Arkansas is an agricultural state. From the earliest times, agriculture has been a foundation of Arkansas’s economy and society. Working the land has provided a living—sometimes ample, other times meager—for successive generations of Arkansans.
This year’s NEARA Symposium will explore the history of agriculture in the state and how individuals and families survived by working the land, whether as land-owning farmers, sharecroppers, or day laborers. What was life like for farming Arkansans? Was “tilling the soil” a labor of love, desperation, or both? What were people dreaming of while farming for survival?
Speakers include:
- Lauren Willette, Ph.D. Candidate in Heritage Studies, ASU "Women Farmers in Arkansas"
- Dr. Adam Long, Executive Director of Arkansas State University's Heritage Sites, ASU "Delta Agricultural History and the Arkansas State University's Heritage Sites"
- Dr. Gary Edwards, Associate Professor of History, ASU "A White Yeoman and a Black Overseer: Farming in Freedom and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Arkansas"
Lunch will be provided. Teachers who attend will be able to earn up to three credits of professional development.
REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/376799376077
The symposium will take place at the Carl Reng Student Union on the campus of Arkansas State University Saturday, August 6 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For more information, contact Fatme Myuhtar-May with the Northeast Arkansas Regional Archives at 870-878-6521 or [email protected]