The Clinton Presidential Center, an impressive 30-acre complex, sits along the banks of the Arkansas River at the eastern end of Little Rock’s Riverfront Park.

Johnny Cash, the Man in Black was raised in a little white house on Farm No. 266 in Dyess Colony, a New Deal resettlement community in the Arkansas Delta.

New Deal oil on canvas mural commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for the Pocahontas, AR Post Office.

As unlikely as it seems, Arkansas became the unwilling home of two of these War Relocation Centers. The only internment camps south of the Mason-Dixon line and deep into Jim Crow territory, one was built at Rohwer, the other at Jerome.

My first reaction was one of panic. Wide-open and desolate, I felt completely exposed, vulnerable. Except for an occasional car and the rumbling of a freight train, there was nothing for miles.

Memphis Mural Rendevous Alley by Brandon Marshall.

Climb aboard a yellow (reproduction) electric-trolley for an hour-long tour of Little Rock’s Rivermarket district and North Little Rock’s Argenta district.

New Deal oil on canvas mural commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for the Lake Village, AR Post Office.