Three Stamps properties are on the National Register of Historic Places.
One is the former Lafayette County Training School 1046 Berry St., attended by Maya Angelou for several years. Now derelict, the single-story brick structure was built in 1929 with financial help from the Rosenwald Fund. It served Black students until Lafayette County’s schools were integrated in 1969.
First Presbyterian Church at Market and Church streets, gained National Register status in 1996. Built in 1906 during Lafayette County’s timber heyday, the Gothic Revival church was erected for one of the first congregations to form in Stamps. It is one of the few surviving structures from that time, with intricate triple arched windows of stained glass.
Stamps’ third National Register property is the former Gulf Oil Company Filling Station ,131 Main St. Likely dating back to the 1930s, it is painted in Gulf’s colors of white, blue and orange. A single-story brick building, it was listed on the National Register in 2019.
In “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou described the pleasure she gained from strolling to Lake June during her hardscrabble Arkansas childhood in Stamps.
“Each day, I found some time to walk to the pond where people went to catch sun perch and striped bass,” Angelou wrote in her 1969 memoir. “The hours I chose to go were too early or late for fishermen, so I had the area to myself. I stood on the bank of the dark green water, and my thoughts skidded like the water spiders. Now this way, now that, now the other way. … I couldn’t decide on any move, so I recited a few Bible verses and went home.”
That was one of 13 times Angelou mentioned Lake June, which she called “the pond” in the book that first brought her literary renown. Now the lake honors her memory. Its 80 acres south of downtown Stamps abut Dr. Maya Angelou Memorial Park, so named in 2014 and posted on a shoreline sign. The lake was placed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places in 2017.
The sign identifies Stamps, population 1,206, as “The Childhood Home of Dr. Maya Angelou.” Then named Marguerite Johnson, she lived mostly in the Lafayette County community with her loving grandmother, Annie Henderson, from ages 3 to 13.
Angelou worshiped with her grandparents at Brown Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, still standing at 516 Oak Grove Road. The church and its congregation appear frequently in her memoir. Her grandparents are buried in unmarked graves at Lakeside Cemetery No. 2, on a hill near Lake June.
Lumber and legacy
A large mural at the corner of Main and Thomas streets in downtown Stamps features a prominent portrait of Angelou. The outdoor art also shows Lake June, as well as Bodcaw Lumber Co., a major employer in Stamps from 1898 to 1931. At one time, its mills were said to produce the most yellow pine lumber of anywhere in the world.
The needs of Bodcaw Lumber led to the digging of Lake June, one of the oldest man-made lakes in southern Arkansas. It was created in the last decade of the 19th century as a mill pond called simply “the pond.” Its purpose was to allow the transport of logs from offloading trains to the mill. Pushing floating logs across water was much easier than dragging them over dry land.
At its peak, Bodcaw employed about 3,000 workers. After the company closed during the Great Depression, the lake was sold to the city of Stamps in 1943 and became a municipal property given the name Lake June. The city later donated the surface area to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, to be stocked with game fish.
After Lake June’s spillway was damaged by flooding in 2014, its water was drained for a three-year renovation to revive the fish habitats. The lake is said to support healthy populations of channel catfish, largemouth bass, bluegills, redear sunfish and black crappie. The location is also popular for birdwatching.
Extending into the lake near the Angelou memorial sign is a fishing pier. During Angelou’s childhood, there would have been one notable difference from today. In the racially segregated Arkansas of the 1930s, the shore closer to downtown was reserved for white fishermen, with Black fisherman relegated to the farther side. Now anyone can fish anywhere in Lake June.