As African Americans in Arkansas emerged from slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, it was the job o the Federal Freedmen's Bureau to help them build bridges to freedom. The bureau supported former slaves as they assumed new names, searched for lost family members, moved to new homes, worked to provide for their families, learned to read and write, formed and attended their own churches, created their own histories and myths, and struggled to obtain land.

In this account of hte gains made by Arkansas freedman during this period, Randy Finley describes the ways that blacks, whites, and bureau officials undertook their foles in a new society and began to live the complex reality of freedom.

1996 Certificate of Commendation American Association for State and Local History

Elites have shaped southern life and communities, argues the distinguished historian Willard Gatewood. These essays—written by Gatewood's colleagues and former students in his honor—explore the influence of particular elites in the South from the American Revolution to the Little Rock integration crisis. They discuss not only the power of elites to shape the experiences of the ordinary people, but the tensions and negotiations between elites in a particular locale, whether those elites were white or black, urban or rural, or male or female. Subjects include the particular kinds of power available to black elites in Savannah, Georgia, during the American Revolution; the transformation of a southern secessionist into an anti-slavery activist during the Civil War; a Tenessee "aristocrat of color" active in politics from Reconstruction to World War II; middle-class Southern women, both black and white, in the New Deal and the Little Rock integration crisis; and the different brands of paternalism in Arkansas plantations during the Jacksonian and Jim Crow eras and in the postwar Georgia carpet industry.