This issue of Arkansas Review is guest-edited by members of the Arkansisters Project: A Delta Initiative for the Heritage, Health, and Human Rights of Women and Girls. The Arkansisters Proj- ect represents a collaboration spearheaded by Ar- kansas State University’s Heritage Studies PhD Program and the Delta Population Health Institute of New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University. The Arkansisters Project advocates for the health and well-being of women and girls through- out the Arkansas Delta through education, com- munity engagement, policy development, research, writing, preservation, archival activity, and cultural and artistic expression and programming. Our transdisciplinary approach integrates population health and public policy, as well as the humanities, social sciences, and arts, for the express purpose of challenging and addressing the impediments to health, human rights, and social justice currently and historically experienced by women and girls in this region. Typically, when people think of health, they refer to care received in clinical and hospital set- tings. While access to health care is vital in a com- munity, a substantial amount of data shows that the significant drivers of “health outcomes” are the conditions where we live, learn, work, play, and worship, commonly referred to as the social deter- minants of health. The study of population health underlines the health disparities among multiple populations categorized by race/ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, geography (rural vs urban), and disability, to name a few examples. Painfully, the Mississippi Delta region registers the most significant health disparities in the United States. To date, Arkansas has the highest mortality in mothers and infants and is one of the lowest- ranked states in heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity. Our region also has one of the highest con- centrations of poverty and food-insecure homes. These challenges are not new or accidental but due to centuries of institutionalized, legalized, discrim- inatory injustices. The cost of lives due to health disparities calls for equity among the social factors that significantly drive health outcomes. According to the Robert Johnson Foundation, “Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as pov- erty, discrimination, and their consequences, in- cluding powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care.” Despite harrowing challenges in the Delta, as we learn from historian Cherisse Jones-Branch in the groundbreaking study, Better Living by Their Own Bootstraps: Black Women’s Activism in Rural Ar- kansas, 1914–1965, and in her essay in this issue, courageous women in Arkansas have long exercised their agency and power to educate, innovate, create, build on community assets, and mobilize for jus- tice, equity, health, and wholeness. As Jones-Branch and each of the contributors to this volume insist, the self-help initiatives of so many women in our communities, past and present, are vital to the heal- ing of inter-generational trauma that impacts the health and well-being of Delta communities. Like the women whose life stories of resistance to social injustices fill these pages, we must all embrace our roles as healers in our own communities. With gratitude to Donna Shelton, as project manager and lead editor, and to the entire team of Heritage Studies doctoral students who helped to bring this issue of Arkansas Review into existence (Shobhi Kandasamy, Faisal Mohammed, Swity Sul- tana Monni, Corrina Neal, and Abigail Wilson), we join you on the all-important journey toward health equity and wholeness for all.

Lucy C. Barnhouse received her PhD from Fordham University in 2017, and has been Assistant Professor of History at Arkansas State University since Fall 2020, having held visiting positions at the College of Wooster and Wartburg College. Her recent work in- cludes Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland: Houses of God, Places for the Sick, and, co- edited with Winston Black, Beyond Cadfael: Medieval Medicine and Medical Medievalisms.

Patricia L. Griffen, PhD is founder and CEO of Clin- ical Psychology Services, Inc. of Little Rock where she maintains a private practice providing clinical services to an adult population. Dr. Griffen is one of the charter members of the Arkansas Association of Black Psychology Professionals and previously served as the organization’s president.

Jennifer Hadlock, MSW/JD is a community organ- izer, genealogist, and movement lawyer. She learned about the Elaine Massacre of 1919 as a Board member of the Fund for Reparations Now!! and was sub- sequently invited by the Elaine Legacy Center to re- search land ownership and theft in Phillips County, Arkansas, and to document the oral histories of Black descendants of the Elaine Massacre.

Gregory Hansen is Professor of Folklore and English at Arkansas State University, where he also teaches in the Heritage Studies PhD Program. He is the author of A Florida Fiddler: The Life and Times of Richard Sea- man, and his publications focus on roots music, folk-

lore and language, and public folklore.

Dawn Herd-Clark, PhD, is Assistant Professor of His- tory at Hillsborough Community College, where she teaches African American and United States History. Her research specialty is on rural African American Georgians.

Dr. Cherisse Jones-Branch is Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of History at Arkansas State University-Jonesboro. She received her BA and MA from the College of Charleston, and a doctorate in History from The Ohio State University. Dr. Jones- Branch is the author of Crossing the Line: Women and Interracial Activism in South Carolina during and after World War II and the co-editor of Arkansas Women: Their Lives and Times. A second manuscript, Better Liv- ing By Their Own Bootstraps: Black Women’s Activism in Rural Arkansas, 1913–1965, is now available from the U of Arkansas P. Jones-Branch is currently working on a third book project titled “. . . To Make the Farm Bureau Stronger and Better for All the People”: Afri- can Americans and the American Farm Bureau Fed- eration: 1920–1966. She is also the co-editor of the newly created “Rural Black Studies” series for the U of Arkansas P.

Shobhithan Kandasamy is a PhD candidate in Her- itage Studies researching heritage tourism, rural studies, women’s heritage, and economic develop- ment. Originally from Sri Lanka, Shobhithan now lives in Arkansas where he is completing his doctoral studies at Arkansas State University. He works as a Project Specialist for The Oxford American Literary Project. Shobhithan is an original member of the Ar- kansisters Project.

Guy Lancaster currently is the editor of the online En- cyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkan- sas Library System (CALS) and the author of a number of books on race and violence, including American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching (U of Arkansas P, 2021).

Brookshield Laurent, DO is an osteopathic family medicine physician. She is a fellow of the American Osteopathic Association Health Policy Fellowship. She is the founding chairwoman for the Department of Clinical Medicine at NYITCOM at Arkansas State University and the founding executive director for the Delta Population Health Institute, the community en- gagement arm of NYITCOM at A-State. Dr. Laurent is a leader in driving health equity in population health, and leads in innovation and advancement in medical education, professional development, and in- tegrative multi-sector community engagement.

Loretta McGregor is Professor of Psychology at Arkan- sas State University. Dr. McGregor has written numer- ous articles and book chapters. She is also one of the foremost scholars on the life and works of Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark.

Faisal Mohammed (he/him) is a doctoral student in Heritage Studies at Arkansas State University. Origi- nating from Ghana, he received his master's degree in Cultural Heritage Studies from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, as well as a master's degree in Cultural Anthropology from four consor- tium universities: the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Szeged in Hungary, the University of Auvergne in France, and the Roehampton University in the United Kingdom. His field of interest integrates Cultural Anthropology, Performance, and Heritage Studies to interrogate ap- proaches for fostering community resilience and sus- tainable heritage promotion in rural and underserved communities. Faisal is an original member of the Ar- kansisters Project.

Swity Sultana Monni, a native of Bangladesh, is a PhD candidate in the Heritage Studies program at Arkan- sas State University. Monni’s research examines women’s health and human rights, with a focus on self-help activism, especially as it relates to women in rural areas aiming to improve economic opportuni- ties. Swity is an original member of the Arkansisters Project.

Wendy Onek earned a BA in History from Arkansas State University, where she currently is a student in the Heritage Studies PhD Program. A native of Bos-

ton, she has lived in Jonesboro, Arkansas, for most of the past decade.

Lisa Perry is Executive Director of Research Solutions Inc. and adjunct faculty at Southern New Hampshire University. She is author of Reimagining Camelot: Wheelwright, Kentucky in Memory and Folklore, Images of America: Floyd County, and numerous articles and book chapters related to labor history and African American history. She holds undergraduate degrees in Mining Engineering Technology and Management, MA degrees in History and Heritage Studies, and a PhD in Heritage Studies from Arkansas State Univer- sity.

Ann Robinson has published in Atlanta Review, Amer- ican Literary Review, Connecticut Review, Interim, Jelly- bucket, Nimrod, Tampa Review, and Zone 3, among others. She studied under Miller Williams in the Uni- versity of Arkansas MFA program. Retired from the Marin Superior Courts, she owns a small farming op- eration with her sister in Arkansas, her native state. She travels between California and Arkansas several times a year.

Kristen Ruccio is Director of First Year Writing and Assistant Professor of English at Arkansas State Uni- versity. In her very limited spare time, she loves cro- cheting and cooking vegan food.

Edward Salo is Associate Professor of History and As- sociate Director of the Arkansas State University Her- itage Studies PhD Program. His research centers on military history, historic preservation, and the cultural history of comic books. Before coming to A-State, Dr. Salo spent fourteen years as a historian supporting cul- tural resources management projects around the world.

Virginia Siegel, Professor of Practice, directs Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts, a statewide program of the University of Arkansas Special Collections Division. She holds an MA in Folk Studies from Western Ken- tucky University and a BFA in Historic Preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design.

Donna L. Shelton is currently pursuing a PhD in Her- itage Studies at Arkansas State University. Her areas of interest are the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta, the American South, and the Reconstruction and post- Reconstruction eras especially in regard to underrep- resented populations. Her current research focus is on the all-African American community of her ancestors, Garrett Grove, Arkansas, and women’s activism in the Arkansas Delta. She holds a Master of Arts in Public History and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Donna is a member of the Arkansisters Project.

Essie Trice-Hewett is a retired educator, case manager, and service coordinator. She was instrumental in rec- ognition of her mother by Lee County in 2022 when they renamed the road by their homestead “Gertha Bailey Trice Road” in honor of her community activ- ism. Hewett and her siblings set up a scholarship at Lee Senior High School in honor of their mother. The scholarships are awarded to deserving students annually to attend their alma mater, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). She holds a bachelor's degree from UAPB.

Lauri Umansky is Professor of History and Director of the Heritage Studies PhD Program at Arkansas State University. Her books include Motherhood Recon- ceived: Feminism and the Legacies of the Sixties, Naked Is the Best Disguise (pseud. Lauri Lewin), “Bad” Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America, Im- possible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s, The New Disability History: American Perspectives, and others. Her latest book, Águila: The Vision, Life, Death, and Re- birth of a Two-Spirit Shaman in the Ozark Mountains, co- authored with María Cristina Moroles, will be published by U of Arkansas P in February 2024.

Lauren Adams Willette is the Folk Arts Survey Co- ordinator at Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts, a statewide public folklore program of the University of Arkansas Libraries. Willette is a Heritage Studies PhD candidate at Arkansas State University.