NOIRE

08/05/2024

Today in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol, the long-awaited statue of civil rights icon Daisy Bates was unveiled. Bates, featured in the inaugural issue of , sacrificed greatly and ended her life in poverty because of her fight for equal justice under the law.

Through her and her husband L.C.’s newspaper, The Arkansas State Press, the couple actively advocated for civil rights for Black Arkansans. And famously through her mentorship of nine Black students, Bates and those teenage change agents turned the world of education upside down.

While we celebrate Bates’ courage, we can never forget the march toward equality through equity must continue. As Bates depicts in this beautiful statue sculpted by Benjamin Victor, it’s up to all of us to pick one foot up and put one foot down, moving ever steadily toward a more perfect union.

08/05/2024

Today at 2pm, Arkansas and congressional leaders will celebrate civil rights icon Daisy Bates as her long-awaited statue is unveiled in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

Watch the ceremony here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/-evu1wJfW5Y?si=OYv8a2zgCzG-cS5R

Daisy Gatson Bates will become the 13th woman to be represented in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol in Washington D.C. on M...

25/04/2024

We’re throwing it back to last Thursday when we celebrated the grand re-opening of the Central Arkansas Library System’s Sue Cowan Williams Library branch. Great food, great entertainment, and great fellowship!

Check out our other posts to learn more about the amazing woman who changed history for teachers in Little Rock. Then, visit the library!

20/04/2024

Our team had a wonderful time celebrating the reopening of the Central Arkansas Library System's Sue Cowan Williams Library last night!

The Family Dinner fundraiser, benefitting programming at the library, included amazing food by Afrobites Arkansas, K Hall & Sons Produce, Community Bakery, Mockingbird Bar and Tacos, El Sur Street Food, The H.O.M.E. Vegan, Flyaway Brewing, and Rock Town Distillery and entertainment by the beautiful Bijoux Pighee, Chris Parker, and Jazz Central from Central High School.

The space is beautifully designed. Congrats, CALS and the Dunbar Neighborhood!

17/04/2024

There’s been a lot of necessary attention on the plight of Black pregnant women, and NOIRE is hopeful that this country can end the maternal health crisis that exists today. Women in America die from pregnancy-related causes at a higher rate that women in any other developed nation. Black women face even more risk and are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.

As ends, we are grateful for the safe deliveries of babies that our publisher and executive editor had but know there is so much work to do to ensure safety and dignity in pregnancy and childbirth.

08/04/2024

Word for the day: WOW.

All across Arkansas, folks gathered to experience the .

📸 Ebony Blevins & Publisher Stephanie Jackson

04/04/2024

Did you know?

Pay equity remains a major concern for working women in America. March 12, 2024 marks the current state of the gender pay gap for ALL women and signifies the day women must work until they earn what non-Hispanic white men made the previous year.

HOWEVER, like Latinas and native women, Black women experience a substantially wider pay gap than all women due to the compounded effect of racism and sexism.

July 9, 2024 is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. Black women working full-time, year-round are paid 69 cents to the dollar earned by white men.

In 1942, Sue Cowan Williams challenged the notion that Black teachers in the Little Rock School district should be paid less than their white counterparts. She won her lawsuit and serves as an inspiration to continue the fight for pay equity in all industries.

Beginning April 18, the Central Arkansas Library System will host a series of events to celebrate the grand reopening of the Sue Cowan Williams Library. Save the date!



-Information for this story from the American Association of University Women
-photos of Sue Cowan Williams courtesy of Encyclopedia of Arkansas

28/03/2024

As Women’s History Month nears the end, NOIRE is excited to spotlight the Little Rock teacher who put herself on the line to gain pay equity for Black teachers. In partnership with the Central Arkansas Library System, we will be sharing a series of stories right here about Sue Cowan Williams, her legacy, and the grand re-opening of the library named in her honor.
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History is filled with instances of the powerful teaching Black folk a “lesson.” And Sue Cowan Williams’ story is no different. While teaching at Dunbar High School in 1942, she sued to get equal pay for Black teachers in the Little Rock School District. Williams, and some other educators, faced backlash because she dared to challenge the racist system—her teaching contract was not renewed. Ultimately, she won the case on appeal.

Nearly a decade after she was dismissed, the principal of Dunbar requested Williams be reinstated, but not before a call from the superintendent asking if she had “learned her lesson.”

Williams was reinstated and taught at Dunbar until 1974, when she retired. She was a pillar of Little Rock’s Black community, as a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, The Links, Incorporated, the National Dunbar Alumni Association, the Urban League, and the National Council of Negro Women.

In 1997, CALS dedicated the newly constructed library near the historic Dunbar school in her honor.

You can join the reopening festivities of the library on April 19th. Look for details in the coming weeks!



📸 and 📠 for this story provided by Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

18/03/2024

Congratulations to Grammy Award-winning Dr. Jeffrey Allen Murdock, Conductor and the University of Arkansas Inspirational Chorale, which performed at the historic Carnegie Hall Sunday evening. We know you all made beautiful music!

Read more about Dr. Murdock in our premiere issue at https://www.NOIREArkansas.com.

06/03/2024

in Arkansas Did you vote?

01/03/2024

[DAY 29] Albert George Hibbler was an American baritone vocalist who sang with Duke Ellington's orchestra before having several pop hits as a solo artist.

Some of Hibbler's singing is classified as rhythm and blues, but he is best seen as a bridge between R&B and traditional pop music.

Hibbler was born in Tyro, Mississippi and was blind from birth. At the age of 12 he moved to Little Rock, where he attended Arkansas School for the Blind and joined the school choir. The early days of his career included working as a blues singer in local bands. He failed his first audition for Duke Ellington in 1935 but joined the orchestra in 1943.

As a solo artist, Hibbler made several Billboard pop hits—“Unchained Melody,” “He,” “After the Lights Go Down Low,” “11th Hour Melody,” and “Never Turn Back.”

Hibbler’s version of “Unchained Melody” was the featured song in the movie Unchained, and he sang the title song in the movie Nightfall.

Hibbler also became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and being arrested for civil disobedience in New Jersey and Birmingham, Alabama. His career waned because of his involvement in the movement, but Frank Sinatra signed Hibbler as one of his first solo artists on Sinatra’s Reprise label.

He died in 2001 at the age of 85.

29/02/2024

[DAY 28] Benjamin “Pap” Singleton was an activist and businessman best known for his role in establishing African-American settlements in Kansas.

Held in slavery in Tennessee, Singleton escaped to freedom in 1846 and became a well-known abolitionist, community leader, and spokesman for African-American civil rights. He returned to Tennessee during the Union occupation in 1862, but soon concluded that Blacks would never achieve economic equality in the white-dominated South.

After the end of Reconstruction, Singleton organized the migration of thousands of Black colonists, known as Exodusters, to found settlements in Kansas and become business owners.

28/02/2024

Did you know? The number one movie at the U.S. box office has a connection to none other than Arkansas. DeVaughn Watts, a graduate of University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, is a music editor on the Bob Marley story, One Love.

Watts’ music career began when he started playing percussion at the age of 10 and continued through his time at . He earned a bachelor’s degree in Music and Sound Recording and while at UAPB was percussion section leader during his sophomore and junior year. He was a drum major his senior year.

Watts also earned a Master’s Degree in Sound Design for Film/TV from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

27/02/2024

[DAY 27] John Hanks Alexander was the first African-American officer in the United States armed forces to hold a regular command position and the second African-American graduate of the United States Military Academy.

He was born on January 6, 1864, in Helena, Arkansas, the fourth of seven children born to former slaves James Milo Alexander and Fannie Miller Alexander. All of the Alexander children graduated from high school and three attended Oberlin College in Ohio.

Alexander graduated first in his high school class and soon moved to Carrollton, Mississippi, to take a position as a teacher before enrolling at Oberlin. He attended there until passing the entrance exam for West Point in 1883. He was known as an excellent student, especially in mathematics and languages and was a skilled boxer. After graduating, Alexander was assigned to the 9th US Cavalry Regiment at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, which was an all-black regiment commanded by white officers and nicknamed Buffalo soldiers. In 1889, Alexander temporarily led the 9th Cavalry's B Troop, becoming the first black officer in the Army to hold a command position.

Alexander died unexpectedly of a ruptured aorta after being assigned to Wilberforce University, an all-black institution, as a professor of military science and tactics.

26/02/2024

[DAY 26] Janet Collins was a forerunner for Black female ballet dancers, inspiring a generation and giving hope for a more equal society.

After years as a dancer performing in various shows and musicals, including in Katherine Dunham’s company, Collins caught the eye of Zachary Solov while performing in Cole Porter’s Broadway production Out of this World. Solov was the ballet master of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House at the time, who invited her to join as a principal dancer.

Collins succeeded in breaking a crucial color barrier when she performed in the Met’s production of Aida in 1951. The following year, she joined the Met’s corps de ballet, becoming its first Black prima ballerina.

26/02/2024

[DAY 25] Fannie Lou Hamer was born a sharecropper in rural Mississippi and started picking cotton at age six. Hamer fought back against violent racism (she was beaten within an inch of her life in a Mississippi jail) to help flip the script on the cruel treatment of blacks in the Deep South in the 1960s. After being fired from her job for trying to register to vote, Hamer turned to activism.

She became the vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer also organized Mississippi's Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Hamer co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus, an organization created to recruit, train, and support women of all races who wish to seek election to government office.

26/02/2024

[DAY 24] Lucy Stanton Day Sessions was an abolitionist, noted for being the first African-American woman to complete a four-year course of a study at a college or university.

In 1846, Stanton enrolled in Oberlin College and completed a literary degree in the "Ladies' Literary Course" in 1849. This degree differed from the B.A. offered to men— it did not require foreign languages or higher mathematics.

Stanton’s graduation speech entitled "A Plea for the Oppressed" expressed her abolitionist sentiments.

25/02/2024

[DAY 23] The son of freed slaves, Charles Harrison Mason founded the Church of God in Christ, or COGIC, which is the largest African-American Pentecostal denomination in the United States.

When Mason was 12, his family moved to Plumerville, Arkansas. While members of his family were part of the Missionary Baptist Church, Mason worked closely with his community to organize a new body.

After moving the COGIC headquarters to Memphis, Mason established additional departments and auxiliaries, created dioceses, and appointed overseers throughout the country.

In 1945, Mason dedicated Mason Temple in Memphis as the church’s national meeting site and the international headquarters of the Church of God in Christ.

At the time of Mason’s death on Nov. 17, 1961, COGIC had a membership of more than 400,000 and more than 4,000 churches in United States as well as congregations in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.

Today, it has an estimated 6.5 million members. The church can be found in every state in the United States and in more than 60 countries around the world.

In 2021, a historical marker was placed on the corner of 8th and Gaines streets in Little Rock, the location where Mason said he had been given the church’s name by God.

23/02/2024

Yellow Velvet Studios, the brainchild of Emmy-nominated composer Dazzmin Murry who was featured in the premiere issue of NOIRE, is one of several organizations partnering to bring the film “Rustin” to a Little Rock audience on Monday at 6:30PM at the Central Arkansas Library System’s Ron Robinson Theater.

Rustin is the story of the gay civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech and where Arkansan Daisy L. Gatson Bates spoke.

A panel discussion with representatives from Little Rock Freedom Fund, Arkansas Public Policy Panel, InTRANSitive, Human Rights Campaign and Get Loud Arkansas will take place after the film.

It’s free and but register at https://www.ArkansasCinemaSociety.org.

Read and see more from Dazz in our premiere issue: https://www.NOIREarkansas.com.

22/02/2024

[DAY 22]: Donyale Luna, an American model and actress, became the first black model in 1966 to appear on the cover of Vogue magazine. She also appeared in several underground films by Andy Warhol and Otto Preminger's “Skidoo” alongside Groucho Marx.

22/02/2024

[DAY 21]: Jaylen Smith, at the age of 18, became the youngest elected mayor in the country when he won his election in 2022 as Mayor of Earle, Arkansas.

Smith won with 235 votes, beating his opponent who received 185 votes and was sworn into office on January 3, 2023. Smith's mayoral priorities include: improving public safety and transportation, beautification and renewal of underused housing, emergency preparedness, and addressing the food desert in Earle.

You can read more about Smith in our premiere issue at NOIREarkansas.com.

20/02/2024

[DAY 20]: Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay, a writer and poet, was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

He wrote four novels: “Home to Harlem” (1928), a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, “Banjo” (1929), “Banana Bottom” (1933), and in 1941 a manuscript called “Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem,” which remained unpublished until 2017.

McKay also authored collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, “Gingertown” (1932), two autobiographies, “A Long Way from Home” (1937) and “My Green Hills of Jamaica” (published posthumously), and a non-fiction work titled “Harlem: Negro Metropolis” (1940). His 1922 poetry collection, “Harlem Shadows,” was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance.

19/02/2024

[DAY 19] Born in 1892, Bessie Coleman grew up in a world of harsh poverty, discrimination, and segregation. Wild tales of flying exploits from returning WWI soldiers first inspired her to explore aviation, but she faced a double stigma as being both African American and a woman.

In 1920, Coleman crossed the ocean with all of her savings and the financial support of Robert Abbott, one of the first African American millionaires. Over the next seven months, she learned to fly and in June of 1921, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awarded her an international pilot's license.

Wildly celebrated upon her return to the United States, reporters turned out in droves to greet her. Coleman performed at numerous airshows over the next five years, performing heart thrilling stunts, encouraging other African Americans to pursue flying, and refusing to perform where Blacks were not admitted. She tragically died in a plane accident in 1926.

18/02/2024

[DAY 18] Charles Hamilton Houston, or "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow," worked most of his career to dismantle racist laws, especially those involving segregation in schools and racial housing covenants.

As a law student, he was the first Black editor of Harvard Law Review. As an attorney, Houston practiced with his father, became dean of the Howard University School of Law and was
sought after to join the NAACP’s legal counsel.

To this role, Houston brought Thurgood Marshall, one of his Howard University law students, to work for him. Houston also mentored the civil rights lawyers who would ultimately litigate and win Brown v. Board of Education.

Houston was involved in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 and 1954. He is credited with designing the strategy that ultimately ended Jim Crow.

However Houston died four years before the Supreme Court would overturn state-sponsored segregation in schools, a decision he had spent a lifetime planning and pursuing.

18/02/2024

[DAY 17] Lawrence Olivier Hamilton, from Ashdown in Little River County, was a Broadway star who appeared in such shows as Porgy and Bess, The Wiz, and Jelly’s Last Jam. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame in 2005.

Hamilton studied music education, piano, and voice at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, where he received a bachelor’s degree. After college, Hamilton moved to Florida to perform at Disney World. There, he met a talent manager who invited Hamilton to come to New York to audition. Starting out on Broadway, Hamilton played parts in many significant African-American-oriented musicals of the late twentieth century.

After debuting in 1979 in Timbuktu, he appeared in the 1983 revival of Porgy and Bess. He joined the cast of the 1984 revival of The Wiz, first playing a Munchkin, then a Kalidah, then a field mouse, then an Emerald City citizen, then Lord High Underling, and finally the Tinman. He performed in the 1986 r***e Uptown…It’s Hot! and was dance captain of Truly Blessed, a 1990 musical tribute to Mahalia Jackson. He was a standby for Jelly’s Last Jam, the 1992 musical based on the life of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton. He also played the Rev in Play On!, a 1997 musical modernization of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In Ragtime, a musical based on E. L. Doctorow’s novel, Hamilton played the lead role of Coalhouse Walker, Jr.

In addition to performing on Broadway, he also served as a musical director for opera star Jessye Norman, was a vocal coach for pop group New Kids on the Block, and was a member of the Southern Ballet Theater, Brooklyn Dance Theater, Ballet Tap USA, and the Arkansas Opera Theater. He performed at the White House for Ronald Reagan and at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II. At the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, he appeared as Whining Boy in The Piano Lesson, created Souvenir (featuring the works of Randy Goodrum), and directed the 2006 production of Crowns.

Hamilton died in New York City on April 3, 2014, due to complications from surgery. At the time of his death, he was on the faculty as Cultural Affairs Director and as an associate professor of humanities at Philander Smith College, now Philander Smith University, in Little Rock.

16/02/2024

[DAY 16]: Angela James is a retired women’s hockey star, and just the second Black person inducted into Canada’s Hockey Hall of Fame.

During her long career, James won a number of gold medal world championships as a member of the Canadian women’s national team.

James was born December 22, 1964 to a Black American father from Mississippi, and a white Canadian mother. She grew up in the Flemington Park section of Toronto, facing some struggles as a mixed-race child with a white mother. This fueled her passion and aggression in sports. She excelled early on in softball before joining a boys hockey league when she was eight years old.

15/02/2024

[DAY 15] William Wells Brown was a former slave who went on to become, by most accounts, the first African-American to publish a novel and the first African-American to publish a play. This came after a dramatic escape from slavery and the assistance of a good Samaritan.

Brown was born into slavery around 1814. At 19, he was sold to a Missouri steamboat company owner and staged an escape when the ship carrying him docked in Ohio. In the dead of winter, Brown traveled on foot and came across a Quaker who gave him his full name and put him on the path of education.

Brown penned and published the book Clotel or The President’s Daughter, a fictional account of two bi-racial daughters of President Thomas Jefferson, in 1853. Five years later, the play “The Escape” or “A Leap For Freedom” was published although it wasn’t produced into a full work until 1971 at Emerson College.

Brown continued to write and lecture, picking up an interest in homeopathic medicine along the way. He became a medical doctor and opened a practice. Brown passed in 1884 at the age of 70, according to most records.

14/02/2024

[DAY 14] Gladys West never knew that her work at a U.S. Navy base in Virginia back in the 1950s and ’60s would play a pivotal role in creating a technology most of us can’t live without.

West was a math teacher for two years before obtaining her master’s degree and going to work at the Dahlgren Naval Base in Virginia. She was the second black woman and one of‌ only four black employees.

West used early computer software for complex calculations, eventually as part of the team of engineers that developed the Global Positioning System, or GPS.

13/02/2024

[DAY 13] John Steptoe (September 14, 1950 – August 28, 1989) was an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books about the African-American experience. He is best known for "Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters," which was widely praised by literary critics as a breakthrough in African history and culture.

Steptoe's wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Stevie, when he was only 16 years old. Published three years later, it was received with critical acclaim and printed in its entirety in Life magazine.

Steptoe went on to illustrate 15 picture books, 10 of which he also wrote. The American Library Association named The Jumping Mouse and Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters Caldecott Honor Books, a prestigious award for children’s book illustrations. Steptoe also received the Coretta Scott King Award for illustration for both Mother Crocodile (written by Rosa Guy) and Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters.

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, his most-celebrated work, was based on an African tale from the 19th century, a story which awakened Steptoe's pride in his African ancestry. Steptoe hoped that his books would lead African-American children to feel pride in their origins as well.

12/02/2024

[DAY 12]: The Fultz Sisters, or Fultz Quad, became the first identical African-American quadruplets on record. They were instant celebrities upon entering the world.

Born into a poor family and to parents who were poorly educated, the Fultz girls were exploited by Fred Klenner, the doctor who delivered them, and capitalist corporations, such as PET, for fame and money.