My Name is Jacque De La Roe.

Hello, my name is Jacque De La Roe. I am a hunble gentleman from the fine country of France. I have traveled to your country for a reason. That being, as all of you well know, my country things of you are warriors. My country doesn't care much for Americans because of the way you think, the way you go on with life. Since the war in Iraq had began, my country had taken your offer for support in the war and through it back in your faces. In return, you show your innorance by renaming foods in attempt to hurt our feeling. Freedom fries, freedom toast, freedom dipped rolls. How mature!

So i am here in the states to show my country, that you are not all about hate and war. I am hear to find out about your past. To find history about how your counrty came to be, the hardships you endored, and the ways you over came those hardships. For the next year, I will be in your country, and when the year is over, I will return home and send my report to the government in hopes to allow them to warm up to your American ways.

My first stop is Little Rock, AR. Little Rock just so happens to be located in the center of a state called Arkansas. Now, even though some Spanish fellow beat us to the area in 1541, Little Rock, or La Petite Roche, was named by a Frenchman named Bernard de la Harpe in 1722. An area largely populated by Native people called the Quapaws. These people would eventually be forced out to surrounding areas for the access to the Arkansas River and its land. In 1812, a settler named William Lewis became the first white settler to locate to Little Rock. 7 years later, Little Rock became the capital of the Arkansas Territory, and then 17 years after that, Arkansas became the 25th state.

Being a slave state at the time, the state found its self a confederate state in the Civil War in 1861, with action during the Brooks-Baxter War, in Little Rock, in 1864. After the war, there was still so tension with blacks for years to come. In 1957, some unwanted attention was brought to the area when, Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus and the Arkansas National Guard tried to stop the integration of a local high school. The President got wind of the goings on and sent trrops to the area to protect those who needed it. To this day, marks can be found all through the landscape, but better times did come.

It really wasn't until, William Jefferson Clinton was elected as your President in 1992, that the focus of the city, turned more towards the birthblace of a president, than a location of past conflicts. Mr Clinton had also become the youngest Governor in state's history prior to his presidency. But he too had to stick his nose into Iraq, but for a diffenent reason I suppose. This president of yours would help bring light to a tunnel, that the city needed, never once forgetting his roots. Accepting the presidency on the steps of the Old State House in 1992, and celebrating his reelection in 1996 on its balcony.

I have now decided to move on to another area of the country. It seems that Little Rock, was a little bit of a dissappointment to me, but it is not me you need to impress. It is a beautiful city, that has gone through its ups and downs. May I wish this fair city a goodbye.

Jacque De La Roe - Le Petite Roche - Little Rock, AR