Lambet Hayes – FIRST BLACK ENLISTEE AT CAMP PIKE
The first black enlistee showed up unannounced at Camp Pike on September 7, 1917.
Lambert Hayes, a Black turpentine worker of Magee, Mississippi, reported for duty.
His presence surprised the command post, unaware that any Black volunteers would number among the earliest troops at Camp Pike.
Officers from the command’s reserve corps, nevertheless, welcomed Hayes and he was “quartered” in a building at the camp.
Just two days earlier, an advanced guard of men began registering in the 87th Division for training to prepare for some 40,000 draftees and enlistees
soon to follow.
Tracy Nieser wrote in the Fall 1993 issue of the Pulaski County Historical Review that Hayes “made three statements: he was a drafted man, he
came to enlist, and he was hungry.”
Hayes apparently came on his own accord and paid his own way to join the Army, Nieser said, citing the Camp Pike Gazette, published in the Arkansas
Gazette on page 3, September 8, 1917.
1918 Influenza Outbreak
A little more than a century ago, Camp Pike was the epicenter of the Spanish flu in Arkansas. North Little Rock and Little Rock were hit hard by the respiratory illness, with reports of up to 200 new cases a day by early October 1918. By mid-October some 13,000 men at Camp Pike and about one-third of Missouri Pacific Railroad’s workforce and their families had the flu.
No reliable medication or immunization was available. Camp Pike, along with schools, churches, theaters, and lodges were closed and store hours cut back. A
statewide quarantine was ordered on October 7. Dr. J.C. Geiger of the Public Health Service, who himself caught the flu and lost his wife Florence in the
epidemic, coined a slogan: “Cover up each cough and sneeze; if you don’t you’ll spread the disease.”
Geiger also cautioned against people spitting on sidewalks and encouraged the police to arrest those who did. He advised rest, fresh air, avoiding crowds, and
staying home and calling the doctor if not feeling well. Physicians, nurses, and other hospital workers were on the front lines. According to the Arkansas Gazette on October 16, 1918, some physicians in North Little Rock and Little Rock were traveling up to 300 miles a day treating patients. Dr. William M. Burns went door-to-door throughout North Little Rock.
The epidemic tapered off by the end of October 1918 to around 20 new cases a day, but it had overwhelmed the Camp Pike hospital and Owens Funeral Home,
which had a contract with the Army to bury the dead soldiers. During a four-day period in October, the Camp Pike hospital admitted 8,000. One eyewitness
described “double rows of cots” in every corridor.
Nine embalmers and 25 truck drivers sent by the federal government assisted Owens. Evelyn K. Eubank, the late North Little Rock historian, said bodies were
stacked into the funeral home’s hearse and taken to the Third Street School at Third and Poplar streets for embalming and shipping.
The Spanish flu, so named because the first reports of it came from Spain, killed far more people than World War I. Estimates of flu deaths range between 20
million and 50 million worldwide from 1918 through 1920. The United States experienced about 675,000 flu deaths and Arkansas about 7,000. A majority of
those sickened by the flu were young to middle-age adults, enhanced no doubt by the close quarters prevalent at military bases and on ships, trains, and in staging areas. Camp Pike alone had 446 deaths by June 30, 1919.