Opinion

The history of African Americans has been shaped by many influential figures, including various civil rights activists. Ruby Bridges may be one of the youngest. At age six, Ruby Bridges became the first African American student to integrate the formerly all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Although Bridges lived five blocks away from William Frantz Elementary School, she had to attend kindergarten several miles away at an allblack segregated school. Bridges volunteered to take an entrance test to be able to attend the allwhite school. The test was purportedly designed to be extremely difficult so that students would have a hard time passing it, and thusly New Orleans could avoid de-segregation if all the African American children failed the test. Individuals from the NAAP informed Bridges’ parents that their daughter was one of only six African American students to pass the test.

All this freezing weather lately made a homebody out of me, when it is too cold for me to go, it is just too cold. I stayed happily at home wearing velour pajamas and thick wooly socks in my comfy chair, drinking hot tea, and reading. Cozy and snug as a bug in a rug and content to just be there, reading, calling family and friends to check up on them. Cooking large pots of soups, stews, and beans so much that there was no way Red and I could begin to eat all of it. I believe the more you stay home the more you cook, so I’m usually careful not to stay home for long!

i& ll Car Trollhere Randolph County has numerous Arkansas firsts–sites and events that were the first occurrence of their type in what is or would become Arkansas. What are the reasons that this county was so important in the settlement and development of our state? What did we have that other counties didn’t? As we’ve discussed before, it’s estimated that 80% of Arkansas’s early settlers entered the state at Hix (later Pitman’s) Ferry on the Current River in extreme NE Randolph County.

Recent frigid temperatures undoubtedly sent shock waves around the community. January and soon to be February means we are still in the throes of winter and subject to all the weather fluctuations we tend to experience in the midsouth. Take a tip from the Boy Scouts: Be prepared. For the next five weeks of official winter, be prepared.

Bryn Ulmer, the patriarch of the Ulmer-Koons clan of Stokes, has passed away. He was a rare individual.

Population growth is considered an important measure of progress in small towns and counties– one wants to feel one’s town isn’t ‘dying’ but growing instead. I remember in past decades, eastern Arkansas (the Delta) towns and counties were the places where the population was larger and the economies were booming.

Live sports can be wildly entertaining, giving viewers lots of ups and downs to enjoy (or endure). That emotional roller coaster has made live sports, and football in particular, especially popular among television viewers. Data from Nielsen indicates that the National Football league was responsible for 45 of the 50 largest Nielsen-measured sports audiences in 2022. In fact, the top 32 events were all NFL games, with the 2021-22 College Football Playoff National Championship Game between Georgia and Alabama coming in at no. 33 among the year’s most watched sporting events. Even the thrilling World Cup Final between Argentina and France was no match within the United States for the NFL, garnering 22.32 million viewers. By comparison, that year’s Super Bowl between the Rams and Bengals attracted 99.18 million viewers. Curiously, despite baseball’s designation as “America’s pastime,” Major League Baseball did not have a single game place among the 50 most watched sporting events of 2022.