Other days

100 YEARS AGO March 19, 1920

■ With the tearing down of the old Johnson house on East Seventh street goes one more link which binds the old South with the new. On the site of the famous old mansion, which offered hospitality of the pre-war South, will rise the walls of that modern travesty of the home, the apartment house. Nothing, perhaps, could better illustrate the changes wrought in Little Rock in the last century. Though more generally known as the Johnson place, the home was originally built in 1823 by Robert Crittenden, the brilliant Kentucky lawyer, who was Arkansas’ first territorial secretary. The house was the first brick house built in Little Rock.

50 YEARS AGO March 19, 1970

■ The Arkansas Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) Wednesday stated the group’s opposition to the military draft – and to an “Anti-Draft Week” being sponsored across the nation by the new Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. YAF called the draft “immoral, unconstitutional, dishonest and discriminatory.” It called the “New Mobe’s” actions “childish temper tantrums that will only invite repression.”

25 YEARS AGO March 19, 1995

■ Once more, some legislators are trying to return the state’s primary elections to August. A similar attempt in the 1993 legislative session failed. This time, supporters of such a move are using a different tactic. They say moving primaries from May to August would give defeated incumbents less time to waste the taxpayers’ money as lame ducks. They seem to be referring to former Secretary of State Bill McCuen, whose activities during his final months in office are the subject of an Arkansas State Police investigation. Sens. George Hopkins, D-Malvern, and Stanley Russ, D-Conway, are leading the effort to return primaries to August.

10 YEARS AGO March 19, 2010

■ Adopting an overhaul-minded strategic plan is a painful but necessary step to increase student achievement in the struggling Little Rock School District, one of the plan’s authors said Thursday. Little Rock School Board member Baker Kurrus, the only member to serve on the citizens commission that crafted the strategic plan, spoke during a community forum Thursday night at Parkview Magnet High School, where the group presented the plan publicly for the first time. “We have too many students who simply are not achieving,” he said. “The results we are getting in this school district are unacceptable for many — not for all, but for many. The commissioners know that and they know it’s time for a change.”