Tag Archives: Clinton School Speaker Series

Ernest Green leads event tonight at Clinton School commemorating 100 years since Daisy Bates was born

Posted on by

bates daisyDaisy Bates was an American civil rights activist, publisher, journalist, and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. Daisy Bates would be 100 years old on November 11th. To mark the milestone the Clinton School of Public Service is hosting a celebration of Mrs. Bates featuring Ernest Green.

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates and her husband were important figures in the African American community in the capital city of Little Rock.  Realizing her intense involvement and dedication to education and school integration, Daisy was the chosen agent after nine black students were selected to attend and integrate a Little Rock High School.  Bates guided and advised the nine students, known as the Little Rock Nine, when they enrolled in 1957 at Little Rock Central High School. President Clinton presented the Little Rock Nine with the Congressional Gold Medal and spoke at the 40th anniversary of the desegregation while he was in office.  He returned as a speaker for the 50th anniversary and opening of the new museum and historical site in 2007.

Ernest ‘Ernie’ Green was one of the nine African-American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock and the first of the nine to graduate.  Green is the managing director of public finance for Lehman Brothers in Washington, D.C., has served as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training during President Carter’s administration, Chairman of the African Development Foundation under President Clinton, and Secretary of Education, Richard W. Riley, appointed him Chairman of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Capital Financing Advisory Board.

The event will take place at 6pm tonight at the Clinton School.

*Reserve your seats by emailing publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu or calling 501-683-5239.

Noon today – Grammy winner Sharon Isbin speaks at Clinton School; performs with ASO this weekend

Posted on by

isbin_sony_soho_11This weekend, Grammy winning guitarist Sharon Isbin will be performing with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.  Prior to those performances, she is speaking today at noon at the Clinton School.

Isbin is a Grammy Award-winning classical guitarist and the founder of the Guitar department at the Juilliard School in New York City. She is the author of “Classical Guitar Answer Book” and the director of the guitar department at the Aspen Music Festival. She is also the winner of the Guitar Player magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award, First Prize winner of the Toronto Guitar 75 competition, and has received numerous other awards. Isbin has appeared as a soloist with over 170 orchestras and has commissioned more concerti than any other guitarist.

She is a multi-Grammy Award-winning artist and has performed for the memorial tribute at Ground Zero, was featured on the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s film “The Departed,” and has performed at the White House by invitation of President Obama and the First Lady. Isbin will speak and perform with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra

Today at noon Clinton School features 30 Years of Main Street Arkansas with Patrice Frey

Posted on by

Main Street ArkThis year marks the 30th anniversary of Main Street Arkansas being created.  To mark that, the Clinton School of Public Service is hosting Patrice Frey.

She is the first President and CEO of the National Main Street Center. The National Main Street Center, Inc. is an extension of the 33-year-old Main Street program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which uses historic preservation as a tool for economic development in downtown and neighborhood commercial districts. More than 2,000 communities have participated in the Main Street program since its inception, leading to more than 235,000 building rehabilitation projects and the creation of nearly 475,000 jobs in those cities and towns.

Since 1984, Main Street Arkansas has been a leading advocate for downtown revitalization providing resources, education and professional assistance to spark life into Arkansas’s traditional commercial areas. Since that time, Main Street Arkansas cities have yielded a net gain of 3,907 jobs, 1,151 new businesses and 1,066 business expansions and relocations into downtown. A total of $145,650,659 in investment has financed 3,272 facade renovations, rehabilitations and new construction projects. The Main Street cities have seen 844 public improvement projects valued at $25,193,767 and 545,536 volunteer hours on Main Street matters.  Main Street Arkansas is a division of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

Patrice Frey is President and CEO of the National Main Street Center, where she oversees the Center’s work, offering technical assistance, research, advocacy, and education and training opportunities for Main Street’s network of approximately 1,100 communities. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the National Main Street Center is a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and has participated in the renewal of more than 2,000 older commercial districts during its 30-year history. Before joining the National Main Street Center in May 2013, Patrice serviced as the Director of Sustainability at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where she oversaw the National Trust’s efforts to promote the reuse and greening of older and historic buildings, including research and policy development work through the Seattle-based Preservation Green Lab.

George Washington Gardened Here – Mount Vernon Horticulturalist speaks at Clinton School tonight

Posted on by

mount vernon nortonTonight at 6pm at Sturgis Hall, Dean Norton, the director of horticulture at Mount Vernon, will give a presentation.

For more than 150 years, people have studied, researched, and dug the earth for clues helping to make the home of George Washington one of the most accurately restored 18th century estates in America. The beauty, the use, and the importance of Mount Vernon’s gardens and landscape will be discussed, as well as preservation over the years with a focus on the most recently restored pleasure garden. Norton’s presentation is an informative and entertaining look at the gardening world of George Washington.

A book signing will follow.

The director of horticulture at Mount Vernon since 1980, Norton calls upon a full-time paid staff of twenty-three and a few volunteers to manage both the fifty-acre parcel open to the public and 450 acres of field and forest. He also supervises the green house and the estate’s livestock operations.

Noon today, the Clinton School and Butler Center’s Legacies & Lunch present Justice Troy Poteete, executive director of the National Trail of Tears Association

Posted on by

PoteeteToday at noon, the Clinton School Speaker Series and the Butler Center’s Legacies & Lunch jointly present a program.  Justice Troy Poteete, executive director of the National Trail of Tears Association will speak at the Ron Robinson Theater.

Troy Poteete was appointed to the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court by Chief Chad Smith in 2007 and is the executive director of the National Trail of Tears Association, an organization he helped found. Justice Poteete also founded the Historical Society in Webbers Falls, Okla., served as executive director of the Cherokee Nation Historical Society, and was a delegate to the Cherokee Nation Constitutional Convention. In 2000, Justice Poteete was appointed executive director of the Arkansas Riverbed Authority, a tribal entity jointly created by the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee Nations to administer their interests in the 96-mile section of the Arkansas River between Muskogee, Okla. and Fort Smith, Ark.

The Trail of Tears was actually several trails.  Little Rock is one of the only cities (if not the only city) that members of all six relocated tribes passed through.  Little Rock’s emerging merchant class benefited from the relocation efforts as the Federal government paid for goods and services in Little Rock.

WAIT UNTIL DARK at Arkansas Rep is focus of Clinton School lunchtime program today

Posted on by

THEREP_WAITUNTILDARK (no credits)-page-001The Arkansas Repertory Theatre works in partnership with the Clinton School of Public Service to participate in the UACS’s Distinguished Speaker Series, hosting educational panel discussions on various Rep productions.

The latest in these takes place today, Thursday, October 23 at 12 noon at Sturgis Hall in Clinton Presidential Park.  It focuses on the Rep’s upcoming production of Wait Until Dark.

Written by Frederick Knott, Wait Until Dark was originally a play which inspired the 1967 Hollywood film of the same name.  The play and film garnered Tony, Golden Globe, and Academy Award nominations. In the story, a sinister con man and two ex-convicts are about to meet their match. They have traced the location of a mysterious doll to the Greenwich Village apartment of Sam Hendrix and his wife, Susy. With murder afoot, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, as Susy discovers the only way to play fair is to play by her rules. A panel of those involved in the production will talk about what it’s like to bring this thrilling production to life.

Join members of the production team as they discuss this chilling play selected for the Halloween season.

Wait Until Dark opens officially on Friday evening and runs through Sunday, November 9.

THE GREAT NEW ORLEANS KIDNAPPING CASE focus of Clinton School lecture this evening

Posted on by

nola kidnapTonight at the Clinton School, a discussion by Michael Ross of his new book, The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case.

An associate professor of History at the University of Maryland. Ross offers the first full account of one of the events that electrified the South at one of the most critical moments in the history of American race relations. The book covers the kidnapping, where two African American women kidnapped seventeen-month-old Mollie Digby in front of her New Orleans home. From the moment it happens through the highly publicized investigation and sensationalized trial that followed, Ross paints a vivid picture of the Reconstruction-era South and the complexities and possibilities that faced the newly integrated society.

Ross’s book also serves as a reminder that a fascination with sensationalized trials is hardly an invention of the last twenty-five years.

The program begins at 6pm at Sturgis Hall.  Following the comments, Ross will sign his book.