The Seed and the Story: ARVAC and VISTA, Folk arts and the War on Poverty in Arkansas.

Click on the photo to connect to ordering info via Amazon.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

Alongside researching the history of Chickalah and Harkey’s Valley, I’ve been reading In Service to America: A History of Vista in Arkansas 1965-1985.  Written by Marvin Schwartz, this 1988 publication traces the VISTA organization throughout the state.   I’ve been particularly interested in the work of this organization in central Arkansas, including the creation of a craft co-op, which served both Yell and Pope Counties.

Created in 1965, VISTA was an outgrowth of President Johnson’s War on Poverty and Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.  This national legislation sought to provide lasting and locally based solutions to struggling communities.  Operating much like a domestic version of the Peace Corp, volunteers in the VISTA program received a subsistence wage and lived in economically poor areas where they worked in partnership with community members to generate economic initiatives and help residents gain access to health care and adequate food.  VISTA volunteers, many of them college age, worked to help create grassroots programs which focused on local needs, thus making each VISTA program unique to its region.

In 1960 approximately 40% of the population in the river valley was living below the poverty line.  Illiteracy, inadequate housing, and unemployment were rampant.  One of the first VISTA programs in the nation was the Yell County Economic Opportunity Program, a pilot recipient of an OEA grant.  The organization was soon absorbed into its larger sister organization, ARVAC (Arkansas River Valley Area Council), which hosted numerous national and local volunteers.   ARVAC formed programs such as the Housing Development Corporation, an organization utilizing the rural tradition of barn raising to help low income families secure homes, and ARVAC Rural Folkcrafts, a network which provided a market for rural quilters, white oak basket makers, seamstresses, and other artisans, allowing them to sell their traditional wares and earn a living for their families. Another organization, Counseling Associates (formerly known as ARVAC Community Mental Health Program), began under the ARVAC VISTA program and operates independently today.

In its early days VISTA brought in volunteers from around the nation, but in later years became more focused on long-term, locally based volunteers, which helped the programs thrive.   From the beginning, the goal of VISTA programs was to become self-sufficient. ARVAC stuck around and quickly became a model of successful VISTA organizing.   ARVAC’s craft co-op, which began in 1975, continued throughout the 1980s, as did housing initiative, which later became known as Universal, INC.

Schwartz’s book features interviews with a few river valley VISTA workers, including the late Myrtle Cress who worked in Ola and Betty Burnett who organized a housing co-op in Dardanelle.  It also highlights the work of Lou Vitale who was instrumental in founding the crafts co-op. I’d love to learn more about the creation of these initiatives, how people felt about the work, the craftspeople who sold at the co-op, and the use of the barn raising tradition in area housing initiatives.   Were you affiliated with VISTA?  Did you or someone in your family sell crafts at the co-op?  Perhaps your house was built utilizing the barn raising tradition?  I’d love to hear more.   An extra special thanks to Mike Luster of the Arkansas Folklife Program for introducing me to this book.

Also please don’t forget we’re still working on compiling stories of plants and seeds for our book on stories and gardening in the area.  We’d love to include your story!  To learn more visit us here.  To read a little bit about the backstory of the garden book read this column.

The Seed and the Story Column: Garden Stories Book and McElroy House.

Wood sorrel from my grandmother's house.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

As the days grow (unseasonably) warmer, the wood sorrel in my front yard is beginning to bloom.  Often called false shamrocks, wood sorrel comes in hundreds of varieties and is sometimes considered a weed.  Sometimes referred to as Oxalis, the little pink or yellow flowers shoot up from the three-leaf clover-like base of the plant.  In the variety I have, the plants grow in fat, round clumps.  My plant comes from a cutting of a plant that once grew along the walkway leading to my grandparent’s house on Second Street in downtown Dardanelle.  After they died my mother dug up some of the roots and planted them in her yard.  After she died I dug some up and planted them in mine.  When I moved to Little Rock last year, I dug some up again and took them with us to our new home where they now grow along our walkway leading up to the red front porch.  Come to find out, as one of my cousins informed me this week, the plant originally grew in my great grandmother’s yard, long before I was ever born. And who knows.  Maybe she dug it up from her own mother’s yard in Cardon Bottoms. We invest so much memory and meaning in our plants.

For a few years now I’ve become increasingly interested in the way plants carry our stories, and I’m especially interested in how gardens play a role in this part of Arkansas.  Seeds passed down through families often bare the name of family members or geographical locations.  Recent immigrants bring with them seeds from home, their gardens a marriage between a former home and a new one.  And if you take a walk though just about any flower garden in the area, the gardener will likely tell you stories of friends or relatives who once gave them a cutting of the lilac bush or the four o’clocks which now cover their yard.   Last year I wrote a piece about my grandmother’s love for irises and soon discovered just how many other people had similar connections to the plant, family members treasuring both the bulbs and stories passed down through the years.  You can learn a lot about people, I’ve discovered, by asking them about their plants.

Along with the help of a few other people, I’m working toward the creation of the McElroy House: Center for Folklife, Oral History and Community Action, an intergenerational and inter-cultural organization working to document and discuss folklife and oral history in our region. Gardening is a tradition that’s alive and well in our area and it transcends racial, geographic, even linguistic, boundaries.  Our first project for the Center is putting together a publication about the stories behind plants and gardens in the river valley and Yell County areas.  Gardening knowledge is instrumental as is seed saving, and thankfully other groups and publications are filling this need.  What we hope to do with this project is focus on the stories behind the plants and the relationship between the gardener and their gardens. So, do you have a plant or plants that carry special meaning, perhaps a link to past generations?  If you’re new to the area, have you brought seeds or cuttings with you from your home state or home country?  Why are these plants important to you and what meaning does the garden hold for you? After all, gardening can be hard and is a labor of love. We’d like to hear why you love it and what brings you back to it year after year. It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned gardener or someone’s whose just started.  It’s your stories we want to hear.   Please help us spread the word.  If you know of a gardener who you think should be included in this book, please let us know.

The Seed and the Story for February 8, 2012: Origins of the Chickalah Name.

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

Update:  I originally listed the Highway as Highway 28 instead of Highway 27.  A reader from Chickalah corrected me.  Thanks so much!  This is what I get for working in a hurry due to computer problems.  But computer problems are fixed now.  Thanks so much! 

I’m very excited about the continued response from these recent columns on Chickalah.  Please excuse my delay in responding to emails.  Last week my computer, which has long since seen better days, crashed one last and final time.  Thanks to the generosity of some very dear friends, I’ll soon have a new (to me) computer with several nice upgrades!

In the past few weeks I’ve discussed the somewhat recent history of Chickalah (click here to read the first installment and here to read the second), but this week’s column will go back quite a bit further and explore what little we know about the community’s unique name.  I don’t about you, but as soon as I was old enough to read, those white letters on the green background of the sign on Highway 27 always intrigued me.  It’s a Native American name, but where did exactly did it come from?  And why don’t we pronounce it phonetically, I’ve always wondered.   How did it sound on the lips of the early settlers?  I don’t have any answers for these last two questions, but, of course, the word is full of places whose names ring quite differently from the lips of the residents than the sign might suggest.  One of my personal favorites is the Newton County community of Mount Judea, which is pronounced by locals as Mount Judy.

There are more mysteries to Chickalah’s Native American history than there are answers, and the sources we do have are, at best, fragmented and incomplete. Tribe members have long since left the area, forced out of this region, and most of the rest of the United States, by a host of factors, including what amounts to genocidal acts perpetuated by the U.S government to eradicate their presence in the area.  We do know, however, that the community’s name is a variation of Chikileh, the name of a Cherokee chief, who, according to researcher Samuel Dickenson, was “noted for his oratory.” Continue reading »

The Seed and the Story for January 25, 2012: Visiting with Bud Rector

Bud Rector and J.L. Martin Chickalah, Arkansas, 2012

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

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Before I get into this week’s column, I want to thank all those who called or wrote in response to the previous column about the history of Chickalah.  It’s such an honor to hear from readers with memories and stories to share, and I’m thankful to all of you who took the time to tell me about the places you call home.  I learned from Carolyn Garner that back in the 1940s people would gather to watch outdoor movies on the back wall of Neil Cowger’s Chickalah store.  And I had several people tell me about the rural baseball league from the area, including the days when the Dean brothers lived on Chickalah Mountain.  So this week’s column is a continuation of the recent Chickalah research and will highlight just few stories I learned from a man many of you know and love: Bud Rector.

My father and I recently had the opportunity to visit with Bud in his home on Harkey’s Valley road in Chickalah where we were greeted by his friendly dog who got up from her cozy front porch chair to come say hello.  Bud Rector was born in 1914 and has lived in the Harkey’s Valley area all of his life.  He’s hauled logs in the timber woods, raised chickens and cows, worked for the WPA, driven the rural bus route for Dardanelle Schools for decades, and traveled throughout the area singing in a gospel quartet.  He’s also an excellent storyteller and a joy to be around.  I can’t begin to do justice to all his stories in this short column, so I’ll just highlight a few.

For decades the Chickalah area was home to a thriving timber economy, and Bud recalled many of the early logging operations and sawmills that dotted the mountains.  He and my father swapped memories of those days when, as Bud recalled, “everybody was going around with the chopping ax and cross cut saw.”  While my father recalled skidding logs, Bud and his brother Buford found work hauling the lumber to town.  He mentioned his short stint with the WPA where men were given shovels to help dig out the bluff and told of the well known store in Sulpher Springs operated by a man with, quite possibly, one of the best names I’ve ever come across: Bonaparte Rutledge.  Come to find out, my own grandparents were married in front of Mr. Rutledge store.

Thanks your suggestions, I was sure to ask him about the rural baseball leagues that were so popular in the area during the 1930s and 1940s.  He recalled teams from Spring Creek, Chickalah Mountain, Chicklalah Village, Slo Fork, Pisgah, Casa, Sulpher Springs, Ard, and Harkey’s Valley, the team for which he played.  While he never had the chance to play with Dizzy, he did play with Paul and their younger brother, often known as “Poodle.” The teams played at places like the old Gatley ball field near Sulphar Springs and in numerous cow pastures all around the county.  Readers might recall the team’s manager Pete McMullan and some of well-known players like Burt Tucker, Roger Harkey, Grover Martin, John Martin, and Ame Bates.

In the near future I’ll have some of the audio of Bud up online so you can listen to Bud telling these and other stories in his own words.   Do you remember the ball teams, the logging woods, or Bonepart’s store?  I’d love to hear from you!  A very special thank you to Mr. Bud Rector for allowing me to visit and share some of his stories here.

The Seed and the Story for January 11, 2012: Chickalah Academy

Chickalah Methodist Cemetery. Click on photo to see full listing of graves in cemetery.

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend! And thanks for reading!

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I recently began doing some research on the history of Chickalah and have been reading two books which provide a great deal of information about this and other rural communities in the area.  Both Wayne Banks’ 1959 publication, A History of Yell County Arkansas, and Catherine Eikleberry Roger’s Readin’, ‘Ritin, and ‘Rithmetic, published in 1981, are filled with oral histories from community members who have long since passed away.  In addition to many of the stories I’ve heard over the years from family and friends, these books help shed light on this community which once boasted eight businesses and two hundred and fifty residents.

Today Chickalah is a small, rural community with a few churches, a community center, and a rural fire department.  In the late 1800s, however, Chickalah, often referred to as Chickalah Village, was located about a mile north of its present location and was home to the Chickalah Academy, a two story building which provided the first non-denominational educational opportunities in the area.  Prior to the Academy, all schools in the village were subscription based and conducted by the Methodist church on Harkey’s Valley road across from Little Chickalah Creek.  The Chickalah Academy, located near where the fire station stands today, was a two story building with four separate entrances.  The school boasted three departments: “Primary,” “Grammar” and “Academic,” and in addition to these regular classes students also had access to classes in vocal instruction, piano, organ, guitar, and violin. 

The Chickalah Academy burned sometime during the early 1900s, and although another two story building was constructed, the subsequent school appears to have only hired two teachers.  Eventually that building was torn down and replaced by the one-story, two room building that still operates today as the Chickalah Community Center.  As many readers may remember, beginning in the 1930s, the Chickalah School began a gradual process of consolidation with Dardanelle Public Schools.

To my knowledge there is no one living today who attended the Chickalah Academy, but some of you have probably heard stories about the school, and no doubt there are many readers who remember attending the later school before consolidation.  In my quest to understand more about Chickalah, I’m especially curious to learn more about the coming of Highway 27 and how this shifted the population from what is often referred to as Chicklaha Village to the Chicklah we know today.   I’m also curious to learn more about a shoe factory that may have once been located in the area.  Operated by the McCray family, the factory would have existed sometime in the mid 1800s.  I’d also love to learn as much as possible about the sawmills in the area and the role they played in the larger timber industry. Do you know anything about these topics?  I’d love to include this and any other information in our ongoing research at the community center I’m working to open, the McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action.   As always, I’d love to hear your stories.  You can visit me online at www.boileddownjuice.com.  If you want to know more about the McElroy House and our goals, you can check us out online at www.mcelroyhouse.wordpress.com. Of course, I always love handwritten letters or phone calls as well!  Thanks so much for reading and sharing your stories.  I feel very thankful to be learning from you all.   

The Seed and the Story for November 30, 2011: Dardanelle Mural and Upcoming Christmas River Walk

Dardanelle Post Office Mural

The Seed and the Story is published every other week in the Post Dispatch and syndicated in the Courier.   Thanks so much for reading and don’t forget to support your local paper!

Just a bit of information for the web readers: This column was written for readers of the Yell County and River Valley area papers, but we hope there is something here for all readers wherever you live.  And we’d love to have you come visit the River Walk if you are going to be in the area!  Thanks to our wonderful volunteers we will have some homemade cookies and the mayor is providing cider and coffee.  Come out and say hello!

Last week art historian Dr. Gayle Seymour visited the Dardanelle Historical Society to discuss the history and importance of the Dardanelle Post Office Mural.   You may recall a previous column from August of this year explaining how the mural was created under the Percent for Art model, a Depression-era federal program that provided employment to out of work artists and brought art to highly-accessible public buildings.  The artist who created our mural was Ludwig Mactarian, an ethnic Armenian who escaped the Armenian Genocide and came to New York at the age of thirteen.  Our mural, which features workers in the cotton industry, is one of very few Percent for Art murals depicting African Americans.  Equally important,  the artist’s focus on the struggles of share croppers suggests a multi-layered social commentary, making our mural unique and important on both a local and national level.

Close up of man in center panel.

Thanks to the hard work of Dr. Seymour, the great folks at the Dardanelle Historical Society and many concerned citizens, there are plans in the works to call more attention to the mural and work toward its eventual restoration. 

You have probably heard about the upcoming downtown Dardanelle Christmas River Walk December 9^th from 5:00-8:00 P.M.  Organized by the wonderful folks at Renaissance Front Street Restoration, this event will feature area artists, carolers, music, and more.  To help draw attention to the mural and its importance in our community, the Dardanelle Historical Society will be serving refreshments and handing out information about the mural inside the post office lobby.  Be sure and drop by and check out this historic work and learn more about its history. 

I’ll be present at the Art Walk as well, sitting at the booth for the The McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action.  We will be discussing various ways we can engage in research and public education programs centering on the mural and the history and themes it represents.  We’ll have some homemade treats on hand made by volunteers and information about documenting oral history in the area, especially cotton picking as depicted in the mural.  Did you grow up picking cotton in the area?  Did your grandparents?  We’d love to hear all about it.  One of our main goals of the McElroy House is to help document these community stories and preserve them for generations to come.  Please stop by and pick up a cookie and visit with us.  If you’ve got photos or other things you’d be willing to share, bring those too.  We’ll have a scanner on hand to scan in your old photos as well as other photos for people to view. If you want to know more about the McElroy House organization, visit us online at www.mcelroyhouse.wordpress.com. 

Thanks so much for reading and I look forward to seeing you at the Christmas Walk! 

Seed and the Story for November 16, 2011: The Coming of Autumn.

Taken in 2001.

The Seed and the Story column is published every other week in the Post Dispatch and syndicated in the Courier.  If you enjoy the column, please be sure and support the local paper! Your support matters.  If you don’t live in the area please support your local paper!  Thanks for reading.   

When I was younger fall was my favorite season.  I loved the wind, the deep orange and red leaves and their constant crunch under my feet.  I even loved the early nightfall.  But mostly it was the hypnotic scents of the changing season that drew me in. The smells of summer meals were always lost in the late-afternoon heat and the numbing chill of the air-conditioner, but the house in autumn held onto the smells of supper with diligence.  Everywhere you’d go the world smelled like soup and burning dust from the coils of heaters fresh out of storage.

I still enjoy the changing colors of the trees and the first chill in the air, but alongside the magic I sensed as a child, it’s hard to mistake the sorrow present in such a transition.  The leaves are their most beautiful, but they’re dying.  The sweeping wind fills the neighborhoods with motion, yet after a few weeks it will succeed in shaking every leaf from every tree.  You know how it is.  Sometimes the metaphors of autumn are hard to take.

Despite the ambivalence that fall brings, the smells of the season haven’t lost any of their power or mystery.  Even though it’s been over a decade since he died, autumn always makes me think of my Uncle Junior and his small house out in the Chickalah/Sulpher Springs area, one of my favorite places in the world.  We’d drive down the dirt road, get out of the truck, and watch our breath become visible in the near dark.  As we climbed the steps to his tiny house, the boards on the front porch would creek underneath our feet.  Upon opening the door we were met with a blast of thick air from the potbelly stove as the smell of fireplace would rush out into the night air.

The smell was so intense and inviting, and the spice of the woodchips mesmerizing.  We’d take seats in a semi-circle around the stove, and after a few minutes my cheeks would glow red with the heat and my eyes would begin to sting.  Uncle Junior would lean over from his rickety, narrow-back wooden chair, open the heavy metal door, and throw in a Prince Albert cigarette butt into the flames.  I’d stare into the red center of the stove, hear the wood pop and watch the paper curl.  He’d lean in again and close the door with a quiet creak.  Then he’d talk about horses, cutting timber in the nearby mountains, or something he’d seen on the news.  Later we’d step back out onto the front porch and the chilly air would soothe my cheeks.  The smell of the woodstove would travel home in my coat.

I’ve experienced the coming of fall in many different places, but no matter where I go there’s something about the wind and the chill that takes me back to that small box house in rural Yell County  What about you?  I’d love to hear your stories and memories of fall in Yell County and the river valley.   

As a side note, you may recall a previous column about the history of the Dardanelle Post Office Mural.  Anyone who is interested in its restoration is invited to attend the Dardanelle Historical Society meeting this coming Monday at 7:00 at the Dardanelle Senior Center.  Art Historian Gayle Seymour will discuss the mural and ways to move forward with the artwork’s restoration.

J.L. Martin, Yell County Arkansas. Photo by author in 2001.

Art Walk, Chicken Fry, a McElroy House booth in Dardanelle, Arkansas

Flyer from Front Street Renaissance Restoration

This coming Saturday in downtown Dardanelle, Arkansas two coinciding  events will be taking place:  The 63rd Annual Chicken Fry down by the river and the River Walk on Front Street up the hill from the river.  Both events are free and open to everyone.

If you unfamiliar with the Chicken Fry here’s an informative article from a few years ago about the event and the 150th anniversary celebration of the City of Dardanelle.  For years the event was held on Mount Nebo and has always attracted locals and state politicians.  The event is a nod to one of the region’s biggest employers, the chicken industry.   Events include music, games for kids, the annual Lil Miss Pullet and Mr. Rooster Pageant at 10 a.m.,  a chicken calling contest at 1 p.m. and the Lovely Legs contest at 1:30.   Chicken dinners are available from 11:00 a.m.—5:00  p.m. and cost 5.00 for adults and 3.oo for children.  To get all the details read the Courier’s recent article here.

Back in June we posted about the downtown Art Walk led by Renaissance Front Street Restoration.  These Art Walks have become so successful they’re now occurring on a regular basis.  This Art Walk, which is being called the River Walk, will take place from 1:00—4:00 during the middle of the Chicken Fry festivities.  If you’d like to see Front Street once again become an active, thriving location for the community, then be sure and check out the work of the Front Street Restoration project.  They’ve been organizing numerous events all geared toward bringing people back downtown.   In addition to the regular downtown events,  there’s also locally-owned restaurant Tarascos, the best Mexican food you can find anywhere (seriously),  Savannah’s with views of the river,  and the historic post office with WPA-era mural.    Thanks to the Front Street folks and so many others who are working hard to bring business back to the downtown.   There are still places for artists to be involved this weekend.  If you’re a regional artist or craftsperson and you’d like to get involved with the Art Walk call call (479) 229-03567, (479) 747-5938 or (479) 886-0817.

We’d also like to let folks know that the The McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action will have a booth with a short slide show discussing our current projects and future plans.   We’re looking forward to hearing more from the community and perhaps picking up a few more volunteers for projects and future plans.   We’d love it if you came by and said hello!  And if you’re interested we’d love for you to come join us in our work and become involved in something that interests you.

Do you want to help document oral histories in the area?  Help sustain living community traditions?  Help with the flower or veggie garden?  Food preservation?  ESL classes? Spanish classes?  Are there other things you think we should be offering?  Whatever the case, whatever your age or regardless of how long you’ve called the river valley home, we want to hear from you.

Check us out online here.

Let’s Talk About Muscadines.

Purple and gold muscadines from Bluebird Hill Berry Farm out of Atkins, Arkansas

Every other week the Seed and the Story column comes out in the Post Dispatch and the Courier newspapers.  I’m thinking this next column should be an ode to the greatest regional fruit known to humankind, the muscadine.

I’ve eaten my fill of them lately, and I’ve been hearing others talk about them as well, including one friend who teaches at Danville Public Schools, Samantha Dill,  who said the students recently had them for an after-school snack followed by a discussion about the fruit’s various folkways and the variety of different ways to eat their delicious contents.   Isn’t that great?   She’s an excellent teacher!

Here’s what she had to say about it (via comment section): As part of the grant program, teachers and cafeteria must document lessons they incorporate into their classrooms. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and sometimes Thursday and Friday afternoon, we all all get a beautiful tray. There is a watermelon plant that out groundskeepers have obviously ignored on our playground from the watermelon seeds some fifth graders spit out while enjoying the fruit outside with Mrs. Rose.

I’ve found that a few different farmers that sell them around here in the central Arkansas area, including Bluebird Hill Berry Farm in Atkins, Arkansas.  Right now they have both the gold and purple varieties available.  Typically these are the tame kind as opposed to the wild, gathered kind.  But they’re still quite tasty.

I’d love to hear your muscadine stories!  How do you like to eat them?  Do you make jelly? Eat them raw?  Maybe you do a little fermenting even?  Let’s talk muscadines.  Or mus-cee-dines, as my grandmother said.

McElroy House Update: EAST Lab at Dardanelle High School

Beginning this month the McElroy House: Organziation for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action will be partnerning with the EAST Lab classes at Dardanelle High School on oral history and community research.

Click here to check out the McElroy House webpage for information!