'Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics': New Book by Tom W. Dillard From University of Arkansas Press

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Book cover of “Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics” and Tom W. Dillard, author.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Tom W. Dillard keeps a list of interesting people in Arkansas. He researches information about these people in his leisure time, which is skimpy, considering his demanding job as head of the special collections department at the University of Arkansas Libraries and his many other obligations to projects and organizations throughout the state as the unofficial advocate of Arkansas history.

Dillard’s list often serves as a starting point for his column, published weekly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which Dillard has written since 2002. Roughly, that’s 350 columns composed of 280,000 words. Seventy-three biographical sketches from that column have been collected in Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans (paper, $22.95), published by the University of Arkansas Press. Called “a series of brilliant profiles of scores of the state’s most interesting people” by Roy Reed, who wrote the foreword, the book’s range is wide — from American Indians, explorers and early settlers to entertainers, business people, politicians, lawyers and artists. All of the sketches are absorbing, and taken together give a fascinating portrait of the diversity of Arkansans.

Dillard says that in writing his biographical sketches, he worked really hard not to choose the predictable, though he feels he has written about many of the prominent people of Arkansas history. He hopes his selections will challenge readers to look beyond stereotypes to reflect on the diversity and extensive breadth of Arkansas history, what he calls “the rhythm and discord of our heritage,” because, he says, “We are a state of contradictions.” Dillard believes that learning about our state’s background can engender a better future. He says, “The more we know, the more we can realize we are a part of the larger fabric of America, and as such should have the same opportunities as people from Connecticut or California or anywhere in between.”

Some sketches were chosen for what Dillard calls their “wow factor,” such as that of Gilbert “Bronco Billy” Anderson, the first American cowboy screen star who had never sat astride a horse until winning the role. Others were chosen because of their influence on Arkansas, both real and imagined, such as that of Norman McLeod, an eccentric Hot Springs photographer and owner of the city’s first large tourist trap, which marketed Arkansans as backwoods hillbillies.

His favorite sketch is that of Scipio A. Jones. It’s his favorite both because Jones was the subject of the first article Dillard published on the topic of Arkansas history back in 1972 and because of Jones’ remarkable life, which spanned a period of great change in Arkansas history, from the end of the Civil War to the second World War. Dillard says admiringly that Jones “fought against the prevailing Jim Crow system in ways both small and major throughout his lifetime.”

Dillard will appear in select locations throughout the state to promote the book. He will be the featured speaker at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ “Legacies at Lunch” at the Darragh Center, Main Library, 100 S. Rock St. in Little Rock at noon April 7. He will speak at the Fayetteville Public Library, 401 W. Mountain St. in Fayetteville at 2 p.m. April 11. He will appear at Books in Bloom Literary Festival at the Crescent Hotel, 75 Prospect Ave. in Eureka Spring on May 16, and at the Fort Smith Public Library, 3201 Rogers Avenue, in Fort Smith at noon May 21.