Winthrop Rockefeller and African Americans- William “Sonny” Walker

During his tenure as governor, Winthrop Rockefeller appointed more African Americans to state positions than ever before. This included William “Sonny” Walker, the first African American cabinet member in the South. You can find out more about Rockefeller and the larger history of race relations in Arkansas at a conference being held in the Darragh Center at the Main Public Library in Little Rock on May 11 and 12, 2012. The evening of May 11 will feature a plenary talk by Douglas Blackmon, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Slavery by Another Name. May 12 will feature talks by fourteen experts on a variety of historical and contemporary topics relating to the conference theme of “Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas: Perspectives on the African American and Latina/o Experience.” The conference is free and open to the public. I’m John Kirk of the UALR History Department and this has been an Arkansas moment.