John A. Kirk, the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will present "Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer, 1912-1956" at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22. This lecture is a continuation of the Pryor Center Presents lecture series hosted by the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Why did Winthrop Rockefeller, the scion of a wealthy and influential New York family, move to an Arkansas mountaintop in the 1950s? Kirk draws upon his deeply researched new book to examine the clues to this mystery, which, he argues, are threaded throughout Rockefeller's New York life. In so doing, Kirk casts a powerful new light on Rockefeller's later Arkansas years, where, in 1966, he was elected the state's first Republican governor in almost a century.

Kirk is the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He taught at the University of Wales and the University of London in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States in the summer of 2010. Kirk served for five years as chair of the U of A Little Rock History Department and for four years as director of the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity. He has authored, edited or co-edited 10 books, published in a wide variety of journals and edited book collections, newspapers and magazines. He has held several grants and fellowships in both Europe and the United States, including as Roosevelt Study Centre Fellow (Middleburg, The Netherlands), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Fellow and Rockefeller Archive Center Scholar-in-Residence.

Pearl's Books will have copies of Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer, 1912-1956 available for sale at the Pryor Center.

This event will be held in person and via Zoom. If you wish to attend virtually, go to the Upcoming Events section on our home page to register with an email address that is associated with a Zoom account. Registration is not required for in-person attendance.

The Pryor Center is located at 1 E. Center St., Suite 120. The event is free and open to the public, and parking is available on the Fayetteville Square.

Upcoming Events: 

Thursday, Feb. 16, 6-7 p.m.
"Continental Reckoning: The American West and Modern America" presented by Dr. Elliot West as part of the Department of History's Kennedy Lecture Series.

About The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History: The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History is an oral history program with the mission to document the history of Arkansas through the collection of spoken memories and visual records, preserve the collection in perpetuity, and connect Arkansans and the world to the collection through the Internet, TV broadcasts, educational programs, and other means. The Pryor Center records audio and video interviews about Arkansas history and culture, collects other organizations' recordings, organizes these recordings into an archive, and provides public access to the archive, primarily through the website at pryorcenter.uark.edu. The Pryor Center is the state's only oral and visual history program with a statewide, seventy-five county mission to collect, preserve, and share audio and moving image recordings of Arkansas history.

About the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with three schools, 16 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the majority of the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the top 3% of U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.