The Rest is History
/Jamie Simmons became a preeminent Texarkana historian by chance
By Ellen Orr
photo by shane darby.
Jamie Simmons, who has been a public historian and museum director for more than three decades, entered into her career by accident.
“My academic advisor said, ‘It’s time to get you an internship,’” Jamie recounted. As a student at Ouachita Baptist University planning to pursue commercial art, Jamie was hoping to intern at an art museum, where she could perhaps design marketing pieces like logos and advertisements. However, her advisor failed to find any opportunities for Jamie in Arkadelphia, or in Jamie’s hometown of Magnolia—but then, she had an epiphany. “She said, ‘Oh, wait a minute: I think there’s a place in Texarkana,’” Jamie recalled. “And she was thinking of TRAHC [the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council], but the number she got was for the history museum.”
Velvet Cool and Jamie Simmons standing outside the Museum of Regional History (the historic Offenhauser building) in 2021. photo by alamond photography.
The Texarkana Museum of Regional History was, in fact, looking for a paid intern. Jamie, who double majored in history and art, jumped at the chance. “That was my entry to the Texarkana Museums System,” she said, “and I didn’t leave for 30 years.”
Working at the TMS proved a wonderful outlet for Jamie’s lifelong passion for history. Even at a young age, she appreciated stories of bygone times.
“I’ve always loved history—always,” she said. “Some of my earliest memories are of my mother’s parents. My grandfather had muscular dystrophy, so he always had to be sitting down somewhere. He would sit up on the porch and watch us all play, and incidentally, I had dozens of cousins, so it was always a big group of kids. But I used to like to sit up there on the porch with him. He would just talk about family stuff, history, things from when he was a kid, and I just ate it up.”
“It’s just been amazing working downtown for 30-plus years.”
Jamie was born in Hope but raised in Magnolia from a young age. As a teenager, she was passionate about creating art and even worked at the foregone Smitty’s Grocery from 15 to 19, creating advertising materials. She intended to be an art teacher after studying at Magnolia’s own Southern Arkansas University. However, two chance encounters changed her course.
The first was when she stumbled into the wrong panel discussion at a college fair. The presenters, from Ouachita Baptist University, were speaking on music. Jamie was rapt. “I’m not even musically inclined,” she said, “but the speakers were so amazing that I just stayed.” She had a gut feeling that OBU was the place for her. She was so sure that she worked full-time for a year between high school and college so that she could afford to attend the private university.
The second event occurred during that gap year, when Jamie ran into her former high school art teacher at the Magnolia Blossom Festival, where she shared her own career plans of becoming an art teacher.
“She said, ‘Oh no,’” Jamie recalled. “And I said, ‘Why not? Was it horrible? Were we terrible to you?’ I was kind of shocked, because she was an excellent teacher. We all loved her. She said, ‘It’s not because of that; it’s because you come across as a child. [Students are] not going to listen to you.’ Of course, it doesn’t happen to me now—I have gray hair and a grandma vibe—but back then, I always looked a little bit younger and came across a little less mature than I actually was. And I was short—not even five feet tall. She said, ‘You have to be able to look down at a child to get them to respect you. That’s not going to work for you.’” With that, her dream of teaching was dashed.
While taking all of the art and history classes she could, Jamie headed first toward a career in advertising. Then, steered by her academic advisor, who worried that working for an advertising firm might “suck the life out of [her] soul,” she considered a career as a brand specialist. During her happenstance internship at the TMS, she realized that her art background would serve her well in any number of careers—including, thankfully, that of public historian.
Jamie outside the p.j. ahern home. Photo by shane darby.
“There are so many ways you can leverage art education in other careers, which I didn’t realize at the time,” she said. “My art major has really paid off when designing exhibits and visually telling stories.”
When Jamie’s internship ended, she accepted a full-time job as museum assistant. She later became the curator for the Texarkana Museums System. Over her 30 years there, she learned from first-person accounts, historical documents, physical artifacts, and written histories about the history of this community, from the era of the Caddo to present day. She shared this knowledge with the public through exhibits, tours, talks, and special events.
One of Jamie’s favorite exhibits was a crowd-pleaser: in the early 1990s, they displayed wedding dresses from different eras in the Ace of Clubs House. The oldest dress was from 1879.
“That was so much fun, and that was one of our most engaging exhibits,” she said. “We had people who had never set foot in the museum coming just to see that wedding dress exhibit. That exemplified to me what public history could do—these gorgeous dresses that we were able to share with the public drew them into a space they’d never been in before, a space that had a bigger history that they were able to learn about and become interested in. I think people who aren’t naturally interested in history assume it’s going to be boring no matter what—until you show them that it’s not.”
Another notable exhibit was less popular but undoubtedly more important.
“This was around 2000, and the concept was ‘the journey toward the Civil Rights Movement in the context of Texarkana,’” Jamie said. “Texarkana was formed in 1873, during the Reconstruction Era, so a large part of the population was formerly enslaved people who were moving from other areas to find work in this new town. The exhibit followed those stories up through the Civil Rights Movement in Texarkana. We were able to talk to people in the community and use their oral histories to create sound bites for the exhibit.” And, thanks to the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project of the 1930s and ‘40s, the museum had access to recordings and transcripts of interviews with formerly enslaved people local to Texarkana. Part of the exhibit covered the attempts to desegregate Texarkana College in the 1950s and ‘60s, with dramatic photos: young Black students surrounded by white protesters with vulgar signs.
“We got anonymous threatening calls saying, ‘You don’t need to be rehashing any of this,’ ‘This doesn’t need to be brought up now,’ blah, blah, blah,” Jamie recounted. “And I’m like, ‘This is exactly why it needs to be brought up.’ That really was an eye-opener to me and reinforced why public history is so important.
“The people who have power don’t want certain stories to be told, so they try to brush them under the carpet,” she continued. “Public history is where you can prevent that from happening. You have the broader picture, and you have personal stories. Those personal stories show the human cost, and that can be uplifting, and that can be tragic. But regardless, that’s why the stories need to be told.”
Jamie received the W. L. Cook Award for Excellence in Heritage Preservation at the 2024 Arkansas Preservation Awards. photo by stephanie dunn king photography.
Two years ago, Jamie left the TMS and began working at the Nevada County Depot and Museum in Prescott, Arkansas, where she acts as curator. This role includes managing 800 acres of the Prairie D’Ane, a blackland prairie and Civil War battlefield.
“That’s a treat,” she said. “I’ve never managed that kind of site before, so I’m learning new things again.”
Jamie also works at Main Street Texarkana, which keeps her tied professionally and personally to the place she knows and loves so well.
“It’s just been amazing working downtown for 30-plus years,” she said. “I came in the early ‘90s, when Broad Street was on its last leg. Comparing what [downtown] was then to what it is now—oh my, the positive change that has happened, and it’s still ongoing. It’s amazing to be part of that in some small way, to help that continue.”