Arkansas Freedmen of the Frontier - Ft. Smith’s Black History Site~
Judge Parker’s Black Deputy Marshals
Slave Owners 
Ft. Smith, 1860
Arkansas Black Civil War History
Ft. Smith’s Musical Treasure
Alphonso Trent
Afr. Am Deaths and Burials
Ark Black History Links
Ft. Smith History Links
ArkansasFreedmen.com is owned and maintained by Angela Y. Walton-Raji.  Use of material cannot be used without permission.  For information, contact AngelaW859@aol.com. Page Updated January 10, 2010
Ft. Smith Black History Conference

January 30, 2010

Fort Smith, Arkansas

A conference discussing the history of African Americans in Western Arkansas and Indian Territory from early settlement to the Civil Rights Movement will be held at the University of Arkansas- Fort Smith on Jan. 30, 2010 from 8:30am- 5:00 pm.

Angela Walton Raji, native Fort Smith citizen and a Smithsonian lecturer, and main presenter will present four workshops on the 30th of January. Her topics will include a history of  free people of color–the first black citizens of Fort Smith, the Civil War era and the enlistment of Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War from Ft. Smith–particularly  US Colored Troops, the years of Westward expansion during the Judge Parker era, and moving into the 20th century, the community’s adjustment to Jim Crow laws and later integration and the emergence of a New South.

Other topics discussed will be work songs and music, the Bonanza Race Wars, the American Colonization Society, and the Trail of Tears and freedmen issues. Living history portrayals of the area’s more prominent historical figures will be presented.

For more information click on the official conference site.

* * * * * *

Sponsored by HIstorytellers, Clayton House, The Fort Smith Historical Society, the Fort Smith Museum of History, and the University of Arkansas Fort Smith.

This conference is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities and by a grant from the Fort Smith Area Community Foundation.