By Acadia Roher I have been staring at, investigating, developing metadata, and writing about photographs in the Earl Saunders, Jr. photo collection for seven months now and still find myself startled by what I didn’t notice until the tenth or…
Segregated Neighborhoods, Segregated Schools
By Acadia Roher Resistance to school integration came in many forms, from outright mob violence to indirect tactics like housing discrimination that created segregated neighborhoods and thus segregated schools. In the decade leading up to Brown v. Board, Black communities…
Town and Country: Westward Sprawl in Little Rock (Part II)
By Andrew McClain Hi, everyone – I’m Andrew McClain, one of the graduate assistants at CAHC. I’ve written before about the residential growth patterns in Little Rock starting in the 1950s, but in this post, I’m talking about commercial development.…
Fleeing Downtown: White Western Suburbs
By Acadia Roher My walk over to the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture from the free parking area downtown always takes me under the thundering overpasses and exit ramps of I-30. Long before the debate over…
Town and Country: Westward Sprawl in Little Rock (Part I)
By Andrew McClain I’m Andrew, a Little Rock native, freelance journalist and archival assistant working on the Mapping Renewal project. During my first postgraduate career as a delivery driver, I saw far corners of Little Rock that I had never…
Collection highlight: Metroplan records
By Acadia Roher Are you fascinated by the stories of how Little Rock has changed over time? A massive urban renewal effort from the 1950s to the mid-1970s is largely responsible for the city we navigate today. Urban renewal shifted…
Mass displacement at Granite Mountain
By Acadia Roher Hey everyone! Acadia again. For my previous post on the West Rock community, click HERE. The end of West Rock was the beginning of a new story at a place clear across town called Granite Mountain.…
#Hyping Hillcrest History with Hashtags
By Shannon Lausch The Mapping Renewal project took to the streets of Hillcrest this November for HarvestFest. HarvestFest is an annual event in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Little Rock that celebrates its community with local vendors, entertainers, and food. The…
West Rock to East: Housing Segregation during Urban Renewal
By Acadia Roher I’m Acadia, a local history nerd excited about starting the Public History M.A. program at UA Little Rock in the spring. In the meantime, I’ve been working part-time at the UA Little Rock Center for History and…
Trivia with a twist
By Shannon Lausch Welcome to the official Mapping Renewal blog! Thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Center for Arkansas History and Culture is embarking on an 18-month pilot to develop a website that visually…