Events set to mark Black History Month

In Bentonville, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is displaying work by more than 60 artists with “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.”

Throughout February, Arkansans can salute black history by admiring artwork, inspecting artifacts or attending a speech from a member of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet, among other events.

Every U.S. president has recognized February as Black History Month since Gerald Ford did so in 1976.

The annual acknowledgement stems from Negro History Week, established in 1926 by a historian and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

An abundance of events will honor black culture in Arkansas, including museum exhibits in Benton, Garland and Pulaski counties that run at least through February.

“Foot Soldiers for Freedom” is showing at the Garland County Library, 1427 Malvern Ave. in Hot Springs.

Struggles in Arkansas towns, some of them violent, that escaped mainstream knowledge are showcased, said Paul Austin, executive director of the Arkansas Humanities Council.

The council spent a couple of years crafting the exhibit.

Many people know at least the bullet points of the Little Rock Nine crisis, when Little Rock Central High School was desegregated by nine black students amid angry mobs and armed soldiers during the 1957-58 school year.

But in towns like Earle, Forrest City and Gould, people fought or skirted desegregation efforts for years afterward, Austin said.

In 1970, racial hatred boiled over in Earle when a group of whites armed with guns and clubs attacked unarmed black protesters who were marching to city hall.

Shots were fired, and five black people were injured.

With the exhibit, which includes oral interviews, the council wanted to “capture the experience of people that lived through [ strife] and stayed in Arkansas and lived with the consequences,” Austin said.

Meanwhile, the Garland County Library will provide a refresher on the history of the Little Rock Nine at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 13. Linda Gorham, a professional storyteller, will play the parts of Daisy Bates, famed activist and newspaper publisher, reporter Alex Wilson and the students themselves.

At the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center at 501 W. Ninth St. in Little Rock, museumgoers can peruse all things related to black Greek life.

“Arkansas Divine 9: An Exhibit of Arkansas’s African American Greek Letter Organizations,” is the museum’s first community-curated exhibit.

People loaned pins, jackets, canes and photographs that emblemize the nine historically black fraternities and sororities, said Christina Shutt, the center’s director.

In Bentonville, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is displaying work by more than 60 artists with “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.”

The collection — paintings, sculpture, street photography and murals — will run through April 23.

Several other Black History Month events will also take place in Northwest Arkansas.

At noon Monday, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater will give a lecture in the Bobby McDaniel Classroom at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville.

Slater, an alumnus, served in the Clinton administration. He is now a partner of Squire Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., and part owner of the Washington Nationals.

For a frank discussion about mental health, Kamra Mays, a clinical psychologist, will lead a “Black Minds Matter” luncheon in Fayetteville on Thursday.

In the black community, there is sometimes a “lack of understanding” with recognizing the symptoms of mental illness, which Mays said she will address.

There’s an idea that “you just have to be ‘tough,’ so to speak,” she said.

The discussion will start at 11:30 a.m. at Mermaids, a seafood restaurant at 2217 N. College Ave.

That same day in North Little Rock, Annie Abrams, Elizabeth Eckford and Sybil Jordan Hampton will share their thoughts on the past, present and future of the civil-rights movement.

Abrams is a retired educator and activist. Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, is an author. Hampton is the former president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

Eckford also will sign a new book she co-wrote: The Worst First Day: Bullied While Desegregating Central High.

The panel discussion will start at 6 p.m. inside the Center for Humanities and Arts at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, 3000 W. Scenic Drive.

On Friday, a Black History 101 Mobile Museum with more than 5,000 collectibles will set up at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House, 491 N. Razorback Road, Fayetteville.

Khalid El-Hakim travels the country to engage people with items that span from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Jim Crow era to modern day hip-hop culture.

A slave bill of sale and signed papers from Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X will be on display.

And on Feb. 24, Fayetteville’s first black history month parade will commence at 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 224 N. East Ave.

The next day, dubbed “Fayetteville Celebration Day,” Michael Wallace, director of Global Culture, Diversity and Inclusion at Walmart, and Mayor Lioneld Jordan will speak at 2:30 p.m. at Dwelling Place Church, 1855 N. Porter Road.

D’Andre Jones, an event organizer, said Fayetteville’s black history month theme is “Protecting Our Progress.”

All of February is a chance for black Arkansans and white allies to work toward “a more harmonious, unified community,” he said.