Clinton Center to host Hillary retrospective

The Clinton Presidential Center will hold a restrospective next week about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s years in Arkansas.

The program will feature excerpts from a forthcoming oral history that Clinton — a former U.S. Senator and a former secretary of state — recorded in 2019 with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History.

John C. Davis, executive director of the Pryor Center, and Angie Maxwell, professor and director of the Diane Blair Center for Southern Politics and Society at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville will moderate the program.

Fifty years ago, Hillary Rodham moved to Arkansas. In the 18 years that followed, she would marry Bill Clinton, teach aspiring lawyers, serve as Arkansas’s first lady, practice law, become a mother and work on children and education issues.

The retrospective — “Grace and Grits: A 50-Year Retrospective of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Years in Arkansas” — is scheduled for 6 p.m. April 12.

Organizers ask attendees — whether they attend in person at the Clinton Presidential Center or via webstream — to register here.

In 2023, officials announced plans for an expansion of the Clinton Presidential Center that will include an institute to house the personal archives and papers of Hillary Rodham Clinton and “serve as a hub” for her charity and advocacy work.

The Clinton Center has said it expects to publicly announce more details of the expansion in 2024.

Clinton, 76, was born in Chicago and grew up in suburban Park Ridge, Ill. She graduated from Wellesley College and met Bill Clinton at Yale University’s law school. She worked with him in 1972 on George McGovern’s presidential campaign. Later, she worked for the Children’s Defense Fund and then for the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment proceedings on President Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate.

Instead of staying in Washington D.C. to pursue job opportunities, she “followed her heart” to Arkansas. She and Bill Clinton taught at UA’s law school. Later, during his Arkansas governorship, she led the 1983 Arkansas Education Standards Committee and served on the boards of Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Legal Services and Children’s Defense Fund.

She also worked as an attorney with the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, leaving after Bill Clinton’s 1992 election as U.S. President.

The Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center, part of the Central Arkansas Library System, is named in her honor.