The Committee on Negro Organizations

On March 10, 1940, Pine Bluff attorney William Harold Flowers held a meeting in his hometown of Stamps, Arkansas, to found a new civil rights organization, the Committee on Negro Organizations. The Committee looked to bring together various black political, civic, fraternal, and religious organizations in a push for voter registration. Between 1940 and 1947 the number of eligible black voters in Arkansas rose from 1.5 percent to 17.3 percent. The leading black newspaper in the state, the Little Rock-based Arkansas State Press, printed a photograph of Flowers with the caption: “He Founded a Movement.” In 1945, Flowers was instrumental in forming an Arkansas state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He remained a pioneering civil rights lawyer. Today, the Arkansas Black Lawyers’ Association is named in his honor. I’m John Kirk of the UALR History Department and this has been an Arkansas moment.