The Arkansas Public Policy Panel advances social and economic justice through respect for human dignity, diversity, empowerment and an inclusive, fair and transparent political process.
The Panel provides hands-on experience in civic participation by helping community groups organize, create infrastructure, set goals and develop action plans to reach those goals.
A Brief History of the Panel
Uploaded by CitizensFirstCongres on 2013-06-17.
In 1963, Sara Murphy led a group of brave mothers to travel our state together, talking with people in churches and civic groups to help them accept school integration and to promote understanding among various ethnic and religious groups. They were the Panel of American Women. They were black, white, Asian American, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. Their message — that they were all mothers who just wanted the best for their children — seems universal today, but it was truly radical in Arkansas at the time. The Panel made over 150 appearances in their first 18 months and spoke with over 28,000 Arkansans.
Lots of people have heard of the Central High Crisis, and the Women’s Emergency Committee was the group that was really focused on reopening the schools in Little Rock after they were shut down. And in 1963, they were reopened and a lot of the women in the Women’s Emergency Committee were justifiably tired and ready to be done with it. It had been a long and pretty bruising campaign for them. But some of the women felt like there were maybe some other issues in other schools across the state having to do with race and diversity and cultural acceptance. And so they formed the Panel of American Women, and they were panels – literal panels – of moms of school-aged kids and they’d have an African-American, a White, a Catholic, Protestant, a Jew and sometimes an Asian-American when she was available. And they would go hold panel discussions all over the state with PTAs or Kiwanis Club or anybody who would visit with them. They had a philosophy of telling their own stories about what it was like to grow up with their particular cultural background and why diversity was important to them and kind of avoided the political, this preaching to you about why your beliefs are wrong or anything like that. But they just told their stories and really believed in developing relationships and listening to communities. And they’d take questions from the audience, and in 1963 in Arkansas, it was really okay to be openly racist or xenophobic or whatever. So they’d get questions like, “Lady, I don’t have a problem with you, but what’s Dr. King doing in the street with all those niggers?” Or, “Do Jews really do blood sacrifices?” We have some-- The women, our founders, have done some great video storytelling of what that was like. They always put a tablecloth over the table and held hands under the table so that they could support one another and not react angrily. And they would take those questions honestly and they’d tell them what Dr. King was doing or what the facts are about the Jewish faith or Protestant faith or Catholics. People forget in the 60s, we were as religiously segregated as we still are, sadly, racially today. That was their work and they did that all over the state. And that eventually led into them helping the state develop the first multicultural curriculum used in the public schools. At one point in time, we had 50 teachers working for us implementing diversity programs across the state in schools. In the 70s, they became more interested in other policy, the women’s movement was happening, other stuff was happening, particularly working on economic policy for women and working on welfare reform way before it was cool. They noticed that the state was doing a really poor job of job training for single moms, and they thought they could do better using some adult education theory instead of treating these adult, single moms like they were eight years old, treat them like they’re adults learning. So they ran a program and their theory was, well if we just run a program and show the state it could be done more effectively, the state will throw their arms open, embrace it and replicate the model. And their model program was very successful, but the state didn’t quite have the same reaction they expected. They met with a lot of resistance and that got them more interested in policy. By the 70s, there were enough men involved that were feeling insecure about the name that we changed the name to the Arkansas Public Policy Panel -- in 1972 when I was two years old.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Panelists shifted their strategy and began working in the schools, helping facilitate integration more directly. The Panel incorporated as a 501(c)(3) and started programs such as Green Circles, working with elementary school children to teach values of diversity. They coached teachers on how to be more aware of cultural differences and avoid discrimination and helped develop the first diversity curriculum in the Little Rock School District.
In 1973, Panel member Brownie W. Ledbetter became the organization’s first Executive Director. Brownie and other Panel leaders became involved with the Women’s Rights movement and broadened the organization’s focus to include equal rights, environmental justice, and fair economic policies. Brownie’s leadership helped sustain the organization for over twenty-five years.
In the 1980s, the organization started focusing more on public policy issues such as civil rights, farm sustainability, consumer education, environmental protection, and tax policy. The Panel tried to initiate major tax reform at the legislature with the help of then Gov. Bill Clinton, but the political will simply wasn’t there and Clinton eventually withdrew support. This setback caused the Panel to rethink its strategy, seeing that attempts at major reforms without an organized base to support them were not likely to succeed.
In 1983, Brownie worked with Bill Becker from the Arkansas AFL-CIO and other grassroots, labor and non-profit leaders to establish the Arkansas Fairness Council (AFC), a coalition of groups that advocated for civil rights and fair tax issues. This coalition would serve as the foundation for what would later become the Arkansas Citizens First Congress.
In 1987, the organization changed its name to the Arkansas Public Policy Panel. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the Panel began developing a uniquely Arkansan organizing strategy focused on local group-autonomy, relationships, flexibility, strategic planning, and networking across issues and geography. The organization would later focus on organizing in low-income rural communities in South Arkansas and other parts of the state.
The Arkansas Citizens First Congress (CFC) was established in 1998 after several years of planning as a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization. Built on the foundation of the Arkansas Fairness Council, this broader and more participatory coalition set out to bring together diverse grassroots groups, non-profits, labor coalitions, environmental activists, and other allies to leverage their numbers and collaborate across issues to help pass better legislation at the Capitol.
Today the Panel organizes groups all over the state, helping them become effective agents of change in their communities and supports the Citizens First Congress, whose 68 member organizations represent 32,000 Arkansans at the Capitol.
Bill Kopsky is the Executive Director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel. APPP is a statewide organization dedicated to achieving social and economic justice by organizing citizen groups around the state, educating and supporting them to be more effective and powerful, and linking them with one another in coalitions and networks.
Thanks to the 2013 Master of Arts in Public History Seminar students at UALR for documenting the Panel's history more completely.You can find their complete report here.