Boll Weevils united

The auditorium is crowded as I address faculty and staff members on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Monticello. It’s a hot Tuesday in August, and the students will be arriving the following week. A banner behind me proclaims, “Boll Weevils united.”

I’ve been coming to this college campus in the pine woods of Drew County since I was a boy. I grew up in Arkadelphia in a family that religiously followed sports in the old Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference. What’s now UAM was a member of the AIC, and we regularly made the trip across south Arkansas to see football and basketball games here. If you were to ask me what’s between Arkadelphia and Monticello, my answer would be: “Basically, a lot of trees and a lot of deer.”

For 10 consecutive years, I was the emcee for the school’s annual sports hall of fame banquet. And I’ve been broadcasting Ouachita Baptist University football games for 37 seasons, ensuring that I’m on the UAM campus at least every other fall.

So it’s a familiar spot for me. And it’s an important spot. I’ve written a great deal in the past year about the population losses that beset counties south of the Little Rock metropolitan area. A key to the future of south Arkansas will be its ability to produce a work force that meets the needs of businesses in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century.

Given that there’s not a strong growth area south of Saline County, four of the most vital entities in the state are the four-year state institutions of higher learning in south Arkansas—UAM, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Henderson State University at Arkadelphia, and Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia. It’s imperative that the Legislature properly fund these institutions so a whole half of the state doesn’t fall far behind the other half economically.

UAM and SAU represent two of the four district agricultural schools that were established in 1909. The other two are now Arkansas State University at Jonesboro and Arkansas Tech

University at Russellville.

An organization known as the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union lobbied the Legislature for several years to establish the four schools so students could learn advanced farming practices and receive a general education that would result in a high school diploma. The Legislature approved Act 100 of 1909, which created such a school in each quadrant of the state.

“Monticello’s bid to serve the southeastern quadrant was bolstered by the donation of land from the William Turner Wells estate,” Mary Heady writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “The former plantation was well suited for farming education with 900 fruit trees, a house and a pond. Irby Allen Bird of Wilmar in Drew County (one of the five trustees appointed by Gov. George Donaghey to oversee the school) presided over the Feb. 14, 1910, meeting where Monticello was selected as the location. The Fourth District State Agricultural School began classes on Sept. 14, 1910. The StewartMcGehee Construction Co. of Little Rock built the main classroom building and two dormitories in 1910.

“J.L. Spence served as superintendent, and Frank Horsfall served as principal. No tuition was charged, but students worked at the school to pay for their room and board. Horsfall took on many responsibilities to establish the school, including teaching classes, managing the farm, maintaining school records, supervising the dormitories and troubleshooting. By 1914, his position as principal was listed as the highest official on campus in the school bulletin.”

Junior college classes were added in 1923. The name was changed to the Fourth District Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1925 with Horsfall as the first president. The school was a four-year institution by 1933 and was known as Arkansas Agricultural and Mechanical College by 1935.

“Horsfall served for 25 years, working diligently to transform a Southern plantation into an agricultural school and then nourish its growth into a four-year institution,” Heady writes. “The composition of the student body changed dramatically in those years, from young students entering at the sixth-grade level to college students.” Horsfall was president until 1935. UAM’s athletic teams were known as the Boll Weevils, a mascot that’s fitting for what originally was an agricultural school. The mascot is unique in all of college sports.

During World War II, the school increased its enrollment by hosting a Navy V-12 unit that trained U.S. Navy and Marine Corps officers from 1943-45. The trainees formed a football team that beat the University of Arkansas in 1943 before losing to the Razorbacks the next season. Hank Chamberlin came to the school in 1945 to establish what’s now a nationally recognized school of forestry.

In January 1971, Gov. Dale Bumpers signed the legislation that merged Arkansas A&M into the University of Arkansas System. The merger took effect in July of that year when the name was changed to UAM.

UAM, which has been under the leadership of Chancellor Karla Hughes since January 2016, is a key educational and cultural anchor in a part of the state that continues to lose population. Its presence has allowed Monticello to buck the trend of south Arkansas towns that are in decline. The city has grown from 8,116 residents in the 1990 census to a current population of about 9,600. Given the economic state of the rest of southeast Arkansas, UAM’s mission has never been more important than it is now.