I am grateful for this award from the Arkansas Historical Association, and for the many helpers and sources of information for this article about an amazing woman, Forrestina Bradley Campbell (no kin), otherwise known as White River Red. May she rest in peace. This article may be found in my book, “Around the County,” (available at https://www.amazon.com/Around-County…/dp/B0C126KF23) or in the Spring 2023 issue of “Flashback,” the quarterly journal of the Washington County Historical Society.
We need to stop thinking like peasants. We no longer live under the rule of a king or an aristocratic lineage of dukes, earls, and what not. We citizens of the United States (and most modern democracies) hold equal shares of power over ourselves, each of us with the right to assemble, speak our mind, and vote in order to maintain a government that protects us from any force threatening to bar our path to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Apparently some among us have forgotten, or more likely never learned, that this is our gift as Americans. They are the 21st century serfs who plod along ignoring their rights—and their duties—as American citizens. Observers most often label these new age serfs as ignorant, but that’s not entirely the reality. These modern serfs are willfully ignorant, a choice they have made in order to avoid thinking.
True, thinking is a troublesome exercise. Thinking requires the gathering of all pertinent facts on any particular issue. Such fact gathering requires not only the time and effort of the exercise, but also possession of skills in such areas as rationality and research. These skills are taught to children in their school years, but the teaching is clearly inadequate. This inadequacy is not necessarily the fault of the teacher or the school system or the curriculum, although all three can be at fault to some degree. More likely the inadequacy is due to parents not practicing thinking at home.
This kind of generational non-thinking used to be the norm, back when most of us were serfs. Those were the days when a few traditional skills sufficed in meeting life goals. A serf served his/her lord—the duke, earl, or even the king—who made his expectations clear. A woodsman was to cut and haul wood. A farmer was to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops.
As explained in Wikipedia:
Serf children grew up learning about life from their parents, a life that followed the rules set down by their lord’s demands. The sawyer’s sons were sawyers. The tanner’s sons were tanners. Owned by their fathers as girls, females were handed over to their husbands to serve as wives and mothers, subject to his absolute control.
Those rules made it easy to decide what to do without having to think about it.
Ah, those were the days. There were established rules about not only what work to do each day, but what to wear (same homespun garments as the day before), what to eat (same basic gruel and bread as the day before), what to believe (acceptance of one’s humble place in life because the Bible said so), and so forth. Even a free man could become a serf if he owed a large debt. He would make an agreement with the lord of the land. The lord would keep him safe, give money to pay his debt, and give him land to work on. In return, he would work for the lord. All his children would become serfs.
So while our early ancestors arrived in the American colonies fresh from their peasantry, only a few of them brought with them the practice of thinking. This is the resistant strain of human nature, to do what the parents did, to blindly accept a set of rules to follow, to spend our days laboring to satisfy our lord and master. The goal has shifted only slightly in that we labor in the belief that if we work hard enough, we too can be a lord. This is the fantasy that controls so many, that someday when we’re lords, we won’t want the government to tax us. This is the thinking that allows the rich to pay taxes at the same rate as the rest of us, when their incomes surpass by billions the amounts we earn. Meanwhile, we bow down (at least mentally) to the lords who have achieved ‘greatness’ through wealth or power.
After all, peasants believe, how could lowly persons such as ourselves manage to decipher the intricacies of big business or political process much less discern the many aspects of personality and manipulation employed by the lords? How are we supposed to know what is true? We must believe what our chosen leaders tells us. Never mind what news source may or may not employ actual journalists, or who provide ‘news’ instead of ‘entertainment.’ It’s all a lie anyway, they say, throwing up their hands, disheartened.
Well, yes, these are difficult mental tasks for people who never learned how to research or reason. Besides, we’re busy trying to keep a roof over our head and food on the table.
A full 34% of the voting-eligible population did not vote in 2020, which saw the highest voter turnout since 1914. Even more concerning is the popularity of wannabe dictators like Donald Trump whose supporters openly ridicule education, basking in the praise of a man who “loves the poorly educated.” It should be no surprise that Democrats control 77% of the U.S.’s most highly educated Congressional districts (107 districts) while Republicans control 64% of districts where the fewest people went to college (107 districts).[1]
There is no controlling force that coerces individuals into peasant thinking. Such a role is heavily influenced by tradition and hardly mitigated by many educational opportunities. Community plays a role as well, either offering role models who use thought and action to move beyond peasantry, or by warning of negative results for those who try to move beyond their family traditions of non-thinking. It is often easier to remain in the trenches than to climb out, especially when one has failed to grasp the tools which make climbing possible. Plus, who wants the responsibility of stepping up to the plate? I might swing and miss.
Our society and especially our educational systems are failing to penetrate the mental laziness of lingering peasantry enticing us to depend on lists of rules handed down by lords. Curriculum for all schools, public, private or religious, should provide the methods of rational thinking in order to protect malingering peasants from their self-destructive (and democracy-destroying) behavior. Curriculum requirements should include debate where fact-based points are presented on a chosen topic. A thorough understanding of civics and history should form the core of classes that also teach language arts and mathematics/logic. At strategic points in those school years, there should be lessons in conflict resolution as well as introduction to introspection.
The answer is stepping up to our human potential, NOT to install a wannabe king.
[1] https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/midterm-election-house-districts-by-education/
What will happen to them, these lovers of Trump, the men and women who act as if he is the next risen Christ, or at least the best man possible to lead the United States of America? What will happen when the inexorable turn of the wheels of justice finally finally grind him into the ground?
Will they weep? Yes. Will their anger grow exponentially to the point of ignition? Yes.
When the inevitable happens, and yes, I believe in the Constitution and our system of laws that have steered this nation through war and despair for over 200 years. I believe that Trump will finally be held accountable for all his lies and frauds and empty promises that continue to spill from his deteriorating mind, mouthed in nonsensical phrases and welcomed with open arms into the aisles of churches and the homes of the True Believers. I believe that the witnesses and the attorneys and the juries and judges will do their duty, that he will be convicted of his crimes against the people and the nation, that he will at some point have to face the truth about himself.
Nothing could be more terrifying for a man like Trump than to face the truth about himself, that his life was wasted in harming his fellow man, that he was a thief and an adulterer and a rapist, that he could produce nothing of value in this world. That he had every material advantage given to him by emotionally-vacant parents, and he squandered that gift in his ignorance, in his greed and desperation for his life to hold some meaning but never did.
What will these people do who hold him up before themselves and now will find him cast down into the filth of human failure, deceit, corruption? When the revelation of his amoral guilt opens their eyes with blinding light, will they refuse to believe the truth? Will they take up arms and storm the courthouses and prison, crying out for his release, demanding a new day still grasping for that promise, that fable of his greatness?
They believed. They tied their lifeboats to his ship, that great phantasm of belief that he was the strong man, the savior of our times, that their lives could be made meaningful and fruitful under his leadership. As the seas heave and roll, tossing his ship into wreckage, will their boats also capsize, splinter into driftwood to drift back to the littered beaches over the coming weeks and months?
Somewhere deep inside, most of the True Believers sense the truth, that Trump is a fool, an emperor without clothes. They know in that secret room of themselves that they have followed a lie. But for many of them, the truth is too painful, too terrifying, and their solution is to speak of war, that they will take up arms to defend their savior, that they will emerge triumphant in a new America led by God Almighty with Trump seated on His right hand.
These are the fantasies of those who have never seen war, who know nothing of the price we paid in the last civil war when 620,000 men died fighting their neighbors and even their kinsmen over a belief that had long since lost any claim to righteousness. In their glorious imaginings of redeeming the nation, the radical right imagine the fight as taking down the Bidens and the Clintons and Nancy Pelosi and other figureheads of ‘liberal’ democracy without realizing that the fatalities they wish to bestow will instead be their neighbors and their kinsmen.
Will justice for Trump open the door to insight, even epiphany, for his True Believers? Will they be able to accept the truth of his malfeasance or the rectitude of the courts’ judgement? Some will. Some already have. But some will not, and for them we probably should feel compassion for their loss of a dream, of a self-made parody of a god, a feeble man who misled them, made promises he couldn’t keep, presented himself in a fictional persona simply to aggrandize himself no matter the price to be paid.
The private, personal cost will be great for those True Believers unable to let go of the fantasy, that they alone stood by a true hero. They will not be treated kindly by history.
The holiday season is a time when families gather and stories are told. This year I’m happy to see Facebook posts by a cousin who has gone to the trouble to scan his 104-year-old mother’s photos and record the stories behind them. Such a wonderful project!
Here’s the photo and story he posted today.
Grandpa Tom Morrow sitting in the field with Uncle Graydon, teaching Uncles Durward and Douglas how to plow. This past weekend, Mom told me that the mule’s name was Toby. Toby evenutally got loose and was killed by a train as they lived near train tracks at the time. Mom said that she and her siblings convinced themselves afterwards that the chugging sound made by trains coming by were actually the train saying “I killed Toby, I killed Toby”. Circa 1925, Texas
The question of when and how Frank Barr picked up a cornet and learned to play remains unanswered in the mists of time. Yet at the age of eighteen as a student at the University of Arkansas in 1892, this young man not only played but would soon become the bandleader for the University Cadet Band. He would go on to direct the University band for twenty years as well as recruiting youth for “Barr’s Boys Band” through the 1930s. But these were not Frank Barr’s only contribution to the community of Fayetteville and the surrounding region.
Ambitious and hard-working, Barr seemed to be in many places at once. He ventured throughout the region helping local community bands develop. He traveled in an ever larger arena to establish a string of silent movie theaters, perhaps because at that point in the media, music was expected to be performed while the movie reels rolled. He also prevailed upon Fayetteville town fathers to support a community band, to serve in various settings. The Commercial League Band went on to please multiple regional audiences.
Above: At Monte Ne. Frank Barr third from left with his son Clinton standing in front of him. Monte Ne’s creator William “Coin” Harvey always ensured that his resort guests stayed entertained during their visit. Whether it was by going to plays, listening to music or attending dances, his guests were assured to have a good time while at Monte Ne. This 1910 photo of the Commercial League Band from Fayetteville shows the ensemble standing in uniform on the wooden walkway around the edge of Big Spring.
Barr’s work with the Commercial League Band expanded to include playing at the skating rink as well as dances, the park, and open air concerts on the Square. In 1909, Barr took over a fledgling silent picture project that had operated briefly at the Ozark Opera House. He began showing the films, first in an open air setting at the corner of West and Dickson, then within months at 17 N. Block which he named Lyric Theater. He soon built a new theater at the northwest corner of Block and Meadow, tailored to the needs of an audience with its sloped floor and state of the art ventilation.
Alongside his growing responsibilities to the University, the community, and his various pursuits in promoting music, Frank and his wife Annie suddenly found themselves confronted with unthinkable. Their only child Clinton developed a serious medical condition, an ailment of his lungs. In August 1912, Frank and wife Annie took Clinton to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where two operations were performed. Another operation was performed in early January 1913, and before the end of the month, Annie asked Frank to come to Rochester as Clinton would require yet another operation. By June 1913, the situation with Clinton Barr had not improved. In a telegram to close friend Al Rife, Frank Barr described what his family faced.
“Necessary for another operation, could not live without it. Operation not so serious as before, lungs in far worse condition than ever, the x-ray locating nest of pockets, some the size of walnuts. Don’t know when can get in hospital. Opening made by previous operation will assist in this operation.”
The complicated and amazing story of Frank Barr reveals a man of vision and formidable emotional strength as he managed to keep up with the many demands before him. He and Annie mortgaged their properties to pay for Clinton’s medical expenses. He poured his energy into his Boys Band, playing in local parades and providing music for the new Lyric Theater. First reported in August 1912 when they were praised for their performance at the A.H.T.A. (Anti-Horse Thief Association) picnic at Elkins, the Boys Band was soon in demand around the region. In June 1913, they traveled to St. Paul to play for a three-day reunion. “The reunion people can rest assured that they will be furnished with good music,” the paper reported. “And besides, it will be quite a novelty to hear the Kids play. They always make a big hit wherever they go, and it will be a big drawing card for the Reunion.” The band performed so nicely that fall at the Washington County Fair that they were invited to perform at the state fair at Hot Springs.
Barr’s life is a fascinating testament to one man’s love of music and for his family. Read the whole story in The Music Men of Turn-of-the Century Fayetteville, available at the Headquarters House offices of the Washington County Historical Society, or from Amazon.com
This collection of articles covers an eclectic range of subjects from the earliest settlers (and their contribution to the development of the county and the nation) to the 20th century enigma of a former carnie known as White River Red. What about UFOs? What about the Old Wire Road and its storied history in south Washington County? Or the county’s 4 Riverside Parks, 12 skating rinks, and 8 flour mills are among the stories found here (umm, butter melting on hot BREAD!), each selection delving into some fascinating aspect of Washington County life. It’s a joyful and sometimes heartrending read, perfect for a home library or as a gift. Don’t miss this latest contribution to the archives of local history!
Paperback, $19.99, at Amazon.com
Coming SOON! “Around the County,” new collection of articles about the history of Washington County.
From the first chapter:
Among the earliest settlers of Washington County were two men named William Shore. Distantly related in the Shorr lineage which arrived in the British American colonies by 1750, these two men seem not to have known of each other’s presence in this county. They each set about making a place for themselves. The first, William Dahl Shore, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1833 and served in Co. H, U. S. Regiment of Dragoons (subsequently 1st U. S. Cavalry Regiment) as they occupied Fort Gibson “employed in scouting among the Indians, especially along the Missouri frontier, a portion of the regiment going to Nacogdoches, Texas, for the purpose of keeping off white trespassers from the Indian country, and preserving peace between whites and Indians and among the Indians themselves; also in building wagon roads and bridges.” Once he’d served his three year term, W.D. Shore bought land at Taney (later Brentwood) and served as the first postmaster.
The other William Shore stayed only ten years on his land along the western boundary of Washington County before leaving with the Lewis Evans Company for the California gold fields. In the process, he quickly saw that providing meat and other supplies for the miners produced greater wealth than mining and adjusted his enterprise accordingly. Some of his siblings remained in the county.
These two William Shores, both entrepreneurs and adventurers, illustrate the type of men who helped create this county.
(Pictured: In the right foreground stands a subaltern of the First Regiment of Dragoons; in the left foreground is an ordnance sergeant-of which there was one on every Army post. By H. Charles McBarron, Jr.)
Arkansas’ new governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has raised the colors for her term at the helm of the ship of this state. Not that these are ‘her’ colors, per se, but rather edicts scripted for her by her bosses behind the Republican curtain. These are the same entities who put her in front of a microphone to lie for Trump as his press secretary, apparently under the promise that they would support her efforts toward future political office.
Evidence of her bought-and-paid-for status can be found in the immediate issuance of her ban on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the public schools. The boiler-plate executive order commands, in part, that the Arkansas Department of Education:
Review the rules, regulations, policies, materials, and communications of the Department of Education to identify any items that may, purposely or otherwise, promote teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as CRT, that conflict with the principle of equal protection under the law or encourage students to discriminate against someone based on the individual’s color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law.
Sanders’ measure is put forth as enforcement of Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241), which was established to ensure equal rights to everyone.
People of one color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law are inherently superior or inferior to people of another color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law…
This and similar bans present three absurdities. One, the ban alleges that efforts to reduce and/or eliminate the negative impact of entrenched racism are a form of racism. Two, the ban demonstrates either an utter lack of understanding of CRT or an ingrained denial of systemic racism, either of which would be remedied by a study of CRT. The rightwing furor over CRT is a perfect example of racist thinking and reassures its racist followers that rightwing Republicans will resist any effort to encourage white people to think equitably of their darker-skinned brethren.
Critical Race Theory advances the idea that multiple aspects of American law, institutions, and social structures enshrine racist ideas. Wikipedia describes the tenets of CRT as follows:
Scholars of CRT say that race is not “biologically grounded and natural”; rather, it is a socially constructed category used to oppress and exploit people of color; and that racism is not an aberration, but a normalized feature of American society. According to CRT, negative stereotypes assigned to members of minority groups benefit white people and increase racial oppression. Individuals can belong to a number of different identity groups…
Derrick Albert Bell Jr. (1930 – 2011), an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist, writes that racial equality is ”impossible and illusory” and that racism in the U.S. is permanent. According to Bell, civil-rights legislation will not on its own bring about progress in race relations; alleged improvements or advantages to people of color “tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups,” in what Bell calls “interest convergence.” These changes do not typically affect—and at times even reinforce—racial hierarchies. This is representative of the shift in the 1970s, in Bell’s re-assessment of his earlier desegregation work as a civil rights lawyer. He was responding to the Supreme Court’s decisions that had resulted in the re-segregation of schools.
The concept of standpoint theory became particularly relevant to CRT when it was expanded to include a black feminist standpoint by Patricia Hill Collins. First introduced by feminist sociologists in the 1980s, standpoint theory holds that people in marginalized groups, who share similar experiences, can bring a collective wisdom and a unique voice to discussions on decreasing oppression. In this view, insights into racism can be uncovered by examining the nature of the U.S. legal system through the perspective of the everyday lived experiences of people of color.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, tenets of CRT have spread beyond academia, and are used to deepen understanding of socio-economic issues such as “poverty, police brutality, and voting rights violations,” that are impacted by the ways in which race and racism are “understood and misunderstood” in the United States.[1]
Conservatives, including Governor Sanders’ managers, look for any advances toward greater social equity as a destructive force to their world view. Or, perhaps more to the point, greater acceptance of social equity would reduce or eliminate race as a hot button issue in driving Republican voters to the ballot box.
One conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT, including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California’s recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline—such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based,” the organization claimed.[2]
[On the other hand,] Leading critical race theory scholars view the GOP-led measures as hijacking the national conversation about racial inequality that gained momentum after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota. Some say the ways Republicans describe it are unrecognizable to them. Cheryl Harris, a UCLA law professor who teaches a course on the topic, said it’s a myth that critical race theory teaches hatred of white people and is designed to perpetuate divisions in American society. Instead, she said she believes the proposals limiting how racism can be discussed in the classroom have a clear political goal: “to ensure that Republicans can win in 2022.”[3]
With all cannons on deck loaded with her preprogrammed agenda, we can be certain this is only the beginning of pushing Arkansas further into the sea floor. Ironically, argument can be made that the label ‘ideologies’ such as forbidden in the CRT ban could be assigned to religion, i.e. “the beliefs and practices of that religion [which] support powerful groups in society, effectively keeping the existing ruling class, or elites, in power.”[4]
Oh, and the third absurdity? Critical Race Theory is not part of public school curriculum. It’s a college level subject.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
[2] Sawchuk, Stephen. “What Is Critical Race Theory and Why Is It Under Attack?” Education Week, Ma 18, 2021. Accessed Jan 12, 2023 @ https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05
[4] https://revisesociology.com/2018/11/09/is-religion-ideological/
Smelser, Andrews, Clark, Hall, Massey, and Eubanks
Plus Lovelady and Futrell
in Greene County, Arkansas
Combining generations of family history and up-to-date genealogical information, this collection of ancestry information tracks a group of families which settled in Greene County, Arkansas in the first two decades of statehood. Family trees, deed records, census records, and other official records create a factual framework for personal narratives and vintage photographs, creating a fascinating archive of information for any descendant of these families as well as any fan of local history.
Each marriage between these pioneer families brought certain talents and backgrounds to the next generation. They farmed the rich land of Crowley’s Ridge and other Greene County areas, weathered the storms of poverty and loss, and suffered the losses to sickness and war. Yet they survived, and their great-grandchildren entered the twentieth century determined to continue as they had begun.
Now the 21st century brings us the internet with its vast collection of historical documents, making it finally possible to reflect on their adventures and aspirations. The story of these families is the story of thousands of us descended from them. Includes an extensive ‘vocabulary’ of downhome sayings.
Paperback $14.95, Amazon
These are the stories of the innkeepers, stagecoach lines, and stablemen who served Fayetteville, Arkansas—and the region—for the first one hundred years. Travelers and new arrivals, salesmen and politicians, and shipments of food and goods all depended on horses, mules, oxen, stagecoaches, wagons, and buggies to carry out their plans. The animals required shelter, experienced care, feed, and hay. An array of craftsmen—wagon makers, blacksmiths, farmers, saddle makers, and farriers—supported the transportation industry, ensuring that the various needs of this expansive industry were met.
Who were the men who established inns, built stables, and bought sturdy stagecoaches? Where did they come from and how did they end up here? What experiences taught them the skills needed to fulfill their ambitions?
These fascinating biographical sketches along with vintage photographs re-create a time long gone, but not forgotten.
Paperback $19.95 Amazon
I’ll be on hand to sign copies 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. December 11, Washington County Historical Society 118 West Dickson, Fayetteville
denelecampbell 
