A former Scrapper quarterback, coach and administrator will return Saturday, Feb. 2, to speak at the Scrapper Showdown.
Dr. Tom DeBlack will be back in town for the event, which begins at 6 p.m. in the Nashville High School cafeteria. Tickets are $15 each and will be available at the door.
The Scrapper Showdown is a benefit for the Scrapper Booster Club. Proceeds will be used for all Scrapper and Scrapperette sports.
The Showdown will include a barbecue dinner, games, auction items and DeBlack’s presentation.
DeBlack recently retired after 23 years as a professor of history at Arkansas Tech University. He is a 1969 graduate of Nashville High School and holds a B.A. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas (1973), an M.S.E. from Ouachita Baptist University (1979), and a Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas (1995).
DeBlack played quarterback for the Scrappers. Later, he was a history teacher, coach and administrator at Nashville.Â
He is a past president of the Arkansas Historical Association and the Arkansas Association of College History Teachers and currently serves on the board of the Arkansas Humanities Council.
He is co-author of Arkansas: A Narrative History (University of Arkansas Press, 2002; 2nd edition, 2013), and author of With Fire and Sword: Arkansas 1861-1874 (University of Arkansas Press, 2003).
In 2003 Arkansas: A Narrative History was named the winner of the Arkansas Library Association’s Arkansiana Prize, and With Fire and Sword was named the first winner of the Butler-Remmel Arkansas History Literary Prize.
In 2016 DeBlack published a history of the first hundred years of Arkansas Tech entitled A Century Forward: The Centennial History of Arkansas Tech University.
DeBlack is currently working on a book on Lakeport Plantation in Chicot County and another on the Brooks-Baxter War.
He lives in Conway with his wife Susan, an optometrist, and their 15-year-old daughter, Susannah.Â
