Arkansas Women

Following in the tradition of the Southern Women series, Arkansas Women highlights prominent Arkansas women, exploring womens experiences across time and space from the states earliest frontier years to the late twentieth century. In doing so, this collection of fifteen biographical essays productively complicates Arkansas history by providing a multidimensional focus on women, with a particular appreciation for how gendered issues influenced the historical moment in which they lived. Diverse in nature, Arkansas Women contains stories about women on the Arkansas frontier, including the narratives of indigenous women and their interactions with European men and of bondwomen of African descent who were forcibly moved to Arkansas from the seaboard South to labor on cotton plantations. There are also essays about twentieth-century women who were agents of change in their communities, such as Hilda Kahlert Cornish and the Arkansas birth control movement, Adolphine Fletcher Terrys antisegregationist social activism, and Sue Cowan Morriss Little Rock classroom teachers salary equalization suit. Collectively, these inspirational essays work to acknowledge womens accomplishments and to further discussions about their contributions to Arkansass rich cultural heritage.