Tag Archives: Little Rock Central High School

LANTERNS! this weekend at Wildwood

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LANTERNS! Festival, Arkansas’ only deep-winter outdoor festival, will light up the night at Wildwood Park for a fifth year of family fun and illuminating entertainment! Travel paved paths illuminated with fire pits and thousands of luminaria to enjoy unique entertainment, authentic food and beverages for all ages at eight cultural vistas from around the globe!

LANTERNS! runs from 6pm to 10pm on Friday, February 22 and Saturday, February 23.  On Sunday, February 24 it runs from 6pm to 9pm.

Tickets are available at the gate during festival days:
$10 for Adults
$5 for Children (6-12 years old)
FREE for Children 5 and UnderSHUTTLE service will be provided to and from Kroger Marketplace at Chenal Parkway.This year’s cultural vistas include:

Asia – Asian New Year festivals inspire LANTERNS! Hosted by Northington Investment Group, this vista’s serene Asian Woodland Garden & Pavilion are bedecked with paper lanterns and a traditional Chinese dragon. Sushi rolls, warming teas and sips of Sake beckon patrons to immerse themselves in demonstrations and traditions of Asian culture where families explore Eastern artistic traditions. Discover why it’s the Year of the Snake!

Bavaria – Visit the Park’s beer garden and polka to the sounds of The Itinerant Locals! This lively duo will have you dancing yourself into a pretzel under the full moon. Refresh your palate with German fare beneath the Maibaum and enjoy a lakeside feast for the eyes in the winter woodlands.

The Caribbean Warm up next to the fire pits along the shoreline, enjoy a show by the Park’s famed pirates (Armadillo Rodeo Improv Troupe), walk the plank, and seek your treasure in Pirates Cove.

Greece Travel back in time to the mythical land of ancient Greece where you’ll be greeted by living statues. Don your laurel wreath and help reconstruct ancient glory with vista hostess Christen Bufford and her team from Little Rock Central High School. Try a taste of lighter fare, maybe some Ouzo.

New Orleans Hot jazz continues all night indoors on Bourbon Street, where guests will delight in Cajun fare, signature beverages, and a fortune-telling Voodoo Queen! Thoma Thoma hosts our high-spirited Café du Monde while the kings & queens of this party feast on beignets!

Rio de Janeiro Café Bossa Nova, Vivian Norman and Patti Stanley are teaming up to take you on an adventure to colorful South America! Learn to Samba the night away while dining on exquisite authentic cuisine and sipping on caipirinhas.

Shakespeare’s England Hosted by Elizabeth and Tom Small with performances by the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre, this vista transports you to Elizabethan England, complete with street urchins, fresh-roasted turkey legs, ale and kidfriendly Shakesbeer.

Venice The Park’s iconic Gazebo awaits sailors and ladies with a monumental selection of sweet treats! Commedia dell Arte performances will have you silly with glee! Launch wishing lanterns at the gazebo; your hopes and dreams will glow bright throughout this enchanting evening!

Little Rock Central High Band Marches Today in Inaugural Parade

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LR City Manager Bruce Moore presents a check to LR Central Principal Nancy Rousseau and members of the Central High Tiger Band to help defray their costs to go to 57th Inauguration.

The Little Rock Central High School Tiger Band will be marching today in the Inaugural Parade as part of the 57 Inauguration festivities.

Under the direction of director Brice Evans, the 103 member band was selected to participate in the Inaugural Parade today which will follow the second swearing-in ceremony for Barack Obama.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is what the band will play at the inauguration on Monday, Jan. 21.

Central was the only school in Arkansas chosen to take part at the ceremony, marking the start of President Obama’s second term.

Bands which want to participate in the parade fill out an application online. Central’s application included the honors and awards the band has received. The school also submitted a history of the band and a letter of recommendation from Governor Beebe and Senator Pryor.

They were notified that they were chosen on Dec. 17, which gave them just over a month to raise over $100,000, which include travel expenses, hotel, food, and entertainment.

The band members raised money themselves and a community wide effort also took place.  The City of Little Rock and LR Convention and Visitors Bureau together donated $5,000 toward the goal.  The band achieved the fundraising goal and departed on January 17 by bus for the trip.

 

Little Rock Look Back: Woodrow Wilson Mann

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Future Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann was born on November 13, 1916, in Little Rock.

In 1955, he ran as the Democratic nominee for Mayor of Little Rock and defeated two term incumbent Pratt C. Remmel, a Republican.  He took office in January 1956 and immediately set about to make a lot of changes.  In addition to revitalizing the City’s bus system, and removing some color barriers at City Hall, he oversaw the dismantling of the copper dome on top of Little Rock City Hall (as opposed to the repair of the dome championed by Mayor Remmel).

Mayor Mann was caught up in a grand jury investigation into purchasing practices at City Hall as well as within the City government in North Little Rock.  Partially in response to this, Little Rock voters approved a new form of government in late 1956.  Mayor Mann opposed the switch to the City Manager form and refused to set the election for the new officials but was ultimately compelled to do so.

He was also Mayor during the 1957 integration of Little Rock Central High School.  He sought to keep the peace and to broker a deal between President Dwight Eisenhower and Governor Orval Faubus.  His powers within the city were, no doubt, hampered because of his lame duck status as Mayor.  In November 1957, he chaired his last City Council meeting and left office.

Mayor Mann’s signature on the final City Council minutes of his term.

Because of ill will toward him due to the Central High crisis and grand jury investigation, Mayor Mann felt it would be difficult to maintain his insurance business in Little Rock. He moved to Texas in 1959 and remained there the rest of his life.  He died in Houston on August 6, 2002.

 

Harry Belafonte and the Little Rock Nine

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For the past several years, the Civil Rights Film Festival has presented a film series in conjunction with the commemoration of the September 25, 1957, integration of Little Rock Central High School by the Little Rock Nine.  One of the highlights of this year’s festival will be an appearance by Tony Award winning actor and humanitarian Harry Belafonte tonight.

Though the event is sold out, it is an important event and deserves mention.

Those with tickets will be able to see a screening of Harry Belafonte’s documentary, Sing Your Song: The Music, Hope and Vision of a Man and an Era, guest remarks by Mr. Belafonte; and an awards ceremony to honor both the Little Rock Nine and Belafonte.

Mr. Belafonte was a trailblazer as a theatre and film actor and recording artist.  He broke the color barrier in almost everything he did.  He became the first African American male actor to win a Tony Award for his performance in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.

Here is more about the movie, which is being presented in conjunction with the Little Rock Film Festival.

Sing Your Song (2011) (105 min). Directed by Susanne Rostock. An up close look at a great American, Harry Belafonte. A patriot to the last and a champion for worldwide human rights, Belafonte is one of the truly heroic cultural and political figures of the past 60 years. Told from Harry’s point of view, the film charts his life from a boy born in New York and raised in Jamaica, who returns to Harlem in his early teens where he discovers the American Negro Theater and the magic of performing. From there the film follows Belafonte’s rise from the jazz and folk clubs of Greenwich Village and Harlem to his emergence as a star. However, even as a superstar, the life of a black man in 1960s America was far from easy and Belafonte was confronted with the same Jim Crow laws and prejudices that every other black man, woman and child in America was facing.

Sculpture Vulture: LR Central High Statues

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Today the Sculpture Vulture focuses on the four statues which stand abreast above the entrance to Little Rock Central High School. They have watched over students and faculty for 85 years since the school’s opening in 1927.

They also witnessed the historic integration by the Little Rock Nine on September 25, 1957. The 55th anniversary of those events is being marked this week.

The statues represent Ambition, Personality, Opportunity and Preparation. At the 1927 dedication service Lillian McDermott, then the president of the School Board, claimed that the new school “would stand…for decades to come [as] a public school where Ambition is fired, where Personality is developed, where Opportunity is presented and where Preparation in the solution of life’s problems is begun.”

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Ben Piazza’s THE EXACT AND VERY STRANGE TRUTH

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Seventy-nine years ago today, actor and author Ben Piazza was born in Little Rock.  This is a good opportunity to discuss his 1964 novel The Exact and Very Strange Truth.  Published in 1964, it is a fictional memoir of a young man growing up in Little Rock during the 1940s.

Readers of the book will see references to once-familiar names of stores along Main Street and other Little Rock landmarks of the time.  Though the book is a work of fiction, Piazza based many of the young hero’s sites on his own.  Sadly many of the buildings which play important roles in the novel are no longer extant including the hero’s rock house on 14th Street, Centennial Elementary, Immanuel Baptist Church on Bishop Street, and the family’s shoe repair store at 8th and Main Street .  Little Rock Central High School (then Little Rock High School) is one of the few structures mentioned in the book which is still standing.

Following the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, publishers were looking for the next novel of fictional memoirs set in the American South.  Piazza finished the novel in early 1963 and it was published the next year.  It was met with nice reviews and was later published in paperback.  He dedicated the novel to his good friend Edward Albee; at the time the novel was released he was starring on Broadway in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Though it was Piazza’s only novel, he did later write the plays The Sunday Agreement and Lime Green/Khaki Blue.

The Central Arkansas Library System has a copy of The Exact and Very Strange Truth available for checking out.  Copies are also usually available on eBay and other web-based purchase sites.

Sculpture Vulture: Dee Brown

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20120519-114242.jpg Today the Sculpture Vulture continues with the Arkansas Heritage Month emphasis on sculptures of Arkansans.

Visitors to the Dee Brown Library are greeted by Kevin Kresse’s 2004 sculpture of the celebrated author. The bronze likeness depicts Brown with a bepenciled hand raised to his chin as if in the midst of a wondrous thought while writing. The titles of some of his books surround the pedestal including his most famous book: 1971’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Brown was a graduate of Little Rock High and Arkansas State Teachers College (now Little Rock Central and University of Central Arkansas, respectively). After a career as a librarian and bivocational but prolific author, he returned to Little Rock in 1973 and focused full time on his writing. He died in 2002.