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Return to First Page ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 32(Winter 1973) p.371
thorny thicket of Arkansas history, Mr. Atkinson had a special reputation all his own as "Mr. Arkansas History,'" wrote Dr. Walter L. Brown, secretary of the Arkansas Historical Association, in a letter of tribute published in the Arkansas Gazette.
Few of his friends had any extensive knowledge of Mr. Atkinson's personal history. In 1965, he had served on the advisory board of Arkansas Lives, a reference edition recording the biographies of contemporary leaders in Arkansas with special emphasis on their achievements in making it one of America's greatest states, written by Dr. John L. Ferguson, State Historian, who supplied a copy of Mr. Atkinson's biography which was approved by Mr. Atkinson himself, and follows:
ATKINSON, JAMES HARRIS, retired educator, historian, and member of the advisory board of Arkansas Lives, 210 Palm Street, Little Rock. A native of College Hill in Columbia County, Arkansas, he is of English, Scottish, and Irish descent, the son of Samuel W. and Gracy Ella (Finley) Atkinson, and was born June 7, 1888. He attended rural grade and high schools in Magnolia, Waldo, and Bodcaw, Arkansas, was graduated from the University of Arkansas with the B.A. degree and earned the M.A. degree at the University of Chicago. He married the former Miss Zora Lee Langston of Lee County, Arkansas, on July 28, 1920. A rural school teacher in Hempstead County in 1908-09, Mr. Atkinson was located in Nashville and Foreman, Arkansas as High School Principal between 1910 and 1916 when he joined the faculty at Little Rock High School at Instructor in History, as post he held until 1919. The School Superintendent in Wilmont, Arkansas, from 1919 until 1923, he was Head of the History Department at Little Rock Senior High School from 1923 until 1927, and he served as Head of the Department of History and Economics at Little Rock University from 1927 until his retirement in 1957, after fifty consecutive years of teaching. In addition to managing real estate, Mr. Atkinson has devoted his retirement years to History, serving as Editor of the Pulaski County Historical Review between 1957 and 1963, and to writing feature stories for local newspapers. The