100 YEARS AGO March 17, 1914 HELENA - John Loving, a local saloonkeeper, was given a preliminary hearing before Justice of the Peace James R. Turner this morning on a charge of operating and exhibiting a gambling device. For the last several days there have been three or four gamblers in the city court each morning. Justice King, after imposing a heavy fine in each case for vagrancy, ordered the culprits to either get employment or leave the city. As a consequence the gamblers are making themselves scarce in Helena.
50 YEARS AGO March 17, 1964
The president of Arkansas’ largest Negro voters’ group criticized today a proposed state law to prohibit sit-in or lie-in anti-segregation demonstrations at voting places. I. S. McClinton of Little Rock, president of the Arkansas Democratic Voters Association which claims 12,000 contributing members, accused Gov. Faubus and the legislature of trying to “bury their heads in the sand and hope the (racial) problems will go away.”
25 YEARS AGO March 17, 1989
As he explained a routine appropriation bill, Rep. Jodie Mahony of El Dorado received an unexpected dull roar of applause from behind the back wall of the House chamber Thursday.“Am I doing that good?” he asked with a laugh. The applause wasn’t for Mahony. It came from the secluded “quiet room” where at least one third of the chamber’s 100 lawmakers were watching the University of Arkansas basketball game end. “I’ve got a real important announcement,” piped in acting Speaker of the House Ode Maddox of Oden. “Arkansas, 120, that place in California, 101.” Lawmakers wandered in and out of the exclusive room throughout the day, pouring out only for roll calls.
10 YEARS AGO March 17, 2004
This is the time of year when Michael Brown sees a lot of seasonal basketball fans. “I see them with the sheets, watching the TV,” said Brown, the manager of Legends Sports Bar & Grill in west Little Rock. With the beginning of the NCAA basketball tournament Thursday, the brackets are once again a common sight, not just at Brown’s bar, but just about every workplace in Arkansas. Many are entering pools for charity or just for the fun of it. Others are in it for cold, hard cash, running afoul of the state’s gambling laws and, some experts say, costing their employers millions of dollars in lost productivity. “The law doesn’t make any distinction” between betting pools and other gambling, Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley said.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 03/17/2014