Reconstruction
1863-1877
Three Elements
1. Political
2. Economic
3. Social
Three Phases
1. Presidential Reconstruction Lincoln 1863-’65
2. Presidential Reconstruction Johnson ‘65-’67
3. Congressional (Radical) Reconstruction ‘67-’77
Lincoln’s 10% Plan
A state can be re-admitted if
10% of those who voted in 1860
pledge loyalty to the Union.
Isaac Murphy
Arkansas governor
1864-1868
Andrew Johnson, 17th President
Trial of Andrew Johnson
Ku Klux Klan
1868
First buildings at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville ; 1872
Old Main was the first permanent building on the Arkansas
Industrial University campus. Its exterior was finished in 1875.
It is the only building built in the 19th century still standing.
Elisha Baxter
governor 1872-1874
Joseph Brooks
Brooks-Baxter War
Battle of Palarm, a skirmish of the Brooks-Baxter War in 1874. Pictured is the
Baxter steamboat Hallie, which was captured by Brooks’s forces on the Arkansas
River near the mouth of Palarm Creek. (Painting by James M. Fortenbury)
“Lady Baxter,” a Civil War–era sixty-four-pound cannon used by the backers of
Elisha Baxter during the Brooks-Baxter War. The cannon is displayed at the Old
State House in Little Rock
• Five Generations of an
African-American Family,
1862.
Interior View of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond.
(Harper's Weekly, June 27, 1874)
Sharecropping in the South, 1880
Children of sharecropper, near West Memphis, Arkansas, 1935.
Sharecropper’s
child suffering
from rickets and
malnutrition
Photo by Arthur
Rothstein, Aug., 1935
• William Fishback
• “The Great
Repudiator”
Judge Isaac C. Parker, circa 1875.
Populism
1870s-1890s
Agrarian revolt
or
The rise of the angry farmer
THE AGRICULTURAL WHEEL
Come all ye sunburnt sons of toil,
Arise from thine oppression;
'Tis true we till the stubborn soil,
But a highway to progression,
Which enemies cannot conceal,
Is opened by this mighty Wheel.
Come, Let us join our hearts and hands,
And set this Wheel a-going;
Perhaps 'twill roll to other lands,
Its seeds of fortunate sowing,
'Till all the world its power may feel,
And let's bless the Agriculture Wheel.
Heed not the idle words of those
Who would our march to freedom stay.
They get their money, food and clothes
From us who labor day by day;
And if they could, I guess they'd steal
The power and glory of the Wheel.
• Black leaders from Helena around 1880. Seated center
with hat is A. H. Miller, former slave turned businessman
and state representative. Standing far right in the back
row is J. T. White, founder of Second Baptist Church and
veteran state legislator.
Mifflin Gibbs of Little Rock
First black municipal judge in U.S. history
• Black Arkansas legislators (B. F. Adair, George W. Bell
and S. H. Dawson) featured in an 1891 issues of the
Freeman, a national African-American publication.
African-American Population distribution in 1890
Jeff Davis
• Governor, 1901-1907
• Senator, 1907-1913
George Donaghey
governor, 1909-1913
Arkansas’s first
Progressive governor
• State capitol
• Initiative and referendum
• Education
• Ended convict lease
House chamber
Senate chamber
Old Supreme Court Chamber
Joseph Taylor Robinson
governor, 1913
senator, 1913-1937
Dem. Candidate for
vice-president, 1928
• Charles Brough
governor, 1917-1921
Some Notable Arkansas Women
Carrie Nation
leader in Prohibition Movement
She would march into a bar and
sing and pray, while smashing bar
fixtures and bottles with a hatchet.
Between 1900 and 1910, she was
arrested some 30 times for
"hatchetations," as she called
them. Nation paid her jail fines
from lecture-tour fees and sales of
souvenir hatchets. Later in life, she
lived in Eureka Springs.
Ida Jo
Brooks
Leader in Education and
Medicine
Elaine Race Riot, 1919
Scipio Jones
Thomas McRae
governor, 1921-1925
Three ongoing issues in
state government, 1920s-today
1. Roads
2. Schools
3. Taxes
• John E. Martineau
governor 1927-1928
Conservative victories in the
Culture Wars of the 1920s
• Prohibition
• Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
• Anti-evolution
• Two Natural Disasters
– Flood of 1927
– Drought of 1930
• One Man-Made Disaster
– The Great Depression
Flood of 1927
Harvey Parnell
governor, 1928-1933
Drought of 1930 and
“England Food Riot”
• Junius Futrell
governor, 1933-1937
Cotton hoers loading at Memphis, Tennessee for the day's work in Arkansas. June 1937.
Ozark family in Depression
• Ozark family home
Sharecropper’s family in
Washington County, Arkansas
Boone Co., Arkansas
• Negroes waiting for food in the Forrest City,
Arkansas, concentration camp; 1937
• Evicted sharecroppers
Franklin D. Roosevelt
and the New Deal
• FDIC
• AAA
• CCC – Devil’s Den; Petit
Jean
• CWA and WPA
• REA
• Social Security
Devil’s Den State Park
• Dedication of University of Arkansas
stadium; built by WPA in 1938
1934
• CCC; planting trees
Jerome Relocation Camp
1942, Osceola, Arkansas
Figure 1. Machine Harvested Cotton as a Percentage of the Total Cotton Crop,
Arkansas, California, South Carolina, and U.S. Average, 1949-1972
Sidney McMath
gov. 1949-53
Harry Truman and Sid McMath
September 23,
1957
Who's Who in the Central High School Crisis
Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba
Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Carlotta Walls: The
nine black students who were able to attend Central High School.
Daisy Bates: President of the Arkansas NAACP and coordinator of the plan to enroll nine
black students at Central High.
Virgil T. Blossom: Superintendent of Little Rock's public schools since 1953 and chief
architect of the system's gradual desegregation plan.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: president of the United States
Orval E. Faubus: Governor of Arkansas, serving the second of his six two-year terms.
Amis Guthridge: Lawyer of strongly segregationist views and a leader of the Capital
Citizens Council of Little Rock.
Brooks Hays: Democratic congressman, considered a racial moderate, who tried to
mediate between Eisenhower and Faubus.
Jim Johnson: Loser of the 1956 Democratic gubernatorial primary as an outspoken
segregationist, to be elected in 1958 as an associate justice of the Arkansas
Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall: NAACP chief counsel.
1997 - Daisy Bates, Governor Mike Huckabee, Mayor Jim Dailey, and
the Principal of Central High.
• J. William Fulbright
1939-1942 president of Univ. of Ark.
1943-1945, U.S. congressman
1945-1974, U.S. senator from
Arkansas
– 1943 Fulbright Resolution,
putting the House on record as
favoring U.S. participation in U.N.
– 1946 Fulbright Program,
establishing an educational
exchange program for scholars
between the U. S. and foreign
countries.
– 1959-1974, chairman of Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
– Critic of Vietnam War
December 2, 1966
Dale Bumpers
• Governor, 1971-1975
• Senator, 1975-1999
David Pryor
• Governor, 1975-1979
• Senator, 1979-1997
• Father of Mark Pryor
Bill Clinton
• Governor 1979-1981
&1983-1992
• President 1993-2001
Bill Clinton
• Frank White
Jim Guy Tucker
Governor, 1993-1996
Mike Huckabee, 1996-2007
Gov. Mike Beebe
Sen. Blanche Lincoln
Sen. Mark Pryor
• Population today is 2.75 million
• Racially, Arkansas is:
– 79% White non-Hispanic
– 16% Black
– 3% Hispanic
– 1% Asian
Growth in Sun Belt, 1940-1980
Arkansas’s Workforce
Total workforce 1,330,000
32% Services (includes health care, teaching, repair)
24% wholesale or retail trade
22% manufacturing
7% percent in transportation or public utilities
5% percent in construction
4% percent in finance, insurance, or real estate
4% government
1% farming, forestry, or fishing
Only 5% of the state’s workers are members of a union.
Religion in Arkansas
• Christian – 86%
– Protestant – 78%
•
•
•
•
•
•
Baptist – 39%
Methodist – 9%
Pentecostal – 6%
Churches of Christ – 6%
Assemblies of God – 3%
Other Protestant – 15%
– Roman Catholic – 7%
– Other Christian – 1%
• Other Religions – <1%
• Non-Religious – 14%