The long Independence Day weekend gives us time to contemplate the state of our country after 250 years. For those who specialize in writing about Arkansas, it’s also a chance to think about the state of the state.
We have a large number of talented historians for such a small state, and few are as good at what they do as Ben Johnson of El Dorado. He has given deep thought to major changes in the state since 1960. Among his list of key developments:
The growth of northwest Arkansas: “The 21st-century population boom in the urban corridor stretching from Fayetteville to Bentonville is among the most explosive in the nation and is accompanied by growth of per capita incomes that match national levels,” Johnson says. “The state as a whole continues to fall below these benchmarks. Until this surge in the state’s northwest corner, Arkansas had only one city (or really a big town). Little Rock was the political and financial center of the state.
“The economies in northwest Arkansas weren’t dependent upon the overall well-being of the state. They became hubs for international corporations that, in turn, were magnets for people.”
A corresponding development has been the steady loss of population in rural Arkansas.
“The hollowing out of rural Arkansas, which had its origins in World War II, accelerated in the new century,” Johnson says. “The number of counties in the state losing population outnumbered those making gains by the third decade of the 21st century. Even with this exodus, Arkansas in the most recent census ranked high in the percentage of rural population while poverty remained concentrated in rural counties.”
The new political regime from 1966-2010: “This development was aligned with the administration of a series of governors (Republican Winthrop Rockefeller to Democrat Mike Beebe) whose goals, policies and issues broke with a previous 20th-century regime characterized by corruption, personality and faction,” Johnson says. “This political shift was based on the overhaul of the dominant Democratic Party, which shed its resistance to civil rights, antipathy toward federal programs and reluctance to raise revenue to expand public services.
“In addition to the influences of governors, the political class changed as a whole. The Reynolds v. Sims decision of 1964, which required legislative districts to be roughly equal in population (one person, one vote), was transformational. In Arkansas, the effect of this U.S. Supreme Court decision became evident with the arrival in 1971 of a new generation of legislators. They represented growing urban centers rather than decaying rural areas.”
Court decisions led to the election of multiple Black state representatives and senators for the first time since the late 1800s.
“The governors wouldn’t have been able to notch the legislative victories that boosted their reputations without this reconstruction of the General Assembly,” Johnson says. “We probably wouldn’t have had a president from Arkansas without these changes.”
The corresponding development was the rise of the Republican Party in Arkansas beginning with the 2010 elections.
“Democratic hegemony was replaced by Republican hegemony,” Johnson says. “The outlines of this system are evolving, but an emphasis on slashing income taxes and subsidizing private interests to provide public services contrasts with Democratic objectives. We will learn more when state government is faced with replacing federal funds that underwrote countless state programs. From the latter half of the 20th century to the present era, Arkansas has depended upon this external revenue to provide public services comparable with other states.”
Race, power and opportunity: “Citizen activism, court decisions and new political leaders dismantled the Jim Crow system of segregation that permeated all aspects of society before 1960,” Johnson says. “The march toward full integration was hindered by actions of public officials and business interests. In the wake of the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis, the city’s school districts nominally desegregated. But students continued to sit in overwhelmingly single-race classrooms throughout the 1960s.
“Neighborhoods where Black and white families lived in proximity disappeared as real estate practices hardened residential segregation. Judicial rulings in the early 1970s compelled school districts throughout the state to fulfill the 1954 Brown decision from the U.S. Supreme Court and end all vestiges of a racially divided education. In Little Rock, the integration of public schools corresponded with rising private school enrollments.”
In response to the outlawing of the poll tax and a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Arkansas removed restrictions that had prevented Blacks from voting. Civil rights activists endured beatings and arrests to register large numbers of Black voters in east Arkansas during the 1960s and early 1970s.
“African American voter registrations rose 25 percent from 1964-69,” Johnson says. “Black support of reform candidates, beginning with Rockefeller, reshaped politics and government. Despite rising Black political participation, Arkansas is the only one of the former Confederate states to have not elected Black candidates to statewide office or Congress in the modern era. African Americans do hold elected positions in municipal governments, reflecting a changing demographic pattern.
“Black Arkansans are more likely than whites to live in urban centers, a notable change from the historic pattern of rural poverty and labor in cotton fields. Blacks left that old world for a new one. Gains in Black family income in the 21st century were tied to an overall rise in the number of college graduates.”
Arkansas becomes the leading rice producer in the United States: Arkansas still devotes almost three times as many acres to soybeans as to rice, but rice surpassed cotton, the crop that dominated the Arkansas economy during the 19th century and first half of the 20th century.
“Rice production began in the early 20th century but trailed soybeans and cotton until the mid-1970s,” Johnson says. “A 1975 measure lifted federal restrictions on the number of farmers allowed to grow rice. Planted acreage went from 442,000 acres in 1972 to more than a million acres annually. A congressman who represented the Delta once proclaimed that removing the rice limits created more wealth in Arkansas than any other event in the history of the state. That was perhaps an exaggeration, but the state’s rise to leading rice producer bolstered the Arkansas economy.
“Agriculture was historically the central economic engine in the state, and an infusion of profits and government payments linked to rice meant agriculture retained a larger presence in Arkansas than in most states. The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture reported that agriculture’s share of the state’s economy was 2.2 times greater than for the southeastern United States and 2.8 times greater than the nation as a whole. The scale of the agricultural sector in the state meant that Arkansas’ economy rose and fell based on whether the sector prospered.”
Now, we have an agricultural crisis. Crop prices are low, and input prices are high. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have almost destroyed the soybean industry (Arkansas farmers plant more than three million acres of soybeans each year), rice acreage is believed to have fallen below a million acres this year, and cotton acreage is near a record low.
These developments on the farm come at the same time that Gov. Sarah Sanders’ school voucher scheme is particularly hurting rural school districts. Meanwhile, rural hospitals are having severe financial struggles.
The question going forward is how wide the gap will become between Arkansas’ urban areas and its rural areas. We’ve become two states within a state, and that gap is growing wider by the day.
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.