Conversations with West Memphis: A sense of place and heritage.

摘要

When Crittenden Memorial Hospital opened in 1951, it was the first hospital in Arkansas to be constructed with Hill-Burton funds. Using various sources I wanted to investigate why the hospital had been built in this small but growing city. Well into this research, however, circumstance unfolded that precluded access to hospital documents and records.;As the analysis of the hospital ended I expanded the project to address the larger community of West Memphis. I investigated the impact of the hospital upon the locals' sense of place and heritage and sought to ascertain whether the racial tolerance implied by the newspaper coverage of the hospital was a city-wide phenomenon or an anomaly. For this purpose another institution founded at approximately the same time was utilized as a comparison study; the West Memphis Police Department.;As the project continued it became apparent that there was an under utilized technique available, that of collected memory. This approach focuses on the collection of individual memories in oral stories and personal recollections. Thus, the individual, not the group, becomes the building block of history.;Setting out to compare the collective and collected history of CMH to that of the West Memphis Police Department; my aim was to prove, or disprove, the theory that West Memphians during the mid-twentieth century were more racially moderate than current research concerning the Arkansas Delta would suggest. City Leaders, while not necessarily racially tolerant, did not reject realistic accommodations simply to maintain rigid segregation.;Using collected stories as relayed in a conversational style, this work seeks to provide a sense of West Memphis which transcends the purely chronological history, creating a deeper understanding of the city, its people and its importance to the history and heritage of the Arkansas Delta. By combing the oral narratives with maps and visual images it is possible to explore the sense of place of those who lived or worked in the city. While the resulting work is certainly not a comprehensive history of the city, it creates a sense of West Memphis' heritage as seen through the eyes of its people during the mid-twentieth century.