Joseph Robert Booker

Joseph Robert Booker was born in Helena, Arkansas, in 1893. He graduated from Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock in 1914 and gained a law degree from Northwestern University in 1917. He returned to Little Rock and set up practice there. After returning from service in World War I, Booker worked on a number of notable civil rights cases including the appeal of the death sentences of twelve African American men convicted after the Elaine Race Riot; a suit for the right of African Americans to vote in the Arkansas Democratic Party primary elections; and a suit for equal salaries for Little Rock’s African American teachers. From 1949 to 1950 he served as president of the African American National Bar Association. Little Rock’s Booker Arts Magnet Elementary School is today named in his honor. I’m John Kirk of the UALR History Department and this has been an Arkansas moment.