|
Cossatot Community College |
“Trail of Tears” Presents $3000 Check to
CCCUA Foundation
04 August 2004
DE QUEEN – The De Queen Rotary Club’s weekly meeting Monday was the scene of a program about the Trail of Tears-Corridor West organization and the presentation of a $3000 check to the CCCUA Foundation by the organization’s leader, Carl Davis. CCCUA Chancellor Frank Adams accepted the check, which supports the Charley Jones Indian Scholarship Fund, on behalf of the Foundation. Davis said that Jones once told him, “Education is everything,” so the organization thought creating a scholarship in his honor would be an appropriate gesture. Jones’s son Billy attended as a representative of the Jones family.
Checks will also be presented in the amount of $500 from the Trail of Tears organization to the De Queen Police and Fire Departments in a ceremony at City Hall on Thursday. Davis noted that these checks were being presented because of the support the organization has received from the police and fire departments during the Pow-Wows and other events held at De Queen.
Davis’s Rotary program centered on describing the organization’s activities, particularly its recent Car Show to raise money for the scholarship fund. He also spoke at length about the late Charley Jones, a Choctaw tribal leader in whose memory a hospital is being built in Idabel.
Material supplied by the organization states that De Queen was the last camp for members of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes during the “Trail of Tears” removal conducted by the U.S. Government in the 1830’s. The Trail of Tears-Corridor West organization was formed in 2000 to recognize that event, and to promote a better understanding of the culture, history and challenges facing the area’s Native American population.
Trail of Tears spokesperson Jerri Lynn Rivers said that area public schools have incorporated Native American studies in their curricula, and that the Sevier County Historical Society Museum will mount an exhibit dealing with Native American crafts, art and habitat displays assembled by school students during Hoo-Rah Days, set for October 8 and 9 at Herman Dierks Park in De Queen.
Cossatot Community College offers both technical certification
and Associate’s degrees in a wide range of fields on its campus at De
Queen, at extension sites at Nashville and Ashdown, and at cccua.edu. It has
an enrollment of more than 1,100 students, and is accredited by the Higher
Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
- 30 -