The War at Home

About

The War at Home brings together some of the state’s leading historians to examine the connections between Arkansas and World War I. These essays explore how historical entities and important events such as Camp Pike, the Little Rock Picric Acid Plant, and the Elaine Race Massacre were related to the conflict as they investigate the issues of gender, race, and public health. This collection sheds new light on the ways that Arkansas participated in the war as well as the ways the war affected Arkansas then and still does today.

Supported by the Old State House Museum, a museum of the Arkansas Department of Heritage.

Mark Christ interviewed by Kyle Kellams at KUAF: A Century Apart, Arkansas in 2020 Bears Striking Resemblance to Arkansas in 1919

Editor

Mark K. Christ is a program director at the Central Arkansas Library System who has worked in historic preservation in Arkansas for nearly three decades. He is the editor or coeditor of many books, including Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas and I Do Wish This Cruel War Was Over: First-Person Accounts of Civil War Arkansas.

Contents

Shawn Fisher – Arkansas and the Great War: Southern Soldiers Fight for a National Victory

Elizabeth Griffin Hill – Arkansas’s Women and the Great War

Carl G. Drexler – Gearing Up Over Here for “Over There”: Manufacturing in Arkansas during World War I

Cherisse Jones-Branch – “Fighting, Protesting, and Organizing”: African Americans in World War I Arkansas

Raymond D. Screws – “To Carry Forward the Training Program”: Camp Pike in the Great War and the Legacy of the Post

Brian K. Mitchell – Soldiers and Veterans at the Elaine Race Massacre

Thomas A. DeBlack – Epidemic!: The Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 and Its Legacy for Arkansas

Jeannie M. Whayne – World War I and Woman’s Suffrage in Arkansas

Roger Pauly – Paris to Pearl in Print: Arkansas’s Experience of the March from the Armistice to the Second World War through the Newspaper Media

Reviews

“While many retrospectives highlight the diplomatic and military aspects of the ‘War to End All Wars,’ this one wisely focuses on the home front, in a state that was 80 percent rural in 1918. The War at Home is inclusive in its content, paying special attention not only to military enlistments and industrial mobilization but also to women, common laborers, and African Americans during a time of rapid social, economic, and racial transformation. The authors, all of whom are prominent historians of Arkansas’s past, present a cohesive and compelling story that links the World War I experience to the present.”
—Marian Elizabeth Strobel, The Journal of Southern History, February 2022

“Christ explains that the contributors wish to ‘encourage new research into the events of World War I,’ and there are good reasons to think they could succeed. Each of the chapters draws from key secondary literature while carefully analyzing an impressive range of primary sources, as in Roger Pauly’s examination of state newspapers after the Armistice. This means that the next generation of scholars will benefit from a number of critical leads. Moreover, the text is remarkably accessible, a rare feat for an academic anthology, and lay readers and undergraduates may find themselves engrossed in the stories and foundational histories. Finally, the book leaves a great deal of space for new scholarship.”
—J. Laurence Hare, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Spring 2021

Praise

“Mark Christ has assembled a cadre of first-rate historians who address a whole range of topics in these interesting essays on the impact of World War I on Arkansas.”
—Tom Dillard, Arkansas history columnist and former president of the Arkansas Historical Association

Media