“Grace and Grit: A 50-Year Retrospective of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Years in Arkansas”

Fifty years ago, Hillary Rodham moved to Arkansas. In the 18 years that followed, she would marry Bill Clinton, teach aspiring lawyers, serve as Arkansas’s first lady, practice law, become a mother, and work with everyone she could to build a better Arkansas. 

Join us on Friday, April 12 at 6 p.m., for “Grace and Grit: A 50-Year Retrospective of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Years in Arkansas,” which will explore her experience settling in Arkansas and the profound impact she made in the state.

Register here to attend the program in person at the Clinton Presidential Center or to tune in live online.

The program will feature excerpts from a forthcoming oral history that Secretary Clinton recorded in 2019 with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. Dr. John C. Davis, University of Arkansas professor and executive director of the Pryor Center, and Dr. Angie Maxwell, University of Arkansas professor and director of the Diane Blair Center for Southern Politics and Society, will moderate the program and reflect on Secretary Clinton’s Arkansas years and her lasting impact on the state. 

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Dr. John C. Davis serves as executive director of the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas’s Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. He is an associate teaching professor in the Fulbright College’s department of political science.

Before joining the Pryor Center, Davis served on the faculty at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. In 2022, Davis completed a five-year gubernatorial appointment to the Arkansas Rural Development Commission, where he served as vice chair. He has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and other publications on state politics.

An eighth-generation Arkansan, Davis is a graduate of the Delta Regional Authority Delta Leadership Institute and Harvard Kennedy School of Government Authentic Leadership programs. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of Arkansas and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

Dr. Angie Maxwell holds the Diane Blair Endowed Chair in Southern Studies and is a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, where she all serves as the Director of the Diane Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society.

Maxwell is a Truman Scholar who received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas. Her research and commentary have been featured in Henry Louis Gates’ Reconstruction on PBS, on MSNBC’s “The Reid Report” and “The Cycle,” and on NPR’s Here & Now. Maxwell is the author of The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019) and The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness (UNC, 2014).

This program is presented by the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Presidential Library, and the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History.