News Releases

First Tuesdays Poetry Night will honor the late Nikki Giovanni on January 7, 2025.

Author and historian Taylor Branch will speak as part of the NPS Speaker Series on Saturday, January 18, 2025, at 11:00 a.m. CST in Little Rock. The event, a partner program hosted at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, will highlight Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lasting impact on American society.

Dr. Johnson-Dias will inspire attendees with insights on raising purposeful and resilient children while energizing the parental role in community engagement.

Phyllis Brown is a lifelong advocate for equality and justice. Educated in Little Rock’s segregated public schools, she went on to earn a B.S. in Mass Communication from Southern Illinois University. A former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Brown has dedicated her life to social activism, education, and the arts, using her voice to speak truth to power. Phyllis’s sister, Minnijean Brown Trickey, is one of the Little Rock Nine.

The program will examine the catalysts behind the Elaine Massacre of 1919, providing detailed accounts of the events and exploring how and why knowledge of the massacre was suppressed. It will also highlight primary sources to educate attendees about the racialized violence of the Red Summer, offering a forum to discuss the massacre’s lasting impact on our national history.

Wair, a courageous member of the historic Little Rock Nine, played a pivotal role in desegregating Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

Dr. Sybil Jordan Hampton, lifelong educator, social justice foot soldier, and the first three-year African American graduate of Little Rock Central High School in 1962, will present "A Conversation on Desegregation at Central High School after the Crisis" on Saturday, October 26, 2024.

Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize and National Humanities Medal-winner, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, will join Superintendent Robin White of Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site for a special evening as part of the 67th anniversary events commemorating the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

By embracing diverse voices, the program aims to expand perspectives and create opportunities for exploration and growth.

The conversation will explore the need to confront difficult history, ensure inclusive narratives, engage communities in preservation, and raise public awareness of the lives and contributions of enslaved people.