‘Hey, let’s do it,’ so we started doing it,” he said. “Then, my junior year of high school, I saw in the paper that Arkansas was getting wrestling and that Central was part of the initial 16 or 18 schools that would get it.”
Butler said he excitedly took the paper to school and was telling all his friends about the addition of wrestling. None of them shared his enthusiasm.
“I didn’t care,” he said. “Whatever, forget y’all. I knew I was going to really be able to give something to Central athletics, like, I’m going to be a part of this.”
Butler’s first season as a high school wrestler ended with a third-place finish at 160 pounds in the 2007 state tournament. Cline took fourth at 130. The following season, Butler, wrestling at 171 pounds, and Cline, still at 130, were among four Central wrestlers to win state titles.
The pair then wrestled for two years at Neosho Community College in Kansas before transferring to Ouachita Baptist University to finish their college wrestling careers and earn their bachelor’s degrees. Before he had even finished his teaching degree, however, Butler knew exactly where he wanted to be.
“I actually came back [to Central] in probably 2011, just to get on [Principal Nancy] Rousseau’s radar,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to graduate in a year or two, and I want to come back; I want to coach wrestling for you.’ She said, ‘OK, well, come back when you graduate and we’ll talk. I interviewed just before I graduated and got the job.”
Butler began coaching wrestling and teaching Spanish at Central in 2012. Cline got a job at Maumelle Charter High School, where he also taught and started a wrestling program. Within a few years, Cline had five all-state wrestlers in a school of about 200 kids. He also had Butler steadily trying to convince him to come home to Central.
“I mean, it didn’t take much arm-twisting,” Cline said. “I graduated from here. I wanted to be here. When he called me up and said the job was open, I jumped.”
When Butler arrived at Central in 2012, there was no separate girls wrestling in Arkansas; any girl who wanted to wrestle had to com-
NOT LIKE US: Central High’s 2025 championship-winning team, currently ranked #48 in the nation, stands out in the world among high school girls wrestling, where the top teams are primarily full of white and Native American girls.
pete almost entirely against boys in her weight class. That all changed in June 2019, when state athletic officials announced girls wrestling would be added as a standalone sport, first as a club sport for the 2019-20 school year, then as a full-fledged varsity sport starting in 2020-21.
Suddenly, rather than wondering if one or two girls in a given year might be interested in wrestling, Butler and Cline had the opportunity to field a full girls team. But how does one find girls for a fledgling program in a state where even boys wrestling is relatively unknown compared to other sports?
“From Day One, we’ve been at every recruiting event, registration, ninth grade academy,
schedule pickup, anything that kids are coming to at the beginning of the school year,” Butler said. “We have a table and about 20 wrestlers, and we’re grabbing kids and saying, ‘You look like a wrestler,’ because anyone can wrestle. Small, short, tall … anybody.”
The approach worked. Sort of. They had a team, even if they didn’t technically have a full roster’s worth of wrestlers. Since there are 14 weight classes in girls wrestling and schools get zero points for the classes in which they don’t compete, not having a competitor for each class makes it difficult in tournaments, where scoring is cumulative.
“There were only, like, eight of us to begin with,” Prock said. “And there were, I think,
six of us who ended up going to state [in 2021] because some girls had quit. There was no chance of a team championship.”
Contrary to what you hear, modern teens are amazing in myriad ways we were not at their ages. Nowhere is this more true than in the Central wrestlers’ openness about weight and body issues. Where most teen girls even a decade ago would have been mortified about being known and classified according to weight, these girls laugh about it.
“We identify each other by our weight!” Prock said. “We’ll be like, ‘Do you know that Searcy 140?’”
“I started dating a guy who is not a wrestler,” junior Layne Hattenhauer said, “and my teammates were all like, ‘What weight class is he?!’”
A healthier attitude about weight in general, however, doesn’t make them immune to selfdoubt and personal struggles with the scale.
“Last year, my second year of wrestling, I had this liver thing,” said senior Laila Jordan, undefeated state champion at 105 pounds and Arkansas’s 2025 Female Wrestler of the Year. “My weight was going down. So, even though I was acting like I was good, I was OK, I was not good mentally.”
Jordan said she had to eat more just to keep her weight up, but she couldn’t because of her liver issue. She credits communication with her coaches with helping her deal with the mental part of battling her weight loss. “I tell other girls, if something is going on medical-wise, then you should definitely tell your coaches about it.”
For Prock, wrestling allowed her to not just accept her weight, but appreciate what it allows her to do.
“When I was a freshman,” she said, “I had an eating disorder, and wrestling gave me a reason to be as I was: I didn’t have to fight to get down to a smaller weight or look a certain way, because my team needed me exactly how I was. I was wrestling 190 and I could just be
190 and be OK with myself.”
Hattenhauer, who won the title this year at 120 pounds after finishing as state runner-up last year at 115 pounds, credits her teammates for helping her find self-acceptance.
“I didn’t think that I could go as far and do as well being heavier [this year],” Hattenhauer said. “My teammates being able to help me with that was so nice because I had someone I could go to when I was feeling bad about my body, and then winning state while being heavier than I was last year changed my mindset because it showed me I was just as good.”
The athletes also credit their coaches with helping them handle these (and other) issues.
“We have that relationship with our coaches that I don’t think some people can relate to,” Hattenhauer said. “Like, I can go to them about anything. There have been so many days where I’ve sat in Coach Cline’s room and just cried.”
“They created a culture on our team where we all know our boundaries,” Prock added, “but we’re all very close still.” ***
Since the Little Rock Nine passed through its doors in 1957, nearly anything involving Central High School has invited discussions about race, at least among adults who don’t walk the halls of the school every day. The athletes on
the girls wrestling team, however, are of a different generation, where racial differences are barely noticed and take a backseat to gender issues and disparities.
“It’s frustrating,” Prock said, “because obviously we’re not all built the same as boys, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not also talented.”
The girls chalk up a lot of that commentary to insecurity and ignorance.
“They only say something to you when you start doing good,” Taylor said. “They don’t say anything to you before you’re good.”
“And the guys that do that are usually the ones losing,” Prock said.
It does not seem to matter if the girls have more of a masculine or feminine build, they said. Someone is always going to find something to say about it.
“Sometimes, when I have a singlet on, some guys are like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re jacked!’” Jordan said. “There were certain guys, and some girls, they’d be like, ‘You look like a guy’ because of how muscular I am, and I’m just like, ‘I’m not a guy. I’m a female.’”
“People forget that we’re females,” Taylor said. “Everywhere I go — I love wrestling, don’t get me wrong! — but everywhere I go, it’s like, ‘State champ! State champ! Tonka, how was wrestling?!’ I’m thinking, dang, how about, ‘Tonka, your hair looks nice’?”
BRIAN CHILSON
BRIAN CHILSON
“I think it’s because people just aren’t used to women being as confident and secure as we are because of wrestling,” Prock said. “We’re confident young women, and just because we are doesn’t mean that we’re going to hurt people.”
Jordan, who is the program’s first female wrestler to get a scholarship and will wrestle at Baker University in Kansas next season, said comments about her body used to bother her, but don’t anymore. “Just because somebody is saying something about my appearance does not define who I am,” she said.
It’s not just teen boys who make comments, either. Hattenhauer says parents of other kids at tournaments can be just as bad or worse.
“As an athlete with short hair and competing as a female, I know people make assumptions about me,” she said. “I know people sit there and say, ‘I bet that kid’s on testosterone.’”
Maybe this disrespect wouldn’t be so bad if it were limited to snide comments from parents of teens competing against Central. Even within the district, however, it can be difficult to find the same respect boys teams receive, they said, recalling a district administrator who said, “Y’all don’t look like wrestlers” when presenting them with an award recently.
“When we’re recruiting people and we’re in that orientation booth, literally every person that passes, we say, ‘You look like a wrestler,’” Prock said. “We’re trying to draw people in
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Senior co-captains Ar’Kiya “Tonka” Taylor (far left) and Alexandra Prock (far right) and individual 2025 state champions sophomore Markita Harper (middle left), junior Layne Hattenhauer (middle), and senior Laila Jordan (middle right), say success has helped a bit, but Central girls wrestling still does not get the respect it should.
when we say that, so when someone tells us, ‘You don’t look like a wrestler,’ that kind of hurts.”
That general lack of respect for their sport shows up in the relative crowd sizes between the girls’ and the boys’ matches, even at the state finals.
“You go to the state tournament and you see the crowd for the girls and then you’ll wait a couple hours and see the crowd for the boys, and it’s just like, ‘Thanks,’” Prock said, the “thanks” dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only teen girls can deliver.
“It was so disheartening at [the state tournament] because the girls wrestle first, and nobody wants to get up early to watch girls, so it was so quiet when I was competing in there,” Hattenhaur said. “It’s a little bit heartbreaking because, like, I’m doing something big, and people are not seeing this.” ***
Part of the difficulty in convincing girls to join the team initially may have been due to the spartan conditions of the team’s workout facilities. Even calling them “facilities” doesn’t feel like an accurate description: Before the new field house, Central had no dedicated place for wrestlers to train, so they were frequently forced to use gyms and other rooms in defunct schools around the metro.
“It’s crazy for our team to have this much growth when we’ve been through two different buildings,” Taylor said, her teammates groaning in agreement. “The first building was the worst,” she added, “because we had a homeless man in there one day, people stealing stuff, cats and rats.”
“Southwest Middle School,” Prock clarified. “It was condemned — it had been shut down since 2012, and they finally decided they were going to condemn it and sell it, so we had to move to a new place, which was Booker.”
“And it was no better!” Harper said.
“Somebody stole our A/C unit!” Hattenhauer added.
To be fair, this wasn’t just for the girls. The boys practiced under the same conditions, and had since Coaches Butler and Cline were on the school’s first wrestling team.
“Remember when something died above the bathroom, and it was so bad?” Hattenhauer asked.
“Sometimes the water would cut off and we couldn’t flush the toilets,” Taylor said.
The girls spoke at length about the conditions of their practice facilities, offering a parade of horribles that might have broken lesser teams. Not these girls, though.
“We were just happy to have somewhere to practice,” Prock said.
In July, Taylor, Prock, Jordan, Harper and Hattenhauer, along with a few other teammates, will travel to Fargo for the 2025 national tournament. It’s the biggest of big stages for high school wrestling, taking over the entire Fargodome for more than a week, with 32 mats filling a space that normally houses a football field.
After two years of success as a program, and fresh off their first state title, any nervousness the champs feel about the trip quickly gives way to excitement.
“I never get nervous until I shake their hand,” Taylor said. “I just think I’m gonna do good when I get out there. Then after I shake their hand, it’s like, ‘Dang, somebody could whoop me right now!’”
Jordan and Hattenhauer both said they are not nervous at all. “I’m just some kid from Arkansas; no one’s expecting anything out of me,” Hattenhauer said. “This is just for me to get better, to get my name out there.”
“When I get on the mat, I’m nervous, but I’m more excited to wrestle somebody,” Harper said. “There’s about to be some action, and this is what we’ve been working for.”
Not all of their opponents can find that zen outlook. Harper said wrestling can “get in my head a little bit,” but not nearly as bad as it does for her opponents.
“They take it deep, like to-the-soul deep,” she said. “Wrestling is a piece of my heart, but it’s not my whole heart.”
“What I always try to remember is, win, lose or draw, don’t take it home,” Taylor said. “You always have a next match.”
Their collective wisdom belies their ages. And, like so much of what makes them a successful team, it starts at the top.
As Prock explained, “Our coaches do a good job of giving us value as people before we’re valued as wrestlers.”
BRIAN CHILSON
KNUCKLEBALL
BY ELI CRANOR ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF WONG
Headlights poked holes through the oak grove surrounding Eddie Pride’s recently refurbished mansion. The whole compound had once been nothing more than a double-wide with a homemade front porch. The remodel happened after Brett Favre passed out in that Lazy Dayz chair. Eddie had only one goal in mind for the renovation—he’d wanted his whole new estate to scream old money.
Things were different now.
Staring out at the fleet of squad cars in the driveway, Eddie pined for the double-wide he’d grown up in. All that remained from the original structure was the porch. It cost an arm and a leg, but Eddie had the contractor reattach it to the front of his new house and give it a few minor updates. Exposed overhead beams. A couple new fans.
There were four vehicles in total. Three Compson PD cruisers out ahead of a rusty Ford Ranger. Looked just like the tiny truck PawPaw Pride had driven forever. Eight men exited the patrol cars before the Ford came to a stop. Eddie peeked through the venetian blinds and whispered, “Shit,” then took off for the door.
Standing barefoot on his front porch, Eddie placed both hands on his hips and stared into the darkness. He saw the men but didn’t notice the rope in the smallest cop’s hands or the way one end had been fashioned into a noose. It made no difference. Eddie knew what would happen. He’d known it as soon as Matt Talley went diving for the end zone instead of fumbling, or even just getting his lanky ass out of bounds. All the Chiefs had to do was lose. It didn’t matter how.
Eddie shifted his weight from one foot to another. The wraparound porch groaned beneath him, the same planks that had held his family up for decades. Ella May had taken her first steps on that porch. PawPaw Pride used to sit and shell purple-hull peas for hours in the faded white rocking chair positioned neatly in one corner. A brand-new palm blade fan hung motionless from the porch’s sky-colored ceiling. “Haint Blue.” That’s what Eddie’s mother had called it, a homemade paint meant to keep the Devil away.
Eddie finally saw the rope in the lead boy’s hands. That’s what the one up front was, a boy, a young officer of the law, ready and willing to hurt somebody if that’s what it took to get in good with the boss. “Bruiser” Brandt Conrad, former UCM linebacker-turned-Compson-chief-of-police, was back there too. Bruiser was still in good shape outside of his beer gut, but he wasn’t the boss.
Eddie’d never met the boss. None of the bagmen had. That was part of the deal. Everything was done in code, secret messages delivered by the very same men who were now standing on Eddie’s front steps. Cops did most of the dirty work in Compson. Eddie didn’t know if it was like that in Baton Rouge or Athens, but it sure as hell made things easier. Eddie’d go out to check his mail and find a fancy envelope in the box, the paper thick as cardboard with one of those red wax seals melted onto the flap. The notes inside
were simple, usually just names of players, recruits to target, grandmothers and uncles to track down. Biological parents sometimes too. That sort of thing.
And money.
Up until just recently, before Favre made that Lazy Dayz post, the money’d been the most important part. Eddie already knew where to find the best players. He’d been following the recruiting message boards, sites with names like “Fearless Friday” and “Prep Gridiron” for decades. Hell, he even knew the names of the brightest, most innovative coordinators in every state. Eddie’d done his homework, and he didn’t mind sharing his hard-earned answers. Even though Eddie had mostly just recruited offensive linemen, he’d discovered some of the Chiefs’ best talent. Made him proud to see those players sign on over the years. Made him hungry for more.
So hungry, Eddie lost his wife, Darlene, when she found one of his burner phones. Darlene thought Eddie was having an affair even after she called and a teenage boy answered. She was gone a week later. Eddie didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Football would never leave him. There was always another season, another fresh crop of high school seniors, itching to play college ball. Eddie’s devotion eventually paid off. Three winters ago, right around the same time the remodel wrapped up, Eddie got a card with Matt Talley’s name on it. His first quarterback.
The bagman laughed, staring past the men to the racehorse tied to the live oak behind the cars.
“You think this is funny, fatty?” the lead boy said, working the noose around Eddie’s neck. The kid had a shaved head and a tattoo under his left eye. A teardrop, or maybe a dog turd. Good bad cops must be getting harder to come by, Eddie thought, then flexed his neck as the noose pulled tight.
“Think it’ll hold him?” The skinhead tossed the end of the rope up over one of the porch’s new beams. The other cops didn’t answer. Not one word from the Compson chief of police.
Eddie used to play church-league softball with “Bruiser” Brandt Conrad. Bruiser had this wicked knuckleball that gave the Methodists fits. Some claimed it was cheating. Eddie and Brandt played for the Baptist Blitz, league champs three years straight. Would’ve been four but Brandt tore his hamstring trying to stretch a double into a triple during the last game of the regular season.
“Hey, Bruiser,” Eddie hollered. “How’s the hammy?”
The police chief glanced sideways at the yellow Ford. An early ’90s model. Ugliest little trucks ever made. It didn’t add up to the image in Eddie’s head.
a guy. Nothing serious. But I could still knock that knuckleball of yours out the park.”
“That pitch only works on Methodists, Eddie.”
The two men laughed like they were back in the dugout over at Hickey Park, spitting sunflower seeds through the chain-link fence. If only it were that simple. Truth was, Bruiser was the one who’d convinced Eddie to bribe Matt Talley and get him to throw the game. Said it was what was best for the Chiefs, even if it didn’t look that way. What Bruiser didn’t say, what he didn’t have to say, was anything about Eddie Pride’s gambling problem. The fifty grand Eddie had agreed to pay Matt Talley after UCM lost to Southern Miss had come straight from his own wallet, a nice chunk of dough, but it was nothing compared to what the bagman owed his bookie. Once it was all over, Bruiser had promised to drive over to the Horseshoe Casino in Tunica and make Eddie’s debt disappear. No strings attached.
“Methodists,” Eddie said and slapped his thigh. “Hot damn. That’s a—”
The Ford’s driver-side window creaked as it started down, silencing the former teammates. Eddie watched the red-hot tip of a cigarillo materialize in the gap. A quick flick, a scattering of ash, and the skinny cigar was gone. Eddie kept staring through the crack in the window, wanting to see the big boss more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. The window started up again. Eddie shouted, “Hey!” and the window stopped. “After everything I’ve done?” Eddie hollered, ignoring the way the rope scratched his throat. “Least you could do is show yourself.”
“Shut your pie hole,” the skinhead said, crouching beneath the truck’s dented grill. He was doing something with his hands Eddie couldn’t make out beneath the headlights’ glare. Eddie scanned the shadows for Bruiser. The former linebacker with the mean knuckleball was out of the game now, sitting back in his cruiser with the door still open.
“I trusted you,” Eddie said, talking straight to the big boss. “Did just what you said. I told Matt to throw the game. Told him about his pocket presence, his footwork, how he’d never make it in the NFL. This was his only shot at a big payday, but Matt didn’t care about the money.”
“No duh, he didn’t care about the money,” the skinhead said.
Eddie tried giving the kid a real hard look but his jowls got hung in the rope. “You’re right about that.” Eddie craned his neck, nodding past the truck to the thoroughbred.
The skinhead said, “You bought him a horse?”
Bruiser scratched his neck and said, “Still pretty tight.”
“The price you pay. Lord knows my time’s coming.”
“You still play?”
“Brother John calls me up sometimes, when they’re down
“That ain’t just any horse, pard. That one there’s from Ireland. Guess how much that thing cost me.”
“Shiiit.” Eddie liked the way the word slithered through his teeth. He tried shaking his head. The rope wouldn’t allow it. “Bought Matt that horse, even tacked on an extra fifty
grand, cold cash, but then, well . . . You know the rest.” Eddie raised up on his tiptoes, talking over the boy. “How was I supposed to know the kid had a thing for Favre?”
A couple seconds of complete silence, not even any leaves rustling—there was no breeze—and then the window started down again.
Eddie was finally going to meet the man who’d orchestrated the Chiefs’ meteoric rise to the top of the college football universe. The window stopped after only a few cranks. A hand emerged. Despite the dark, Eddie could still see the liver spots and wrinkles marring every inch of pale flesh. Each weathered finger began to curl until only a thumb remained, sticking out sideways, perfectly parallel to the ground. The other men were watching the truck now too, watching as the old man’s forearm twisted and the thumb turned down.
The skinhead howled.
Eddie could see what the boy’d done with the rope now, how he’d fed the loose end into the winch on the front of the truck. The skinhead took the handle in both hands and started cranking.
The rope slithered over the beam like a cottonmouth. The noose constricted, yanking Eddie up, a portly puppet on a string. The bagman punched at the rope, his toes prodded for the planks, but it was pointless. As Eddie’s eyeballs bulged, his life rewound forty years until he was back on that very same porch, watching his mother paint the ceiling. A nine-year-old Eddie held the ladder steady beneath her, whispering, “Haint Blue keeps the Devil away, Momma.”
Eddie was still looking up, realizing for the first time how much Ella May favored Wanda Pride, when his cell phone called him back from the past.
The UCM fight song, a melody similar to “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,” underscored the footsteps on the porch. Eddie blinked but his eyes weren’t working. He felt fingers slide his phone up from his pocket, followed by a voice, saying, “Is that right? Well, I surely do appreciate the tip, hon.”
A pause. A click. Then: “Somebody fetch me that mission-style rocker.”
A moment later, PawPaw Pride’s rickety rocking chair was beneath Eddie’s feet and he was finally able to breathe again. Still couldn’t see shit, though. Eddie thought he’d gone blind until he felt his lashes brush against something slick. A bag of some sort. A feed sack. Purina Strategy Professional Formula GX Horse Feed. Cost thirty bucks a pop and smelled sort of like licorice.
“A rocker like this,” said the voice from before, “might bring a pretty penny, Mr. Pride. You ever considered going on the Antiques Roadshow?”
“The wha—” Eddie’s Adam’s apple got hung up under the rope.
“The Antiques Roadshow. Tickets are free to the public.”
The voice was soaked in Mississippi mud, so thick, Eddie
finally realized who stood before him.
“Holy shit, mister. Is it really you?”
“Afraid so.”
Eddie kept sucking the feed sack into his mouth. Despite the smell, it didn’t taste one bit like licorice. “You—you blindfolded me,” Eddie managed. “You don’t want me to see your face, and that means—”
“It means you’re a lucky man.”
Eddie felt a new pressure on his thigh, one of those gnarled fingers he’d seen pinching the cigarillo. The man’s digit was sharp and cold. Eddie felt the chill even through his Wranglers.
“Lucky or desperate, I haven’t quite decided.” The man coughed, and it sounded like something from one of those “Tips From Former Smokers” commercials. “Never imagined you’d get your family involved in this. Must say, I’m impressed.”
Eddie’s hand moved from the rope to his heart. The UCM fight song replayed in his mind. Ella May was the only person in his contacts with that ringtone. Eddie remembered handing her the red gym bag, thinking he’d never see his daughter again.
“What’d she do?” Eddie croaked. “What’d my baby girl tell you?”
Duty boots clacked across the porch planks. The skinhead hissed. A moment later, car doors were slamming, but Eddie could still feel the old man’s finger on his leg.
“It appears our quarterback finally took his fall, Mr. Pride. Better late than never.”
“Matt?”
“Yes, young Matthew has shuffled off this mortal coil, but your daughter says she’s found a replacement. And if that’s true, then we still have a deal.”
Eddie knew what was being wagered. He knew what he’d have to do, but he wanted to hear the man say it. “A deal?” He said, “What kinda deal?” and waited.
There were no footsteps. Not even a single plank creaked. The patrol cars came to life, revving their engines then roaring away. Eddie cocked an ear, expecting to hear that little Ford fire up next.
“Mister?”
The feed sack pulsed over Eddie’s lips. He shifted his weight, working hard to stay balanced on PawPaw Pride’s antique rocking chair. The rope around his neck was looser now, but it was still there. The racehorse whinnied from the grove.
“How the hell am I supposed to get down from here?”
Excerpted from “Mississippi Blue 42”
WE'VE GOT THE BEEF
The best burgers in Central Arkansas.
BY DAVE ANDERSON, RHETT BRINKLEY, GRIFFIN COOP, DANIEL GREAR, LEON JONES III, GUY LANCASTER, STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND MILO STRAIN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARA REEVES
ONa recent spring day, a group of Arkansas Times staffers gathered at Moody Brews in Pettaway Square with the intention of grabbing a few brews — nothing more, nothing less. Little did we know, the neighboring Smashed N’ Stacked food truck had other plans for us. The purchase of one enchanting burger led to the purchase of a second, and soon enough, the whole table was smothered in grilled beef and fried potatoes, styrofoam clamshells incessantly changing hands in a symphony of sharing. Could this be a contender for the best burger in town? Inspired, Managing Editor Benjamin Hardy began to hold court. “You know, the thing about a really good burger is it puts you in the moment,” he said. “I think the best burger is just the one you’re currently eating.” He’d stumbled upon profundity without even meaning to. Sure, not every burger is special enough to produce this kind of reaction, but when a burger passes a certain threshold of excellence, the rest of the world falls away. All of the burgers on the following list — our honest attempt at corralling the best that Central Arkansas has to offer in no particular order — give rise to a similar feeling.
SMASHED N’ STACKED
Pettaway Square’s burger truck isn’t a secret anymore: Smashed N’ Stacked has not only grown a loyal following, but has also been crowned Best Food Truck in Little Rock/North Little Rock in our Readers Choice Awards for both of its two mere years of existence. The menu is tight and tasty: five variations on the double smashburger, piled high with wildly creative toppings and served with a massive portion of their perfectly crisp shoestring fries. And there’s always a killer monthly special. This writer can’t stop ordering the aptly named Oh. My. Cheesus Stacked — two grilled cheese sandwiches bookending those tasty smash patties, plus Doritos for a gloriously absurd crunch. Another standout is the Ooey Gooey Stacked, with a daring sweet-and-spicy blend of pepper jack, jalapeño jelly and peanut butter. And, of course, the Original Smashed N’ Stacked — featuring a unique bacon-infused crust, a blend of melted cheeses and a distinctive honey mustard barbecue sauce — is a no-fail classic. The hype is well-earned. DA
DELUCA’S PIZZA
A great pizza spot doesn’t need a great burger. Hell, a great pizza spot doesn’t even need an OK burger. And yet Deluca’s Pizza delivers. Tucked away in the appetizer section of its menu, the Deluca’s Steak Burger is as simple as it gets — meat, American cheese and a mayo-less Martin’s potato roll, plus some pickles served on the side; somehow, it’s anything but dry and boring. Melted by what must be a blowtorch, the cheese cascades over every millimeter of a cast iron-seared, thicker-than-average patty made of “a proprietary blend of USDA prime aged beef exclusively for Deluca’s.” We have no idea what that means, but the result is a divinely juicy, can’t-miss burger experience. DG
THE ROOT CAFE
It’s not typically in the nature of burger lovers to give a rat’s caboose about where their meat comes from; if it tastes good, that’s good enough. But in the case of The Root Cafe — which gets all of its beef from Simon Farm, a family-owned operation just outside of Conway — the integrity of the sourcing is undeniable. The burgers just hit different, to borrow a phrase from Gen Z. Whether it’s the placebo effect of a clear conscience, the freshness of a well-treated cow that didn’t travel far, or some combination of the two, no patty tastes quite like The Root’s. The lunch menu features a number of specialty burgers that are worth a try (we recommend The Hotmaker, a moderately spicy option that includes pepper jack cheese, fresh jalapeños, raw red onion, tortilla strips and hot sauce aioli), but the original is plenty flavorful on its own. DG
THE BOX
It’s not often that local greatness is so regularly overlooked, but that’s the case with one of Arkansas’s all-time burger greats: The Box. Originally opened in 1948 as The Band Box, this Little Rock institution has been slinging juicy, handmade burgers for over 75 years. Each patty is formed fresh every morning and cooked on the very same flat-top gas griddle that’s been in use since day one at the original South Main location. That aging beauty delivers a sear and time-seasoned flavor no new grill could replicate. And the result? A near-perfect burger. Not so greasy it runs down your arm, but juicy enough to soak just slightly into that toasted brioche bun and complement your fixins. It’s humble, heavenly and unforgettable. Just one bite, and you’ll understand why this neglected legend deserves center stage. DA
BEST TURKEY BURGER
BIG ORANGE
If you’re looking for an alternative to the greasy, sleep-inducing, nutrient-void traditional beef burger, Big Orange’s Smashed Avocado Turkey Burger was made for the real turkey burger connoisseur. Assembled with avocado, bell peppers, havarti cheese, tomato, lettuce, a fancy garlic mayo and two appropriately buttered buns, this bright and airy concoction offers the folks who don’t eat beef a real chance to take part in the most beloved handheld American delicacy. Complete the meal with sweet potato fries and iconic mango curry ketchup on the side — you’ll want to kiss the chef. My aunt always told me to make sure to have some color in my meals, and this burger meets that standard. LJ
YE PAUL’S SOUL BODEGA & GRILL
Ye Paul’s Soul Bodega and Grill — previously J. Paul Express, previously Monkey Burger — serves what is, in my humble opinion, the single greatest burger in Central Arkansas, and maybe the entire state. These burgers are halfpound patties served on a comparably sized bun, seasoned rather simply with salt and pepper — but somehow, like consciousness itself, greatness emerges from this combination of rather simple ingredients, and when you take that first bite, you have to keep on eating, because you’ve unlocked all the juices, and the bun will soon dissolve if you don’t hurry. You can order a single patty hamburger or a patty melt. These are excellent. You can also order their two-patty Monkey Burger. That’s a good choice. Only once have I eaten the full Gorilla Burger, a three-patty dish topped with a fried egg, cheese, bacon and onion rings; I didn’t eat again for another 24 hours, and when next I showed up, the lady behind the counter shouted, “Hey, you’re still alive!” The Silverback has four patties, but we need not speak of such forbidden things. GL
DAVID’S BURGERS
David’s Burgers is a strange place. Saying anything less than positive about an institution that offers bottomless hand-cut french fries — delivered to your table in a big silver bowl, no less — is probably blasphemous, but it has to be stated that their abundantly gracious service is a bit eerie. Are these poor employees being threatened into subservience? Jokes aside, the folks at David’s know how to speedily sling a well-charred, often-greasy and consistently good smash burger that’s brawny enough to stand on its own without the help of a second patty. The toppings aren’t anything special, but they don’t get in the way either, rightfully keeping the diner’s focus on the high-quality beef — ground in-house daily. DG
THE FADED ROSE
According to local lore, pepper jack cheese was a popular burger topper for bikers and business types at The Band Box in the ’70s. Venerable Cajun/Creole restaurant The Faded Rose raised the spice bar a step further with its Ragin’ Cajun Burger, which tops a traditional handformed patty with pepper jack and a savory jalapeño brown gravy. Those components and the bun would be unreal on their own, but the lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle and Creole mayo provide a refreshing balance that gets better with each bite. RB
K. HALL & SONS PRODUCE
Every time I take my first bite of a K. Hall burger, I shake my head, marveling at how something so delicious could be possible. Want one for breakfast? Head over to the Wright Avenue institution where the Hall brothers and company start cooking around 8:30 a.m. Served with lettuce, tomato, onions, pickle, mustard and Miracle Whip, it’s one of the best burger deals in town that comes in a traditional handheld size or a larger size with a jumbo patty. If you’re feeling especially feisty, you can order a double or triple jumbo burger. Daron Hall, one of the Hall brothers known for cracking wise on the company’s Facebook page, told us that the secret to the burger’s success is love and a well-seasoned flat top grill. Now govern yourselves accordingly. RB
COPPER GRILL
Some burgers are fancy for fanciness’ sake; others are fancy because every disparate ingredient matters, each a precisely considered piece in a complex puzzle of flavors. The Signature Sweet Hot Burger at Copper Grill falls firmly in the latter category. Boasting a waterfalling confluence of pimento cheese, bacon jam and Sriracha atop two 4-ounce patties of premium beef, it’s a hulking mess of a sandwich that you’d be nuts not to cut in half before eating. And that’s not all. Hidden in the ooey-gooey goodness are a few sturdy strips of millionaire's bacon (think: candied but less brittle) and a bundle of crispy arugula, the former playing a structural role and the latter providing a bright hint of bitterness to shock you out of the indulgence-induced stupor. DG
COTHAM'S
Cotham’s has been around for a while, first materializing in 1912 as a country store in Scott called Cotham’s Mercantile. In the 1980s, they opened a dining area, started hawking burgers and quickly became one of the hottest lunch spots for local movers and shakers. For decades, politicians, businesspeople and similar such creatures have slithered out of the woodwork to discuss their affairs over plates of spectacular Southern cooking. Former President Bill Clinton, a longtime Cotham’s patron, even held a press conference there in 1995. The original location sadly burned down in 2017 (though it has been immortalized in a 2009 episode of the Travel Channel’s “Man v. Food”), but Little Rock’s Cotham’s in the City has been serving hungry downtowners looking for a lunch that won’t break the bank since 1999. The gargantuan 1-pound Hubcap Burger might be the main attraction, but the regular cheeseburger — thick and juicy, seasoned perfectly and laid on a fluffy, toasted bun — is nothing to scoff at. Shredded lettuce provides a balancing crunch that doesn’t compromise the tectonics of the burger like whole leaf lettuce so often does, and the pickles and onions provide a tangy contrast to the grease. Maybe opt for something lighter if you have an afternoon of important meetings scheduled, though. Cotham’s burger is not for the weak and may cause unexpected midday sleepiness if not handled responsibly. MS
LATE-NIGHT OPTIONS
MIDTOWN BILLIARDS
For decades, late-night South Main Street revelers at Midtown Billiards have watched in awe as cooks working the grill in the corner skillfully craft burgers that look too good to be true in the hours after most of the city has shut down. Following a generous dusting of a secret seasoning blend and a splash of what we assume is Worcestershire sauce, Midtown’s beef patties are topped with either pepper jack or cheddar and constructed with every standard burger condiment: ketchup, mustard, mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle. They arrive sliced down the middle in a paper tray primed to blow your mind. Lawrence T. Pickard Jr. has been slinging Midtown burgers for years and said it’s not really about the ingredients, it’s about the technique. Go watch the masters at work — the burger slaps whether you’re off the sauce or several beers deep. RB
FOUR QUARTER BAR
There are many reasons, I take it on good authority, that living in New York City is a reprehensible way to spend your one wild and precious life. One counterargument, though, is the ability to get incredible eats at virtually any hour, even the wee ones, predawn, when virtuous and respectable people have long since sent their favorite meal down the digestive tract. Until that lifestyle conundrum is settled for you, though, sidle up to Four Quarter Bar in Argenta until 2 a.m. on any night of the week, where the food is light-years better than it needs to be, the bartenders are working-class virtuosos, and the namesake burger absolutely rules. It’s classic and no-frills (and, for my taste, no notes) with a griddled bun, perfectly cooked patty, straight-ahead seasoning, mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, pickle and diced onion, practically begging for a Miller High Life pony for a sidecar. Or three. SS
RHETT BRINKLEY
BUFFALO GRILL
For more than 40 years, the cheeseburger at Buffalo Grill has been a Little Rock favorite. It crushed the competition in the ’90s in the Arkansas Times Readers Choice Awards and took the prize back in 2025 after 12 years of dominance from Big Orange. The burger is an absolute stunner, and on a recent visit, the patty, onion and tomato slices shared about the same circumference as the sesame seed bun. It looked prime for a TV commercial and somehow tasted even better than it looked. RB
SALEM DAIRY BAR
Celtics legend Larry Bird famously walked into the locker room before the 1988 NBA threepoint shooting contest and asked the other competitors, “So … who’s coming in second?” I thought of this quote when the best burgers roundup idea was raised. In my book, Salem Dairy Bar is far and away the best cheeseburger in the state, and it’s not particularly close. The patty is smashed onto a griddle, seasoned well and seared to a deep brown crust. Served on a lightly toasted bun and topped with American cheese, mayo, mustard, onion, lettuce, tomato and pickle, it’s not fancy or flashy, but it’s simple and perfect in every way a burger should be. Paired with a pineapple shake, there aren’t many meals anywhere in Arkansas that can top it, but there is a convenient alternative: Last year, the owners of Salem Dairy Bar took over the longstanding U.S. Highway 70 dairy bar Kream Kastle, eliciting a sigh of collective relief for its legion of fans.
KING KONE
One of the delights of marrying a Hot Springs native is learning of all the eateries that don’t cater to the tourist crowd. Foremost of these is King Kone. Sure, Sonic opened a spot right across the street many years ago, but it never dented King Kone’s traffic, and I’ve seen Sonic workers walk over to King Kone for their own lunch break. My usual order is a double chili cheeseburger — a foil-wrapped delight with just enough chili to threaten the dissolution of the bun but without ever carrying out that threat — with Cajun fries and a purple cow milkshake. King Kone burgers are the taste of time gone by. You might be tempted to say, at first bite, “Well, they don’t make them like this anymore,” except that they do, because Hot Springs is one of those places where history is still alive, and not all of that history is on Bathhouse Row — some of it resides in a purple dairy bar on Malvern Avenue. GL
CIAO BACI
Over the last several years, the Ciao Baci burger has made its way to the top of many burger lists, and for good reason. When a popular restaurant puts a classic burger on a chef-driven menu, it’s a safe bet and an approachable one. Ciao Baci executive chef Jeffrey Owen said it was about creating nostalgia. A flame-grilled patty is topped with American cheese, fresh tomato, lettuce, onion, pickles and the restaurant’s signature relish-forward “fancy sauce.” A fan favorite of the Hillcrest neighborhood and beyond, the burger has remained on the menu for at least a decade unchanged, Owen said. RB
VEGGIE OPTIONS
CITY SILO TABLE + PANTRY
As diverse and shape-shifting as the plant world is, vegetarian food seems forever destined to mimic some carnivorous counterpart, engineered to elicit the same cozy feelings as comfort food without the cost to your cholesterol numbers and your impending sense of dread about climate change. If you’re looking for a veggie burger that’s hale and hearty as beef but makes you feel more honest when you tell the doc you’ve been eating sensibly, the Silo Burger at City Silo will do the trick. Monster thick, only faintly spicy and made with lots of the good stuff — black beans, green lentils, red quinoa, chipotle and serrano peppers — it’s bound together cohesively with gluten-free oats and served on a golden bun with tomato, spinach, pickles and a mayo-esque cashew ranch, plus your choice of chips or a side salad. SS
NORTH BAR
There are over a dozen burgers on the menu at North Bar in North Little Rock and we’re patiently waiting for some clever local Instagrammer to assign them each to an astrological sign based on their character traits. Matter of fact, let’s get the ball rolling and declare the Fri-Yay Veggie Burger the clear Sagittarius of the bunch, with its world-wandering mix of crispy wontons, guacamole, provolone and garlic aioli atop a house-made white bean patty. SS
LEO’S GREEK CASTLE
The bacon cheeseburger and fries at Leo’s Greek Castle in Little Rock’s Hillcrest neighborhood is best enjoyed on a nice night when you can sit outside at the old wooden picnic tables and take in the quaint charm of Kavanaugh Boulevard. On a recent Monday evening, the weather was perfect to grab Leo’s 5-ounce burger with Swiss cheese, crispy bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and onions. I left off the mayo that normally comes with it and, truth be told, should have done the same with the onions that I picked off. But the not-too-big, not-toosmall burger was a blur — a testament to both my own hunger and having that just-right patty in front of you. It was messy, so I had to run inside the small restaurant to grab some napkins, but I hustled right back to scarf down the rest of my dinner. The fries with Greek seasoning can’t be beat, just like the setting. GC
THE PANTRY
The Pantry isn’t best known for its hamburgers, but it does have two on the menu: a standard half-pound Pantry Burger, which comes dressed with all the usual fixings, and something called the Nuremberger, which some purists would probably exclude from the category of burgers altogether. Rather than a beef patty, the Nuremberger features a brat patty — that’s right, the ground meat that goes into a bratwurst, but served in patty form. Instead of the usual lettuce and tomato, it comes topped with sauerkraut, bacon and a whole grain mustard. It’s a delightful novelty, straddling the categories of burger and sausage and approaching in a whole new way the ageold question: Is a hot dog a sandwich? When served like this, it undeniably is, but whether the Nuremberger remains a burger is left to the mouth of the beholder. GL
BROOD & BARLEY
The Yum Yum Smash at Brood & Barley is a solid example of how a simple burger can be elevated to insane levels of savoriness with quality ingredients. A perfectly smashed patty with just the right amount of char rests on a brioche bun that’s both pillowy and firm to the touch. It’s dressed with excellent pickles sliced lengthwise, purple onion, yum yum sauce and a delicious melty slice of white American cheese. Originally available only on the happy hour menu ($10 with fries included from 3-6 p.m.), demand for the Yum Yum Smash was so high that the Brood team added it to the lunch menu. If you’re feeling adventurous, each month the Argenta gastropub features a Big Stupid burger that pushes the envelope. The current special consists of a beef patty, blistered shishito peppers, mozzarella, hot honey and a big slice of pepperoni atop the bun. RB
DOE'S EAT PLACE
It feels like sacrilege to go to legendary downtown institution Doe’s Eat Place and order anything but the soaked salad, a round of Delta-style tamales with chili for the table and a family-style porterhouse as the centerpiece. But on the Little Rock hamburger family tree, Doe’s shares roots with The Band Box (which Little Rock Doe’s founder George Eldridge owned for a few years in the ’70s) and the former Sports Page (which he opened in 1979). Plus, a time-honored classic burger just hits harder in a historic setting that served as the unofficial hangout for the ’92 Clinton presidential campaign. RB
MASSIVE MEMOIR: Born in Little Rock in 1936, historian David Levering Lewis’ latest book, “The Stained Glass Window,” catalogs his family’s strivings from 1790-1958, interlacing his personal narrative with the larger American story.
A HISTORIAN’S HISTORY
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNER DAVID LEVERING LEWIS RECALLS A LITTLE ROCK CHILDHOOD.
BY FREDERICK MCKINDRA ILLUSTRATION BY KASTEN SEARLES
My cousin Janet Perkins, a preternaturally youthful and glamorous member of that little-red-glasses brigade recently satirized on “Saturday Night Live” — elderly middle-aged women who project boldness through their eyeglass frames and sophisticated hairstyles — hosted the family this past Christmas morning for breakfast. Sitting there between heaping helpings of cheese grits and biscuits and bacon, I listened to her lifelong friend Arkie Byrd lambast my generation for failing to know more of the stories of Little Rock’s bygone eras.
Did I know Little Rock produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, she asked. Though the name she mentioned, David Levering Lewis, was vaguely familiar, I wasn’t aware of a local connection. I recognized his face but had probably only logged it in the barrage of history talking heads one encounters in a Henry Louis Gates documentary like “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.”
Ms. Byrd’s critique was especially withering for a humanities enthusiast like me, inclined as I am to sift through the past for insight into the present and future. That same inclination animates Lewis, judging from his new book, “The Stained Glass Window,” a history that catalogs his own family’s strivings from 17901958, interlacing his personal narrative with the larger American story. A departure from his Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume biography of W.E.B. DuBois, Lewis’ new book is a loving work of genealogy and legacy, something like if your family history buff had the full complement of a master’s in history from Columbia and a Ph.D. in modern European and French history from the London School of Economics. Lewis devotes some time in the
book to his family’s sojourn in Little Rock. Unbeknownst to both of us, I’d been chasing Lewis for years. He grew up on Ringo Street. I grew up 15 blocks away and 48 years later, on Izard Street. I, like Lewis, attended an HBCU and decided to study the humanities. I even went to grad school at a university a few blocks north of Lewis while he was at New York University. I regret not knowing better to look him up back in 2010. From Washington Square, I began working in Harlem for the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Writing Corps, a writing collective that worked to revive the literary spirit of the Renaissance Lewis explored in his book “When Harlem Was in Vogue.” Had I known, I certainly would’ve assigned excerpts from his text as class reading.
***
Born May 25, 1936, at Tenth Street Hospital in Little Rock, Lewis was delivered by Dr. G.W.S. Ish, a prominent Black physician and a Yale contemporary of his father’s.
Lewis’ father, a pastor and school administrator, was principal of Little Rock’s Dunbar High School when David was born. Lewis was the product of his father’s second marriage, to Alice Urnestine Bell-Lewis. Two of his older half-brothers attended Dunbar, while another half-brother and half-sister attended Gibbs Elementary. The family’s white, two-story frame home at 1204 Ringo St. still stands at a comfortable walking distance just north of both schools.
What did the Little Rock of Lewis’ boyhood look like? “I remember the neighborhood,” he told me by phone. “My father would get up, he’d walk out the front door and he’d walk Ringo Street to Dunbar, which was on Ringo, and there was no superhighway slicing across
Ringo Street, and you had a very successful mortician, I think, across the street. You had houses that were in good repair. Fairly prosperous, I think it was fair to say.”
There were still vestiges of this Little Rock during my own childhood in the ’90s: Ringo Cleaners and Torrence Flower Shoppe, various strip malls where I got my first haircuts or stopped for a sandwich at Uncle T’s Food Mart. Not the shiny buildings of new development or even refurbished retro ones, but buildings and streetscapes that spoke of entrepreneurial spirit strung together atop neglected infrastructure.
In 2005, he wrote in The New York Times of middle-class Black life in Little Rock, “We lived well, our days were mostly sunny, and I know that my parents were stoically undeceived by the objectively equivocal, contingent nature of the advantaged life they gave me and my siblings. We knew we would go to college (with a detour for my older brothers in the segregated armed forces during World War II) and then become lawyers, doctors, teachers and preachers. Within our cocoon of modest material possessions, my playmates of the ‘right sort’ and I envisaged a grown-up future of unexceptional assimilatedness.”
His family, Lewis wrote, “were people of consequence in the eyes of both ‘races,’ a family who lived, therefore, under the discipline of a double mandate: to be pillars, straightlaced and self-conscious, of social uplift in the community of color; and to serve, at best, as ameliorating agents of relations between the races and, at worst, as hired professionals of the Jim Crow order.” In rejecting this privileged position on behalf of the NAACP and the city’s 86 black primary and secondary teachers by testifying in a legal dispute over the disparity in
salaries with their white counterparts, Lewis’ father compromised the family’s tenuous position in “a class at the top of the bottom.”
Lewis’ father resigned from Dunbar in 1943 amid the family’s social descent and took a job at Shorter College in North Little Rock. Lewis also wrote about that time in his 2005 New York Times piece: “In less than a year, as I remember it, our family went from the top of the social heap to pariah status in the dominant community and to an awkward presence as unemployables among its own racial group. From this profoundly instructive trauma, I learned to assume the permanent possibility that, however solid the middle-class reinforcements, race could trump class in my life experience.”
Lewis recently described his mother’s stoicism at this moment: “My mother's attitude was a sort of, if they don’t appreciate what we tried to do for this issue, why then we won’t allow ourselves to be affected by it. We will just go as proudly as ever.”
Throughout Lewis’ book, the intersections with luminaries of the African American world astounded me. He listed Burghardt Du Bois, Charles Wesley and Roy Wilkins as family acquaintances. “I think we’ve met everybody. Everybody of any significance at one point or the other came to dinner either in Wilberforce [University, in Wilberforce, Ohio, his dad’s next academic outpost after Arkansas], or in Little Rock, or Atlanta,” he said. These relationships grew partly from necessity. “Of course there was no public accommodation. You stayed with the local minister, the local physician, what have you. That was driving by the Green Book, I think.
STILL STANDING: The Lewis family’s home at 1204 Ringo St. has stood the test of time.
en recognized how meager their attempts were to protect him from it.
He also remembers the loss of his friendship with a white boy from his neighborhood, Tommy, who made enough of an impression on young David that he reached out to his old friend some years later when his family returned for a visit.
“I had a very good white friend who lived on Ringo Street, too, and there was a kind of genteel, if you could describe it, trailer camp, and this white boy and I were very good friends. Tommy was just my best buddy,” he said. Upon returning to Little Rock for a visit in the late ’40s, David wrote to Tommy, inviting him to come along to the movies.
“I remember meeting Maynard Jackson when we were in North Little Rock, visiting someone, and they came through on their way to Texas. So Maynard and I were sort of underneath the table while everybody was eating, just getting to know each other, and so we just developed an affinity, which lasted and so when he became mayor of Atlanta, I came to write the history of his administration, but it didn’t work out.”
The Lewises left Arkansas for Ohio when David was 8, before eventually returning to Atlanta.
Of those early years in Little Rock, Lewis can recall just a few incidents that marred his outlook on race in the city. Racial attitudes in Little Rock in the 1940s made the city a precarious place for a precocious Black child. Consider the time he accompanied his parents to buy a pair of dress shoes and was stopped “excitedly yet apologetically” by a white patron upon exiting the store, who told his parents that they should leave Arkansas as soon as possible, whispering to his mother that “they will kill him.” The time his leg was caught in the door of a bus driven by a white driver and he was carried half a block, supported by his panicked mother in full sprint.
The strained attempts at care, both from the fellow customer and Lewis’ mother, are what strikes me about Lewis’ experiences — the seeming futility of compensating for a hostile world that would imperil either his physical well-being or sense of self. Racism cast a long shadow in Little Rock, indeed, and both wom-
On the day of the outing, David was persuaded to leave without waiting for Tommy to join them. “And I never saw him again and we went off to Ninth Street, I think, to the local cinema. And I've always thought of that as one of the awful anomalies of segregation, of course,” he said.
That note of regret in Lewis’ voice still rings in my ear. Accepting one’s own complicity in the racial order recalls for me similar evasions I began to make in elementary school, no longer accepting sleepover invitations from white friends after the fourth grade, the convenient cover our transition from elementary school to junior high lent my disavowal of years-old friendships. I can’t believe this is a particularly fond remembrance of his, but it has lingered, and perhaps it has shaped some part of his life and work in the years since. My own memories have certainly shaped mine.
A New Yorker for decades, Lewis has returned to Little Rock only twice since then.
I drove past Lewis’ old home a few weeks ago and tried to retrace the route from it to Dunbar, remembering that the school’s life as a high school wound down with the building of Horace Mann High School in 1955, where my cousin Janet and Arkie Byrd were once classmates. Where I attended junior high school some decades later, before matriculating at Central High School.
I’m hoping to answer Ms. Byrd’s Christmas breakfast challenge to retain some of these vanishing histories of the city and the people who once lived in it. Luckily, I’ve found Dr. Lewis’ new book, which feels like a start.
BRIAN CHILSON
Special Advertising Section of the Arkansas Times
FACES OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS 2025
When we first introduced the Faces of Central Arkansas in 2016, we set out to find those within our community who exemplified, uplifted and otherwise stood out among the crowd in their respective fields and industries. Now, almost 10 years later, we are happy to once again bring you the Faces of Arkansas.
From environmental law and litigation to fine dining, from cannabis to French antiques, these are the select individuals who represent their work within Arkansas with outstanding commitment, contributions and collaboration with The Natural State. They are your neighbors, your friends and your family, keeping Central Arkansas a top destination among our surrounding states.
As the original spotlight shone on these individuals, we welcome you to explore their stories and celebrate the achievements of their work.
The Face of Hospitality.
Heather Baber of The Taco Society is undeniably the “Face of Hospitality” in Central Arkansas. Her expanding portfolio of restaurants is a testament to her welcoming approach. From the casual, lively atmospheres of Baja Grill and Revival to the refined experience of RŌBER, her establishments prioritize guest comfort and enjoyment. Baber’s acknowledged reliance on her team underscores a collaborative ethos that translates into positive guest interactions. By consistently creating must-visit destinations with distinct ambiance, Baber demonstrates a deep understanding of how to make diners feel valued. The Taco Society’s growing presence in Benton’s entertainment district further solidifies their reputation for fostering convivial spaces and extending genuine hospitality across diverse range of dining preferences.
Heather Baber
The Faces of Pub-style Pizza.
Conan Robinson and Jess McMullen, the duo behind The Pizza Pub, are poised to become the hot spot in the Park Hill neighborhood of North Little Rock. Their collaboration sparked from a strong “bar neighbor” relationship forged through their successful Argenta establishments. Robinson saw a perfect opportunity to join forces with McMullen, driven by a desire to bring a much-needed cool spot to the neighborhood near where he lives. McMullen readily agreed, envisioning a premier location where quality pub-style pizza meets a relaxed pub atmosphere, fostering a social gathering place. Their combined experience in creating welcoming environments and serving great food fuels their ambition to replicate Argenta’s vibrant energy in Park Hill, hoping to contribute to the area’s growth and provide a beloved neighborhood hub.
Conan Robinson Jess McMullen
The Face of Spirits, Fine Wine & Craft Beer.
For John Crow, owner of 107 Liquor, having grown up in the liquor business since age 4, it’s more than a job; it’s a foundation for his passions. As a founding board member of the Argenta Downtown Council, his involvement in countless events, such as the Argenta Vibe Music series and the Arkansas Times Craft Beer Festival, continues to show his commitment to culture and community. As president of the United Beverage Retailers of Arkansas, Crow advocates for small, independent liquor stores, even facing legislative battles to protect them from larger corporations. His dedication extends to personally selecting unique offerings for his customers, traveling to Kentucky and even Mexico to hand-pick barrels. 107 Liquor isn’t just a store; it’s a platform for community enrichment and industry leadership.
The Face of Environmental Law and Litigation.
To Richard Mays, the “environment” includes everything that impacts our quality of life. He has spent much of his life attempting to preserve and protect not only the air, water and earth in which we live, but also the social, civic and human elements that make our lives richer, safer and secure. In doing so, Richard takes on entrenched political interests, large state and federal agencies, and corporations that violate environmental laws and the rights of individuals and small entities. Richard has handled environmental cases protecting the Buffalo River from the impacts of factory hog-farming; preventing boat docks from crowding and polluting Greers Ferry Lake; fighting construction of coal-fired electrical generating plants; and opposing herbicides that kill native plant life. He also fights for social and civic causes, suing the State’s Attorney General for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 national general election; suing to void a discriminatory reapportionment law; challenging unconstitutional use of taxes to expand highways; and to restore the historic Pike-Fletcher-Terry House in the Quapaw Quarter.
The Face of Good Eats.
Doe’s Eat Place, a Little Rock institution since 1988, truly embodies the “Face of Good Eats” through its exceptional steaks and welcoming Southern charm. Inspired by the Mississippi original and brought to the city by George Eldridge, its unassuming diner-style atmosphere has cultivated a loyal following of locals, travelers and celebrities. Now run by George’s daughter, Katherine, Doe’s prioritizes making everyone feel at home, fostering a strong sense of community. Beyond the legendary food, the casual environment creates a magnetic draw, solidifying Doe’s as a must-visit destination for authentic hospitality and good eats that will always leave you wanting more
The Face of Esthetics.
When Princess Gupton opened Little Rock Day Spa & LashBar in 2015, she wasn’t just launching a business — she was stepping fully into her purpose. Her passion for the beauty industry lit the way, and what started as a spa offering top-tier aesthetic, massage and cosmetic services quickly became a launchpad for something even bigger.
Determined to help others chase bold, beautiful dreams, Gupton founded the Arkansas Institute of Esthetics & Advanced Esthetics — a school built to train, inspire and launch the next generation of beauty professionals and entrepreneurs.
With more than 15 years of experience, Gupton has mastered turning passion into profit by empowering women through education, elevating the beauty industry and setting a new standard for what success looks like in esthetics.
Katherine Eldrige, Owner
Princess Gupton
The Faces of Personal Injury Law.
With 31 years dedicated to personal injury law, Taylor King Law has grown from a small-town Arkadelphia practice into a statewide force, becoming the “Face of Personal Injury” for many across Arkansas. Recognizing that their target market is broad – anyone vulnerable to accidents – they’ve strategically established physical offices in numerous communities, including Little Rock, Conway, Fort Smith, Springdale and Jonesboro, with further expansion planned. Their commitment to brick-and-mortar locations, beyond just advertising, has underscored their dedication to truly serving and investing in each community. Taylor King Law strives to ensure every client receives fairness and justice, working diligently to help them recover and be made whole after an injury.
The Face of Cannabis.
For Casey Flippo, CEO and co-founder of Dark Horse Cannabis, the cannabis industry has always been about more than products — it’s about people. He sees the true value of this space in the relationships it cultivates — between operators, patients, teams and the communities they serve.
A native Arkansan, Flippo entered the cannabis space through the hemp sector before transitioning into medical cannabis, securing Arkansas’s first processing license in 2021. Today, Dark Horse operates across Arkansas and Missouri with a focus on user-first products, retail innovation and a steadfast commitment to quality. But for Flippo, the bigger mission is building a cannabis community that’s stronger because it works together.
His leadership style is grounded in strategy, adaptability and a strong belief in collective growth. “The challenges we face — from regulation to public education — aren’t ones we can solve alone,” he says. “When we collaborate, we raise the bar for everyone.”
As Dark Horse looks to expand its footprint, Flippo remains focused on fostering an inclusive, resilient industry. Whether supporting his team’s growth, connecting with patients or championing education, he’s committed to building something that lasts — and bringing others along for the ride.
Above all, Flippo sees cannabis as a movement — one that thrives when led with purpose, transparency and a shared vision for what’s possible.
The Face of Farm to Table Fine Dining.
Brave New Restaurant has cultivated a reputation as the “Face of Fine Dining” by committing to fresh, local ingredients and fostering a familial atmosphere. Its culinary excellence since its founding by Peter Brave in 1991 is rooted in a farm-to-table philosophy, with seasonal produce harvested from Brave New’s own farm. The restaurant prides itself on sourcing from local farmers, building strong relationships that ensure quality ingredients without exorbitant prices and maintaining a passion for every dish to celebrate fresh, local flavor. This dedication and multigenerational passion, combined with an active engagement in the community, make Brave New Restaurant a genuine and accessible fine-dining experience.
The Faces of T he Funeral Profession in Arkansas.
Renata Jenkins Byler is the leader of the funeral care profession in Arkansas. She lifts everyone she touches, from the families she serves to the communities she supports through Bolo Bash, the Baptist Health Foundation and her work on the UA Pulaski Technical College and Arkansas State University-Mountain Home boards. Byler leads from the front, often working at funerals and offering her personal healing touch when it is needed most. She previously served as Arkansas’s representative on the National Funeral Directors Association Policy Board and is respected nationwide for carrying on the legacy of her grandfather, Denver Roller, who founded Roller Funeral Homes over a century ago.
ROLLER FUNERAL HOMES
rollerfuneralhomes.com
The Face of French Antiques.
The Punchbowl, owned by Angela Sortor and operated with a deep love for old houses and French culture, is the “Face of French Antiques.” Her unique path, including growing up restoring an old family home and living in France, cultivated her obsession with antique markets. Her genuine passion for curating beautiful, unique pieces from France, often restored to modern glory, has led to immense success. She has fostered a strong connection to the supportive local community, including neighboring vintage shops, just blocks from her home in SoMa. This collaborative spirit, coupled with her dedication to bringing quality and unique French treasures to the area, truly sets her and The Punchbowl apart.
The Face of Human Trafficking Treatment.
The Centers has been home since 2014 to one of the nation’s most comprehensive treatment programs for children and teens who have experienced human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
As a nationally accredited human trafficking program, The Centers provide trauma-informed care rooted in evidence-based practice. Its treatment team is trained in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Certified Clinical Trauma Specialist-Sex Trafficking and Exploitation, as well as providing substance use services.
Its highly trained clinicians and treatment team provide individualized support through residential care, specialized evidence-based therapies and on-campus education within a safe and supportive environment. The Centers goes beyond treatment — addressing physical health, including complex medical needs, nurturing self-worth and equipping young survivors with the life skills they need to move forward with confidence and resilience.
The Centers also partners with law enforcement, provides training across sectors and advocates for policies that protect survivors and prevent future exploitation.
Everyone deserves safety, hope and stability. The Centers is committed to helping survivors reclaim their futures — one step, one story, one life at a time.
The Faces of Prosthetics & Orthotics.
Frank Snell is the president and CEO of Snell Prosthetics & Orthotics, a family-owned company that has been serving the Arkansas community since 1911. With over five decades of experience in the field, Frank’s journey began at age 14, working alongside his father, Ed Snell. He earned his certification as a prosthetist/orthotist by age 22, after completing Northwestern University’s first long-term orthotics program in 1970 and later taking prosthetic courses.
Under his leadership, Snell Prosthetics & Orthotics has expanded to 11 locations across Arkansas, providing custom prosthetic and orthotic care to patients of all ages. The company is recognized for its commitment to patient care and its innovative use of technology, including being the first in Arkansas and the surrounding region to offer Computer-Aided Design and Manufacture capabilities and, more recently, the first to invest in the Symphonie Aqua System.
Snell’s dedication to the field is further exemplified through his leadership in the Arkansas State Orthotics & Prosthetics Association, and his involvement in the push for O&P licensure legislation in Arkansas — a significant victory for higher standards and better patient care. His leadership continues to inspire the next generation of professionals in the orthotics and prosthetics industry.
SNELL PROSTHETICS & ORTHOTICS
625 N. University Avenue Little Rock 501-664-2624
SnellArkansas.com
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‘POLITICAL HANDYWOMAN’
A Q&A WITH FEMINIST TRAILBLAZER SUZANNE PHARR.
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
In 1973, the year a federal lawsuit was brought against our current president for racial discrimination at one of his New York housing developments, writer Suzanne Pharr was leaving her job as a teacher and moving to Arkansas to join a feminist commune in Madison County. Fifty-two years later, Trump has made his way to the White House for a second time, and Pharr is ensconced in a home in Little Rock’s Central High neighborhood, a member of the lesbian literati still seeking social justice in a state she calls “the practice field for the Right’s team.”
Born at home in 1939 in Hog Mountain, Georgia, Pharr’s career as an organizer and socalled “political handywoman” spans over five decades, much of which has been spent giving talks to churches, businesses and schools in her role as founder of the Little Rock-based Women’s Project, a feminist and anti-racist organization established in 1981. Under Pharr’s leadership, the organization monitored and documented hate crimes against Arkansan women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color; published a yearly log detailing the activities of white supremacists and theocratic right-wing organizations like the Family Council; partnered with the United Methodist Women in a program that transported children to visit their mothers in prison; published economic reports on women’s income and work in Arkansas; operated a lending library and a feminist bookstore in Little Rock; and held workshops across the state on HIV/AIDS education.
As the director of Washington County’s Head Start program from 1977-81, during a heyday of anti-gay sentiment stirred by Anita Bryant’s so-called “Save Our Children” campaign, Pharr weathered public hearings on whether she should be fired because she was “a lesbian and proud of it.” She was named one of six “lesbian literary luminaries of the South” by The Bitter Southerner in 2022 and,
PHARR, FROM HOME: Suzanne Pharr’s career as an organizer spans over five decades, much of it focused on seeking social justice in Arkansas, a state she calls “the practice field for the Right’s team.”
since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, has focused her writing on “tracking the growth of a U.S. authoritarian movement and providing political education about its goals, strategies, and leadership.”
Her latest book, “In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation,” was released in April and is a second edition of a text originally published in 1996, which presciently imagined how working class people could leverage their power to resist what she calls “domination politics” and the moral bankruptcy she believes it creates. “We have long had the myth of scarcity,” she writes, “but what’s new these days is the addition of mean-spiritedness: ‘There’s not enough to go around — and you are taking something from me.’”
Like Pharr’s own speaking voice, the book’s voice is gentle and pragmatic, explaining in accessible language what’s at stake when right-wing social and economic policies become the law of the land. For the most part, the original text remains, but Pharr and her editor have added a reading and discussion guide at the end, updated the book’s charts and diagrams, and changed some terminology that refers to organizations or to particular communities that have different names than they did in 1996 — “LGBTQ+” instead of “lesbian and gay,” for example.
And, also like Pharr, the book brims with teacherly optimism and generosity. “My Southern rural family and community,” Pharr writes, “did not offer a window into progressive politics.” A basketball star in her tiny hometown and a self-described “farm kid who had read novels and watched a little television but who had not heard the word ‘homosexual’ until it was used to describe me at age eighteen,” Pharr wanted to change the world by the time she graduated high school, but found no models other than the conservative rural missionaries at her church. “I have been a slow learner on the political path,” she writes. “I offer my life as an example — that is, if I could change and grow politically, maybe anyone could.” Readers can download the book for free at suzannepharr.com because, as Pharr told us in this interview, “we’re in this moment when everybody needs to be able to read about the rise of authoritarianism.”
You lived for 10 years across from Little Rock Central High and count Daisy Bates as an inspiration, you directed the Head Start program in Fayetteville, and you founded the Women’s Project here in Little Rock, where you worked for nearly two decades. Is there anything in particular about Arkansas that you feel has informed or shaped your activism?
Oh, very much so. I became a writer here, as well as a social justice organizer, because I was seeing so many things happen that I
thought were important for [the Women’s Project] to write about. We put out a little quarterly magazine, maybe 10 pages, called “Transformation,” in which we wrote about what was happening in terms of social justice. Many of those articles were about things that were happening here in Arkansas. Almost all of them were, in fact … and what I was seeing up close was a buildup of right-wing activities and the building of a base. So I didn’t know exactly where it was going, but from the time Ronald Reagan was elected, I could see in Arkansas how it was moving.
The Women’s Project was an organization committed to having both Black and white organizers, and we wanted to have majority Black leadership. That was pretty unusual for 1981. Also, we had people across genders, we had heterosexual women, we had lesbians, we had a few trans women who were volunteers with us. We were under the umbrella of the United Methodist Church for our first five years, and our first outright attack was by the conservative right-wing group in the church called the Good News Methodists. They tried to break our connection to the church. ... Those things shaped my politics, just by becoming an observer of them and becoming a person who was writing about them. Prior to that, I didn’t really think of myself as a writer very much. Even with that, I just thought of it as a political activity.
That surprises me a little — you not thinking of yourself as a writer — because you have such a way of using everyday language to describe big movements and ideas, which are sometimes treated in academia with language that’s alienating or super theoretical.
Well, when I first came to Arkansas in ’73 I thought, “I’m going to write the great American novel,” never having written anything. [Laughs.] But there was nothing that pressed me to put something on the page until this happened, and my language is very deliberate. My goal has always been to write in a way that a high school junior could read, and also to use examples that people could recognize, you know. Like, “This is in your own hometown.”
You originally published “In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation” in 1996. Why release a second edition now?
We started on it last summer, and prior to that, I thought, “Oh, I hope I can move this book around a little bit. Get people to read it.” Because, you know, when it’s over 5 years old, it goes into the stacks of ancient books. But when Christian [Matheis, the book’s editor] urged me to do it, I said, “Absolutely,” because I could see not only that what I talked about then has come to pass, but is so much worse
than I anticipated because that political base is so strong and so large. The formula got met, and numbers of leaders and organizations that were able to amass under one intention, which was to create a blueprint of authoritarianism. And then over time, they found a bully, which is what you need. You need the strongman bully in order to make it work. But I have to say, to imagine all the extraordinary cruelty and danger and chaos that has been created in the last 100 days, it would have taken a far larger imagination than mine.
There are these pernicious talking points that immigrants are somehow wholly to blame for crime and unemployment, or that trans people have sinister motives for using the public restroom. And these messages have worked largely because they tap into emotions, particularly fear. What’s your best antidote to that fear?
Since the election of Reagan in particular, there’s been just a huge emphasis on individualism and on spending. … Industry and factories and technology came in, and people were no longer living in their “home” neighborhoods — they were moving places to get a good job. … So then you see just this breakdown of community structures. You know, because the house behind, beside you — it used to be the people who came to you if you were in trouble, and the breakdown of that just gives an open opportunity to play on that separation. The more separated we are, the more we take in information about the people we’re separate from as not being good, giving rise to mischaracterization of people and misinformation, and creating objects of hatred and disdain. And then along comes COVID, which
separates all of us and, I think, has made an extraordinary impact on the country, which will take a considerable amount of time to get over.
I think our lives depend on community and on interconnectedness. Every time I hear or read a story — and we’ve had several here in Arkansas — of a tornado hitting a small town, in that moment, you see everybody rise up and start helping each other. It doesn’t matter if it was the person you hated last week. And it’s based on some sense that we’re all here together. We all have some intention of surviving and making sure other people survive and other people get the ruins of their houses picked up and their homes restored. That’s the thing that we need to have. But we’re in a time not of connection, but of disconnection.
So every step that people can take to build those connections is going to mean finding some way to talk about our shared values in a different way from what we do. … I'm hoping, in this particular piece of time we have right now — say, the next six months — that people are really talking to each other about what it would look like to be different from this.
How do we get people looped into a resistance when they’re too busy to tune into politics at all, and definitely too exhausted to get involved?
I think many people get their hope and aspiration — as in, you know, looking in the direction of joy instead of the direction of darkness — through cultural work. The more music you have on a smaller level, the more art shows, the more comedians, the more gatherings that are bringing people together — not in huge numbers, I’m not sure that serves us well, but 20 people together, 35 people together — it’s any of those things that provide the glue of connecting. That’s one big answer.
Maybe it’s unsurprising then that authoritarian playbooks often have as a crucial, pivotal goal to break down and defund cultural work — say, to defund the National Endowment for the Arts or NPR, or PBS.
The executive order, right? And it won’t hurt us as much right here in Little Rock as it will in places where they don’t have as much money or access. The smaller, rural communities are going to take it so hard, and this is one of my great loves. You know, I'm a farm girl, and so much of my work now is focused on working with and thinking about rural communities, and how to get them the kind of information that’s broader than what they get. You know, that’s a very narrow strip of information that goes into rural communities, and yet these are the people who know how to do mutual aid much better than us. A tornado hits, and they are out there. They know their neighbors, whether they like them or not. Maybe there’s
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something profound to learn there. Even though they may not like so-and-so, they still go to church with them, still send their kids to school with them, still stop by and say, “What are you planting this year?”
Your social justice work predates the internet; you’ve been using and exploring the term “anti-racism,” for example, for quite literally my entire lifetime. Because of that, I am curious what your thoughts are on the role of the internet, and of social media platforms, in getting us to our current political crisis.
I think it has, on one level, done a great job of bringing us together because of access to things that we had had no knowledge of — stuff that has made us be able to know one another. But then there’s the manipulative part; the main line that runs through all of this is that we’re living in a country that’s about competition and consumption. And as long as that’s the line that runs through — the line of capitalism — we’re not going to be able to have people connected. As long as you walk in the line of, “I have to be better than this group of people or I’ll lose what privilege I have.” That’s one of the things I’m so proud of the Women’s Project for: We broke that line as much as was possible in the 1980s and ’90s. Part of that was engaging with people across class and across race, and part was a matter of paying everyone [of the organization’s employees] the same salaries. It was a matter of everybody having the same power and decision-making within the organization. So those that we invited, they could feel that, and they could see it was not a pyramid-shaped organization. So many of even our social justice organizations now are built a lot more like businesses.
Did you ever consider running for office, and if so, what kept you from doing so?
You know, I’ve just never had that interest. I think for a long time, I didn’t recognize the importance of that. I had to grow up some in order to understand the power of that. … I went to college, never having had an English class where you read novels. We were taught the condensed Reader’s Digest educational supplement, if you can believe that. I was this prolific reader at home, so when I got to college, I was just staggered that to study English meant that you were studying literature. That’s how ignorant I was — a farm kid way out of rural Georgia. Then I majored in English and thought, “Man, I want to put myself as close to those books as I can — this is really enjoyable.” And so I did that for 10 years, and then in ’69 I discovered the women’s move-
ment, and this place where I could really be seriously political and do social change — stuff like resisting the Vietnam War — and that just totally engaged me. And I dropped out of graduate school and started spending the rest of my life doing that. Ended up in Arkansas. I came here because I was so worn out. I was going to school in New Orleans, and I was so worn out from doing movement work. I was just going to take a summer to rest, and I came up here and I went up to the mountains and stayed.
You’ve spent so much of your precious energy and attention on thinking about the greed and destruction of the right. How do you take care of yourself?
Well, I read a lot. I still raise a garden. I’m a cat and dog person, so I have those. My partner, Renee [DeLapp], and I, we travel. So I get joy from a lot of places — a lot from music. And I have a great group of friends here. I live between Philander Smith [University] and [Arkansas] Children’s Hospital, on that side of the expressway. It’s just a great place to live, and I have these friends that I made in the ’80s from working with them through the Women’s Project. I was living in Knoxville and heading toward 80, and I needed to think about where I wanted to spend my last years. And I chose to come back to Arkansas, and I chose it because of those friends. It’s a very tightly knit and beautiful community of folks, and that’s what I want for everyone.
So I have a world of joy, but there’s nothing I love more than working with people to organize social justice. That’s the thing that really keeps my motor running. I want for people to learn, to connect, but I want them also to organize, to look around and see what could be changed for the better, and how we can resist this thing that’s happening to us.
We have to defend what we have, like our schools — we can’t make them all very slender religious entities. I’m talking about universities, not just colleges. We have to defend our libraries tremendously. We need to be locking arms around them. We’ve got to create ways that children can grow up in very varied communities of multiracial, multigendered communities with people from other countries, people who have been here a very long time as well as people who are new and find that it’s just the way life is: an extraordinary mixture of human beings that carries in common this desire to be well, to have whatever our definition of family is, to have sports and laughter and seriousness, to be able to have our people pass and grieve, and to also have our eyes to the future.
FARM GIRL: A native of Hog Mountain, Georgia, Pharr founded the Little Rockbased Women’s Project in 1981.
CAFFEINE CATHEDRAL
THE PERFECTIONISTS AT ONYX ARE GROWING THEIR COFFEE EMPIRE — WITH CHOCOLATE.
BY BRIAN SORENSEN
After a little over a decade in the business, the owners of a small but worldly coffee company based in Rogers are ready to unveil one of their most imaginative ventures yet: a sophisticated cafe experience paired with a fully operational chocolate factory. It’s a concept so unique that even Willy Wonka might be a touch envious.
Onyx Coffee Lab has become a standout in the coffee world, earning admiration far beyond the state it calls home. Its reputation now spans the globe — most recently confirmed by The World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops, which not only named Onyx the best in North America but also ranked it the second-best coffee shop in the world.
Andrea and Jon Allen founded Onyx in 2012 and built their coffee empire with an intensely focused yet patient approach. Unlike the prefab 7 Brew drive-thrus that seem to be sprouting up everywhere, Onyx maintains only a few brick-and-mortar locations, all in Northwest Arkansas. Plus, the Allens don’t have investment partners and thus aren’t beholden to the demands for fast profit. Instead, they perfected their craft and let the coffee define their reputation.
“If you ask your local barista who their favorite roaster is and they happen to say, ‘Onyx,’ even though they work for someone else, it tends to grow your business pretty well,” Jon Allen said.
Onyx coffee stands out for its light roasts and delicate profiles. Tasting notes often emphasize bright, floral or fruity flavors that destroy the old opinions of coffee as a burnt or acrid vehicle for caffeine delivery.
The pursuit of perfection has led to several accolades over the years. Andrea Allen earned the title of U.S. Barista Champion in 2020 and placed second in the world competition the following year. Members of the extended Onyx barista team have competed well on national and international stages, too, helping the brand gain credibility with industry observers while amassing a devoted fan base among everyday coffee drinkers.
Onyx has also received attention for its growing chocolate program. In April 2024, its brand, Terroir by Onyx, was named a winner
in the 2024 Good Food Awards for two of its chocolate bars — the 69% Madagascar Dark Chocolate and the Chai Milk Chocolate with Pink Peppercorn.
Despite their far-reaching accomplishments, the Allens are working on several developments that will push their roots deeper into Arkansas. Over the next few months, new shops will open inside the Northwest Arkansas National Airport — where, oddly enough, Onyx already has a robot barista — and inside a space shared with a flower retailer on Fayetteville’s historic downtown square.
But Onyx’s biggest and boldest new project, which debuted May 5, is something a little different: a three-story cafe in downtown Springdale that doubles as a permanent space for its chocolate manufacturing and also represents a homecoming for the Allens.
Jon Allen agreed to meet for an interview at the new location (100 W. Emma Ave.) a few weeks ahead of opening day. Most of the construction was complete, but the pace was still frantic as finishing touches were being applied. Open and airy with big leather couches for comfortable seating, we picked a sunny spot beside the iconic window-framed stairs of the former bank building to sit and discuss the property’s nearly completed metamorphosis.
Jon Allen isn’t technically from Springdale (he moved to town as an older child), but his wife and business partner, Andrea Allen, was born and raised in the city. When a previous plan to open a cafe in their hometown fell through, they jumped at the chance to set up in one of downtown Springdale’s best-recognized structures.
“Andrea has a lot of stories about the history of this building,” he said. “She remembers coming to make deposits here and all those kinds of things. This place definitely lives in the memories of a lot of people in Springdale.”
Originally built in the 1920s, the site most recently housed First Security Bank, though longtime locals may remember it as the former First National Bank of Springdale. After its sale to an investment group in 2022, the histor-
HOMETOWN HEROES: Onyx's new three-story cafe and chocolate factory is a homecoming for founders Jon and Andrea Allen, who grew up in Springdale.
ic building underwent extensive renovations. Onyx then stepped in to transform the interior, infusing the space with its design aesthetic.
In addition to Onyx, the mixed-use development is now home to Gaskins on Emma, a modern steakhouse that has garnered positive reviews. Both new businesses contribute to a downtown Springdale culinary and entertainment scene that has gained momentum in recent months.
Respecting the history of the old bank building while incorporating the Onyx look and feel was important to the Allens. They preserved the view of the building’s iconic stairs through the streetside window and took steps to blend other original design elements into the renovation.
“We tried to utilize much of what was already here,” Jon Allen said. “We wanted to pay homage to the building and then put our own sort of flair on the rest. For example, we restored the original terrazzo floor because to me it’s one of the best features of the building.”
Allen said most of the interior renovation involved opening up more space by removing walls and other visual barriers. “We’ve done more surgical removal than we have actual construction,” he said.
The Allens used structural blocks made of translucent glass throughout the interior to direct traffic around the main room. The blocks bring natural sunlight deeper into the building by deflecting and bending it around corners.
“We were trying to build our brightest cafe yet,” Jon Allen said. “It has been a real goal to create a light-filled space that produces a lot of energy, both inside the shop and to downtown Springdale.”
There’s a full kitchen for patrons with appetites for more than coffee. Dishes such as the beef cheek banh mi, curried chicken sandwich and Nutella milk bun stand out on a simple but diverse menu that also includes specialty pastries and alcoholic beverages. Soft-serve ice cream made in-house and artisanal chocolate satisfy the sweet tooth.
And, of course, all the coffee innovation you’ve come to expect from Onyx is on full display. You’ll find pourovers with tasting notes that would make a sommelier blush. Lattes, cortados and cold brews — it’s all there in abundance.
While many coffee shops frown upon people setting up their laptops and lingering in coffee shops for too long, Onyx is embracing digital workers and creative types who need a place to park. A bevy of individual booths with comfortable leather chairs can be found upstairs, providing room to work in a semi-private environment. And an executive board table offers even more space when larger groups need to meet.
“We tend to be the home for a lot of the artist community, so we want to make a place for them,” Jon Allen said. “We see a lot of cafes kicking those folks out if they don't buy something. Or they’ll put them on a timer, which is not what we want to do here.”
This is an admirable position to take, and it does set Onyx apart from other cafes. But the chocolate factory in the basement is the big differentiator. What was once home to the bank’s vault and safe deposit boxes is now ground zero for confectionery creativity. The chocolate factory features a bar for tasting events, and an adjacent bodega and bottle shop offers products for sale. It’s a compact space, but it manages to feel big thanks to an open concept and, despite being in the basement, lots of light. Burlap bags of unroasted beans stack along the wall, and the stainless steel chocolate-making equipment is front and center.
“I think in a way it’s a coming-out party for our chocolate,” Jon Allen said. “It has been somewhat of a side project at our Rogers location, but now it’s time to put it on full display here in Springdale.”
Onyx has been producing chocolate bars under the Terroir name since 2016. Jon Allen said the endeavor was originally intended to help its coffee suppliers in Latin America and other parts of the world diversify their crops. Cultivating the same crop over a large area — a practice known as monoculture — is risky due to soil degradation, environmental impacts and financial risks. Onyx stepped in to help farmers plan additional crops based on the varying elevations of their farms.
The outcome was new products — cacao, sugar cane and vanilla — that stretched harvest seasons and improved the bottom line for farmers. Jon Allen said Onyx buys much of what is produced on those farms, utilizing vanilla and sugar cane in syrups made for the cafes, along with cacao beans used to make chocolate.
“We don’t do a crazy amount of volume of chocolate yet, but it has grown big enough that we really wanted to put it on full display,” Jon Allen said. “And it seemed perfect for Springdale, which is known as a manufacturing city.”
Terroir is a bean-to-bar product that, much like Onyx coffee, celebrates the countries where the chocolate is sourced. A quick glance at Onyx’s retail website reveals a selection of chocolate bars made with premium cacao from countries like Madagascar, Colombia and Peru. Some are enhanced with seeds, nuts and fruits for extra flavor. Though not inexpensive — 60-gram bars are priced at $11 — the quality is undeniable. Beyond the rich taste, there’s also the value of supporting ethical sourcing practices and ensuring humane treatment for
BEAN-TO-BAR: Top: Onyx founders Andrea and Jon Allen. Bottom: Onyx's Terroir chocolate bars are made with premium cacao from countries like Madagascar, Colombia and Peru.
farmers in some of the world’s poorest agrarian regions.
Beyond their core businesses, Jon and Andrea Allen work with pro athletes and artists to create their own coffee brands or to produce specialty roasts for touring. These collaborations have helped put Onyx on the map in popular culture, bringing its coffee to a whole new audience.
Jon Allen, a big fan of NBA basketball, mused about the recent work he did with current Golden State Warriors star Jimmy Butler to create Big Face Coffee. Onyx handles sourcing and roasting duties for the brand.
“[Butler] is very much into coffee,” Jon Allen said. “And he’s one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met in my life. In fact, he and Andrea have this really competitive thing going when it comes to latte art. He said he wants to be a barista champion, so they’re going at it, talking a lot of trash.”
With its artist series, Onyx collaborates with musicians and artists to create merchandise and coffees specially roasted for the occasion. Recent projects include coffees made for photographer Annie Leibovitz, who showcased her work at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; and musical acts Jon Lampley, The Home Team and joan, a Little Rock-based pop duo.
“Coffee is sort of a nice glue for artists,” Jon Allen said. “They’ll book with us a year in advance, and then they’ll come do a cupping with us and choose a coffee. We’ll create a package for them, sometimes they’ll take it on tour. There’s actually a fun trend of artists traveling with full mobile cafes now.”
“We were trying to get Kendrick [Lamar] to do it,” he said, “but after the Super Bowl I don’t think that’s happening.”
Since its founding in 2012, Onyx has remained dedicated to crafting world-class coffee, all framed by unique and memorable experiences in its cafes. Jon Allen, ever humble about what he and Andrea have built, doesn’t get caught up in the frenzy of awards and recognition.
“I still feel like we’re hustling entrepreneurs, so we’ll take whatever sort of press we can get,” he shared. “The validation feels good, but at the end of the day, we know that if it doesn’t translate into the coffee, it doesn’t really mean much.”
The new Springdale location is a testament to that philosophy, where, as with every Onyx project, the coffee is always the star — though the chocolate is starting to steal some of the spotlight.
You know the feeling: Hunger strikes and you have to decide on where you're going to eat. Look no further than our Foodie Guide to find the most delicious meals throughout Central Arkansas!
DIANA BRATTON TACO MAMA
At Taco Mama in Hot Springs, Diana Bratton channels her Texas roots, creating fresh, mouthwatering dishes with local ingredients. “We make everything from scratch and cook with layers of flavors.” Nothing from Taco Mama comes from a can. Gems like house-pressed tortillas and scratch-made sauces highlight the lineup. “We use authentic basics of Mexican cuisine like garlic, chilis and chocolate.” Bratton recommends ordering the carnitas and cheese empanadas or checking out the housesmoked brisket. Her mantra rings true: “Flavor is everything.” For catering inquiries please email info@spillover.com.
MALVERN & SIDE TOWN | HOT SPRINGS TACOMAMA.NET
COPPER GRILL
Heard the buzz around Little Rock? It’s all about Copper Grill! This downtown gem dishes out deliciousness all week long, but their Saturday brunch is a must. Visualize a fluffy homemade waffle piled high with crispy buttermilk fried chicken, kissed with cinnamon butter and drizzled with their own blackberry syrup. Oh yeah, their Savory Chicken & Waffles is calling your name. Pair that with the $3 mimosas to make those weekend vibes even better.
Need a midweek pick-me-up after the 9-to-5? Copper Grill’s handcrafted cocktails and stocked bar are ready to rescue you during happy hour (4-7 p.m. weekdays). Whether you’re after something refreshing or a bit bolder, their patio is the perfect spot to unwind this summer. Plus, Saturdays are extra special with allday happy hour and brunch! So, whether you’re craving a killer brunch, a perfectly mixed drink or just a great atmosphere, Copper Grill on Third Street is where it’s at. Come on, treat yourself!
FRENCH QUARTER PASTA FOUR QUARTER BAR
Picture this: a generous bowl of Four Quarter Bar’s French Quarter Pasta, where perfectly cooked rotini swims in a luscious, house-made sauce. Each forkful bursts with the taste of the Gulf, thanks to tender crawfish and plump shrimp, mingling with the smoky undertones of shredded chicken. A secret blend of Cajun spices adds a gentle heat, awakening your palate. This isn’t just pasta; it’s a comforting, flavorful journey to the French Quarter, complete with crusty garlic bread for soaking up every last bit of deliciousness. Craving satisfied.
415 MAIN ST., NORTH LITTLE ROCK FOURQUARTERBAR.COM
SAVORY CHICKEN & WAFFLE
PEAR REFRESHER
CONAN ROBINSON
PAYNE HARDING, CHEF CACHE RESTAURANT
Prepare yourself for a culinary journey at Cache, where sophisticated “Southern New American” cuisine meets exquisite technique! This isn’t just dining; it’s an experience meticulously crafted by Chef Payne and deeply inspired by both classical training and rich Cajun/Creole traditions.
Cache is renowned for its Friday Fried Chicken, a downtown legend served with double sides and cornbread — a truly elevated take on Southern comfort, based on a cherished family recipe. But the excitement truly ignites with Cache’s nightly dinner service. Everything is made fresh daily, presented beautifully. The star of the show for many is the fresh fish, flown in weekly. Imagine vibrant, cherry-red tuna from Hawaii, expertly prepared — perhaps with orzo, peppers and a delicate honey-soy glaze, a recent tantalizing special.
Beyond the beloved staples, the menu constantly evolves with two to three seasonal items introduced every few months alongside daily specials that push creative boundaries. Indulge in innovative dishes like a perfectly slow-cooked duck confit with a bright, fruity, citrusy sauce, or savor Cache’s popular shrimp and grits, infused with a delightful Cajun flair.
And for dessert? Prepare to be amazed. Cache boasts an incredible array of house-made sweet treats. Its creme brûlée features a perfect, crisp crust, while the warm bread pudding with cinnamon brioche croutons and bourbon caramel sauce is pure indulgence. Don’t miss the skillet cookie with ice cream, scratch-made key lime pie or the sweet biscuit with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Cache offers a truly unforgettable dining experience, proving that world-class cuisine thrives in Little Rock.
SHRIMP & GRITS
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
LAWRENCE PICKARD, CHEF MIDTOWN BILLIARDS
DEM DAM WINGZ
Imagine sinking your teeth into Midtown Billiards’ legendary Spam, Egg and Cheese sandwich. A generous slab of grilled Spam, tasting like a “giant chunk of bacon,” meets a perfectly cooked egg, all embraced by melted
Get ready for an explosion of taste at Dem Dam Wingz! Their “AllFlavor” sauce is a legendary concoction, blending all 32 of their unique flavors into one irresistible, tangy and sweet masterpiece. But don’t stop there — dive into their crispy fried ribs, a rarity that sets them apart from other chicken shops. And for the ultimate wing experience, savor their award-winning wings, so popular they sold out at Wingstock and earned them first place. Every bite promises a juicy, flavorful adventure you won’t soon forget!
DEM DAM WINGZ 1065 PIKE AVE | NORTH LITTLE ROCK
DROPPING DRIVETHRUS
GOVERNOR’S VETO SHOOTS DOWN DISPENSARY WINDOWS.
BY GRIFFIN COOP
On a Thursday in April, Robert deBin pulled up to The Grass Station dispensary in Arkadelphia. The CEO of White Hall cannabis cultivator Natural State Medicinals, deBin watched an elderly man slowly exit a Chevy Silverado with handicap tags and wrestle a wheelchair out of the back. The man helped his wife climb into the chair, but the woman was “clearly struggling,” deBin noticed.
Staff from the dispensary, which does not offer delivery because of what they say are onerous state regulations, lent the woman a hand and helped her into the store. The man didn’t appear to have a medical marijuana card and didn’t enter the store with her, deBin said.
“The whole time I could not stop thinking about how much easier that visit could have been if they had access to a drive-thru or home delivery,” deBin said. “If they were filling a prescription opioid from a pharmacy, they could have done that without getting out of the truck, or even leaving their house.”
Those aren’t just abstract ideas for deBin, but actual possibilities that he helped nearly become a reality this year. As the president of the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, deBin led the industry’s efforts during the state legislative session earlier this year.
The association advocated for House Bill 1889, which would have permitted dispensaries to install “bank style delivery drawers” to serve qualified patients. During the most treacherous parts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Asa Hutchinson allowed dispensaries to offer curbside pickup, but the
VETOED: When Good Day Farm built the Cantrell Road dispensary that opened earlier this year, the company included space for a drive-thru window with the expectation that they would eventually be allowed. So far, no luck.
state no longer allows that service.
Medical marijuana delivery isn’t new in The Natural State. Arkansas has allowed it since the industry launched in 2019, but the state requires two dispensary employees to ride in a delivery vehicle. In addition to drive-thru access, the bill under consideration would have reduced that number to one employee if the delivery vehicle was equipped with GPS or a camera.
The bill also would have allowed dispensaries to offer tours to invited guests. Two years ago, the Legislature approved similar tours at cultivation facilities. Bill Paschall, executive director of the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, said he believes a majority of the state’s legislators have taken advantage of that privilege.
The bill passed each chamber by a razorthin margin. It passed the House with the minimum 51 votes in favor and it passed the Senate with 19 votes in favor, just one more than the minimum 18 required to pass a bill in the 35-member state Senate.
After moving through both chambers, the bill was on its way to becoming law — or so it seemed.
On April 16, Gov. Sarah Sanders vetoed the bill, one of only four vetoes she doled out for the 2025 legislative session. Sanders’ killing of the bill came as a shock to Republican state Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Knoxville), the bill’s lead sponsor.
“I feel like I was totally sucker-punched,” Pilkington told the Arkansas Times the morning after the veto. “The whole time I was running it, I never heard there was any
BRIAN CHILSON
opposition from the governor’s office. I would have gladly worked with them to address any concerns.”
The Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association supported the bill from the start, and deBin said he met with the governor’s staff to discuss the bill and they expressed no concerns.
“At the time, her staff told me they had no position on the bill,” deBin said. “Our specific request was that they stay neutral, and they did not raise any concerns about the content. To their credit, they did say they could not predict what the governor would do if it reached her desk.”
The statement from Sanders that accompanied her veto provided little insight into her rationale.
“This legislation would expand access to usable marijuana, therefore I am vetoing this legislation,” Sanders said. She offered no further explanation.
That evening, the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association said Sanders’ characterization of the bill simply was not true.
“That is not supported by the text of the bill or the intent of its sponsors and supporters,” an industry statement said. “HB1889 did not expand access to medical marijuana. The bill made no changes to patient eligibility, qualifying conditions or who may obtain a medical marijuana card under Arkansas law.”
The archconservative Arkansas Family Council praised Sanders’ decision on its website under the inaccurate headline “Governor vetoes bad bill legalizing marijuana deliveries.” The story said the bill would have legalized deliveries, although deliveries have been legal in Arkansas for more than five years. The group also said the bill would have made it “easier for ‘medical’ marijuana to be moved to the black market or fall into the hands of people who are not authorized to use ‘medical’ marijuana — including children.”
It’s not the first time Sanders and the state medical marijuana industry have been on opposite sides. Last year, the industry supported a constitutional amendment that would have expanded the state medical marijuana program. Stronger Arkansas, a group associated with Sanders, opposed the measure and campaigned against it, even promoting literature that tried to tie the expansion to “communist China.”
The fight over that amendment wound its way to the Arkansas Supreme Court, where Sanders played a pivotal role in killing the medical marijuana measure before the people had a chance to vote on it. Sanders appointed two special state Supreme Court justices who
sided with the majority in a ruling that kicked the amendment off the November ballot.
That Supreme Court saga was fresh in mind when deBin met with the governor’s staff.
“That meeting was part of an effort to avoid a repeat of what happened with the 2024 ballot initiative, where the governor appointed two alternate Supreme Court justices who were openly hostile to cannabis and ultimately blocked the campaign,” he said.
The bill deBin pushed in this year’s legislative session illustrated at least one obvious truth: It’s hard to pass a medical marijuana bill in the Arkansas Legislature.
Sen. Josh Bryant (R-Rogers) said the marijuana industry wanted him to sponsor the bill because he’s known as someone more open to cannabis than other legislators. In 2023, he introduced a bill that would have placed a constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in Arkansas on the 2024 ballot.
Bryant said marijuana bills are among a group of measures that are hard to pass in the state Legislature.
“Any of the sin bills,” he said, referring to anything related to marijuana, alcohol and gambling. Bryant said votes on those topics are usually “pretty tight,” with about a dozen Republicans joining Democrats to pass those measures.
In the Senate, 14 Republicans and five Democrats voted in favor of the bill and one Democrat (Sen. Fred Love of Little Rock) voted against it. In the House, 34 Republicans and 17 Democrats voted for the bill. All of the votes against the bill were cast by Republicans.
Even after Sanders’ veto, there was still a chance the bill could become law. In Arkansas, a governor’s veto can be overridden by a simple majority by the House and the Senate. The bill passed by just enough votes that if all those legislators stuck together, they could override the veto and the bill would become law. But that would require bucking the will of the governor, a politically daunting ask for Arkansas Republicans.
“We got past the House by the skin of our teeth with 51 votes,” Pilkington said. “No way I can keep that coalition together to override a veto.”
Pilkington said he had seen bills with far more support that were unable to override a governor’s veto.
“While I cannot say why the governor vetoed this bill — whether it was due to a misunderstanding of what it actually did, a personal bias against medical cannabis or external political pressure — the result is the same,” deBin said. “Bottom line, this veto directly harmed Arkansans who depend on our medical cannabis program.”
DEPOSIT PRICING ANALYST
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(Little Rock, AR)
Mng interest expense and income pricing. Email CV to Simmons Bank: wendy.shirar@simmonsbank.com.
Store Manager sought by MobileLink Arkansas LLC. in North Little Rock, AR.
Reqmts: Bach’s deg or foreign equiv in Business or related field, +2 yrs exp in directing administrative activities & implmtg procedures for improving operations.
Interested Applicants may submit a resume by EMAIL to fjamil@ mobilelinkusa.com. Subject Line: Store Manager.
THE DEVIL I KNOW
In early January, The Observer was asked to leave a nightclub in Boston for violating a nonsensical dress code. The alleged rule I’d broken — no ballcaps — wasn’t posted anywhere inside the club. In fact, to find it you’d have to visit the Instagram bio of the venue.
But that didn’t stop a bouncer from escorting me out of the club while we walked past several confused patrons also wearing ballcaps. The actual forces at work were crystal clear to me: I was Black and the other patrons were white.
By this time, I was already on my way out of Boston after threee years there, and this type of scenario was partly why I chose to return to the South. All throughout college in South Arkansas and on visits to my hometown of Fayetteville, I enjoyed going out for a fun night and never had an issue like in Boston.
This isn’t just about having a fun night out, though. It’s about belonging — and a difference in cultures that would push The Observer to want to live in deep red Arkansas over royal blue Massachusetts. Some would say that the South’s deep history of racism is worse than in the North, speculating that life might be easier there than here.
But let’s compare weekends for a second. In early May, I went out with friends during the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s graduation. I saw classmates, caught up with old friends, made new friends and had serendipitous interactions with strangers. All because of what I would attribute to that good Southern hospitality: a warmth from people whose interest in you comes
from the fact that they aren’t minding their own business. I missed the welcoming atmosphere of the South. The table is big enough for everyone to pull up a chair.
Being in Boston for so long, I almost forgot about this. Nevermind always being on edge when going out and never quite feeling safe. Not unsafe in the sense of physical violence, but in the sense that you can almost guarantee someone will have something negative to say or do in regard to my race.
Back in Arkansas, it’s a lot different. I’ve been greeted with “welcome home” by friendly faces and strangers alike. The South feels natural. The wet air, a front and back yard, and driving through the Ozarks gives me a sense of comfort that I once ran away from. I was looking for different kinds of career opportunities and thought, along the way, the substitution of Confederate flags for BLM posters would provide a soft landing for this newcomer. But would I rather live in a place where Confederate flags wave with pride or a place with a veneer of acceptance to distract from the all-too-alive culture of racism that persists? I’ll take the former.
So, of the many reasons I felt the need to leave Boston, high on the list was racism. Coming back to Arkansas, I knew I wasn’t going to be in a utopia of equality, but I did know that the factors of everyday life that made me uncomfortable wouldn’t be there in the way they were in Boston.
I knew that in Arkansas, and the South in general, I would at least see people of color out and about. There’s comfort in seeing people who look like you as if they
belong, not just running an urgent errand where they feel the need to get in and out of a certain neighborhood as quickly as possible.
Stares from strangers in Boston suggest you shouldn’t be where you are. A stare could mean a lot of things in the South, including disgust, but it can also be an invitation to speak, which it never seems to mean in the North.
Recently, I watched the movie “Sinners.” In it, one of the main characters reflects on why he returned to Mississippi after moving to Chicago. “Chicago ain’t shit but Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations,” he says. “That’s why we came back home. Figured we might as well deal with the devil we know.”
That single line resonated with me because while in the South you see fewer yard signs about no human being illegal, you actually feel the spirit of belonging.
Dealing with the devil I know is not having to actively wonder if a person claiming to be progressive is actually progressive or just faking it to toe the party line.
The country has a ways to go before we can get to a point where we actually deal with racism, but one thing that the South has right and the North doesn’t is that we know our past. Some choose to deal with it by eliminating classes teaching Black history and others embrace the good, the bad and the ugly.
Regardless, that’s a world away from the North, where they’ll talk about being anti-racist and study the impacts of racism but still use their systems and culture to perpetuate it.
