The 80-Year Silence
Black Political Power in Arkansas, 1868 – Present
scroll to begin
The last Black members of the Arkansas General Assembly
leave office as disfranchisement laws take hold.
Eighty years passed between the last Black member leaving the Arkansas General Assembly and the first returning. In January 1973, four people broke the silence simultaneously — Wilkins, Mays, Townsend, and Jewell, entering together what one person alone had been denied for eight decades.
Explore the Full ArchiveNjila
The Ancestral Pathway
The history preserved here is not a museum exhibit. It is a living record with direct implications for how we understand civic participation, community power, and the work that remains.
Black History Every Month
A 90-minute course that reframes Black American history as a year-round practice, not a February obligation. The Political Leadership Overlay data is woven throughout.
Know Your Roots, Know Your Rights
Your family's history is connected to laws, policies, and legal systems that shaped where they lived, how they worked, and what they were allowed to own. This self-paced course bridges genealogy and advocacy.
Know Your Power: Civic Advocacy for Black Women
Understanding who held power where your ancestors lived is itself an act of advocacy. From Reconstruction to redistricting, from the Voting Rights Act to your next local election.
Join the Map
Every church, school, lodge hall, and cemetery that Black communities built during the silence is a monument to persistence without representation. Help us document what remains.
Explore the Map- U.S. House of Representatives — History, Art & Archives (history.house.gov)
- Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (Harper Perennial, 2014)
- BlackPast.org