The Arkansas Historical Association at its recent annual conference presented five of the ten awards given by AHA to local or county historical journals to the Pulaski County Historical Review. The awards were based on the content of 2008 journal issues.

The Review itself received two awards: one as the “Best County or Local Journal” and the second as the publication with the “Best Graphics.” Three articles published in the Review received individual awards. Grif Stockley’s “The Negro Boys Industrial School Fire: A Holistic Approach to History” was selected as the “Best Article” to appear in a county or local journal during the past year. Stockley’s article was selected earlier by the Society for the Peg Smith-Mary Worthen award as the best article in the Review during the past year. Bob Razer received AHA’s award for “Best Biography” in a county or local journal for “Joe T. Robinson: The New Deal’s Majority Leader, 1933-1937” an article in the Review’s New Deal anniversary theme issue last December. Shirley Schuette’s article, “’The land is good’: One Immigrant’s View of Territorial Arkansas, the Klingelhoeffer Letter of 1834” received the “Best Edited Document” award.

The editorial staff and authors of the winning articles are grateful to the Arkansas Historical Association for the honors. The editor and Review readers are grateful to those who contribute material to the Society’s quarterly journal for it is those efforts that make the Review the quality publication it is, and has been through the years.

The Historic Arkansas Museum has opened a new permanent exhibit, “We Walk in Two Worlds: The Caddo, Osage and Quapaw in Arkansas.” The exhibit is a partnership among the Arkansas museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, and the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw tribes.

The exhibit represents two years of planning and uses research, Native American narration, and display of nearly 160 objects to tell the story of Arkansas’ first residents – the Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw – from prehistory to the present day. Six thematic approaches are used to tell this important part of Arkansas’ and Pulaski County’s history.

If your mailing label this issue has a check mark on it, this means you have not paid your 2009 dues and this will be the last Society mailing you receive. The Society needs each and every member to continue our important work on behalf of Pulaski County history and our efforts to inform residents of all ages about that history. Send us your dues and remain a part of that endeavor.