Arkansas and the Southwest FINAL

Executive Order 8802

- An order issued by FDR forbidding discrimination of employment by defense industries - Gave an escape route for blacks, one that attracted them to war industries in southern, western, & northern cities & led to what was called the 2nd migration because so many blacks fled elsewhere

Hattie Caraway

- 1st woman to be elected as a senator in the US in 1932 in Arkansas! She was elected to senate during a time period that was experiencing numerous different types of reform movements.

The Agricultural Wheel

- A component of the New Youth that experienced growth & changes. An organization founded by farmers dissatisfied with the state's response to problems in the agricultural sector. Biggest complaint amongst farmers were the middle men who controlled railroads & storage facilities & therefore controlled the profits farmers received for their crops.

Pellagra

- A disease that stemmed from a dietary deficiency (lack of fresh veggies) & led to a variety of debilitating symptoms. It became a big problem in the months after the flood of 1927. Critical issue was the lack of fresh veggies, however planters usually forbade or discouraged tenants & sharecroppers from devoting valuable agricultural acreage to the production of veggies - Health issue forced upon blacks & poor

Sunnyside Plantation

- A plantation with origins in the antebellum period but that was acquired by an eastern financiers who imported Italian laborers to ease a labor shortage in the 1900s-1915. Blacks in Little Rock found safety in numbers but those in the countryside were more isolated & vulnerable, so many left plantations to go to the city where they'd be safe - Imported Italian farmers to use as cheap labor in response to the shortage of black labor

Challenges to the development of business & industry in Arkansas in the late 19th & early 20th century

- Almost all of the money in the state went to farming or was in farming, (only 3% went to/came from manufacturing) - The industries here were extractive ones (mining & timber industries) that were taking the natural resources & wealth out of the state while those who actually worked at the sites were paid little & jobs were really dangerous - Education system was a disaster/nonexistent, half the population of the entire state didn't go to school - Ark. was way behind the rest of the nation in educational systems & learning - People deliberately kept the education system poor & low because most of the wealth in Ark. was in agriculture & sending kids to school meant families lost farmhands - Poor roads & limited railroad tracks made transportation of people & goods more difficult

Alexander Road Improvement Act

- An act passed in 1915 that allowed counties to sell bonds to fund road construction, which led to an explosion of road construction but made it difficult for the state to manage. It further intensified the localized nature of road construction & was passed a decade before the Arkansas Roads Scandal.

Equal Rights Amendment

- An amendment meant to ensure that women had equal rights with men that was passed by congress in 1972 but ultimately failed to secure ratification by the states. - 35 states ratified it, but were 3 short of the necessary three-fourths necessary to make it part of the Constitution - 10 of the 15 states that didn't ratify it were southern states - Shows the gender role barrier in the south compared to the rest of the country

Slavery in Arkansas

- As the plantation culture developed & became the dominant industry in Ark. so too did slaveryHuge growth in population by 1860 (before the war) & a quarter of the population were slaves, wealth was almost entirely in slaves & agriculture. Most people didn't own slaves & those who did had very few, a minority group of slave holders had a large population of slaves - Slaves from around the state leave their plantations to fight with the Union, they move from slaves to freedmen - During slavery they had a place, they were slaves, but with the abolition of slavery they don't know their place - After abolition former slaves moved to towns & cities to find nothing available to them so many returned to the plantations that they were slaves on, so life didn't really change that much - Conscription Laws (the draft) were passed but if you owned 20+ slaves you were exempt, the people who had 20+ slaves were usually the ones passing such laws; so this means the people who wanted to secede from the Union to protect slavery were also the ones who weren't actually doing the fighting

Bauxite

- Bauxite industry was expanding because its a key ingredient for making aluminum, which was becoming increasingly necessary to the transportation, chemical, electrical, & building industries - By the outbreak of WW1, the industry was thriving & the town of Bauxite, a "company" town, had been founded

Impact of WWI on race relations/general changes in race relations post WWI

- Black US soldiers who went to Europe to fight were treated equally by europeans, they were shown respect & treated them normally/equal; this made it hard when they returned to the US & have to face segregation & discrimination again, they didn't want to put up with it - Planters used multiple tactics to cheat black sharecroppers out of profit they were rightfully owed, & cotton was in high demand during WWI meaning higher prices & more pay that sharecroppers should earn - The return of black veterans who were treated equal in Europe & the demand of black sharecroppers - Expansion of the plantation system put black sharecroppers against white tenants, & whites started using violence to drive away black sharecroppers (this violence was called whitecapping, where they attacked blacks, burned their barns, homes, & threatened their families) - Many planters kept their sharecroppers indebted so that they were unable to leave the plantation - Massive black migration out of the south & into northern cities before, during, & after the war

Changes in agriculture in the early twentieth century (20th century is the 1900s)

- Cotton was the cash crop in the early 20th century & planters were used to mass producing cotton to gain the most money, which drove the price of cotton down. People grew whatever crop they wanted it was an unregulated market. Congress passed a series of acts & legislation to promote agricultural education. - Administrations were established to revitalize & control agricultural sector - Promotion of diversification of crops like soybeans - Soybeans required less labor than cotton so thousands of sharecroppers & tenants lost their jobs, planters also got rid of this corrupt system in favor of machines - Mechanization of agriculture made farming operations & practices easier on farmers & their families, so did rural electrification - WWII caused a farm labor shortage that was replaced by Mexican nationals as well as German & Italian prisoners of war, they were used to address the labor shortage - Mechanization along with the use of chemicals, fertilizers, & pesticides increased farm size dramatically & made it a far more capital-intensive enterprise

Economic development in the late 20th century

- Due to our undereducated population, we weren't positioned to to participate in the new economy of the Sunbelt South, a region that witnessed growth of high-tech & the service-sector businesses (businesses that provide goods & services to consumers) - 1970s our agricultural sector thrived due to the escalating crop prices, but in the 1980s would be beaten by the service-sector economy - Agricultural economy severely struggled, while the service-sector economy in NWA experienced a tremendous boom in population & industry thanks to the expansion of the highway system - Population growth of Little Rock, NWA, & other smaller towns was spurred by the development of new economic enterprises in banking, finance, information technology, communications, & medical technology - Walmart opened in small towns often becoming a community's central retail outlet/one stop shop for groceries, tools, everything, etc. - J.B. Hunt Trucking, Tyson, & Walmart employment opportunities made people flock to the region looking for low wage employment opportunities - By the late 20th century Arkansas was much more integrated into the national & international economy

Attitudes of Arkansans towards secession & the Confederacy leading up to & during the Civil War

- During a secession convention popular vote voted to secede but the electoral votes voted to stay with the Union. Many of those who didn't want to secede from the Union didn't want to because Ark. just become a state 14 years ago & the same people who fought for statehood were now forced to fight to secede/remain. - Huge portion of population of Ark. fight in the war - Division in the state between those who refused to support war effort & those who did, pro-unionist & pro-confederate - People in eastern Ark. (the delta) wanted to break away from western & northern Ark.; the delta was were plantation culture was & therefore were almost all of the slaves were - Those who weren't making money from slavery were receiving federally funded economic aid from protection from the Indians

Carrie Nation

- During the progressive era that was a time of reform movement that wanted to use the new innovations to due away with problems in the world like poverty, disease, etc. - Society was basically drunk all the time - She would stand outside of drinking establishments screaming/praying for people to not enter & she'd go into them & smash up the place with a hatchet

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

- Employed single young men & engaged in conservation measures like preventing erosion & planting trees - Developed outdoor parks - Part of FDR's New Deal during the Great Depression - Men were mobilized to build state parks, roads, public buildings, etc. This gave us infrastructure - This program gave people hope & a visible symbol of improvement during the Great Depression

The home front & war "industries" in Arkansas during WWII

- Explosives industry was the main war industry in Ark - Cotton & crops become in high demand to send food & clothes to soldiers - Prisoner of War (POW) Camps pop up, prisoners were mainly Germany; germans usually got along with Arkansans & were treated well, this highlights the issue/significance of race in the South & in Ark. because German prisoners of war were treated better than black US soldiers solely because they were white - Camp Robinson along with other military bases were expanded & developed - Japanese Interment Camps were the most controversial industry that came to the state, it was an order that removed Japanese Americans from cities on the West coast & moved them to more interior states for fear of them communicating with Japan - Women took the brunt of the home front disruption because if they remained at home instead of going to work they were expected to perform a multitude of volunteer actions for the war effort as well as raising the children & maintaining the house - Rationing food products altered nearly every Arkansan's dietary habits - Homefront rationed tires, metal, gas, rubber, & donated money as well as other various items

Brooks-Baxter War

- Fairly sizable battle over the perspective governor (100 people died). Baxter committed voter fraud & won the election. Events followed that would lead to a month long fight with armed militia groups from all over the state. The president had to get involved to end the chaos, & this shows the immaturity & lawlessness of Arkansas at the time. - Liberal republicans wanted less government involvement, didn't want the federal government to enforce the protection of freed blacks - Baxter was a democrat & him becoming governor marks the end of reconstruction - Baxter lifts constrictions on confederates that prevented them voting, they were now able to vote for the first time since before the Civil War

Agricultural Extension

- Greatly expanded the scope of agricultural education - Helped address the agricultural crisis in the 1920s - Used federal funds to supply farm agents to agricultural counties to educate them on crop rotation, diversification, & other farming practices - Agents were hesitant to challenge controversial matters because it would endanger their reception among planters - Played a major role in helping facilitate the acceptance of the AAA that helped revitalize the country's agricultural sector

Hoxie Desegregation

- Hoxie School Board decided to integrate & the first couple of days were fine, nothing bad happened nobody flipped their shit - Life magazine decided to do a pictorial feature demonstrating peaceful integration in the south & chose Hoxie Arkansas as their prime example, using a picture of black & white children arm-in-arms - The pictures pissed off white segregationists & a group of white segregationists flocked to the area to protest/challenge the school board on campus - The people that protested were mostly from other towns - The governor declined to intervene to protect the board against the crowd, this shows the hesitance of the governor to promote integration

Dyess Colony

- Part of FDR's New Deal during the Great Depression - Was displayed as a model for small nicely kept towns/communities for middle class settlement that were self sustaining agricultural community - Photos of the neat rows of clean houses with smiling farmers & wives use to discuss the unrest that existed there

Race and politics during Reconstruction

- Political Reconstruction: create new governments for the states & figure out how the states fit in with the rest of US - Need to figure out how to structure society & figure out the place for the freedmen - Theres a push for industrialization to provide jobs - Abe Lincoln wanted to make it easy for the southern states to rejoin the Union but nobody else did, his assassination was bad news for the south because rejoining would be more difficult now - If 10% of people who voted in previous presidential election signed an oath of loyalty to the Union then the state could reenter - Andrew Johnson took over after Lincoln assassination & he was racist & wanted to punish southerns - Some wanted northern businesses to go to the south - Some wanted to confiscate land in the south & redistribute to give land to former slaves - 13th amendment abolished slavery but it didn't say what would happen to the former slaves - We were seeing political changes but it also looked like the people who used to have power before the war were going to regain it after - Sharecropping becomes the dominant labor system after the war, large landowners before the war tended to remain the large landowners after & now they need labor to tend to their crops so they rent out plots of their land

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

- Put people to work in a variety of jobs but worked in concert with local communities to locate projects there - Built buildings like some of the buildings on campus (Ozark Hall) - Secured cooperation of the state's most prominent citizens - Put people to work on building roads, digging drainage ditches, & erecting public buildings - A New Deal program that provided infrastructure

Successes & failures relating to desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement

- Schools in Fayetteville & Charleston integrated peacefully & without any controversy - The passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 & the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that made it illegal for businesses to discriminate based on race as well as illegal to refuse the right to vote based on race - Most schools in the Delta finally integrated when court orders threatened to withdrawal federal funds to schools defying integration - Rather than just integrating the school, Faubus (governor) closed the school for an entire year, leaving many students both white & black unable to attend school for a year - The Central High crisis tainted the state's image & more subtle strategies for maintaining segregation emerged - Integration of public schools drove a lot of white people out of the city & into the suburbs where they opened up private schools that would eventually shift the demographics of students in the public school system, where blacks became the majority & whites became the minority but the majority in private schools; this supported the growth of suburbs outside of Little Rock & instead in Pulaski County

Changes in attitude toward the government during the Great Depression

- Some Arkansans rejected several programs from FDR's New Deal because they wanted power of the government to rest at the lowest level possible - Arkansas had a shitstorm of disasters going on: emergence of the KKK, legacy of Elaine Race Riot, highly publicized lynchings, & 2 huge natural disasters caused Arkansans to turn to the federal government to solve its problems (moves away from the progressive commitment) - State government instituted constitutional amendments that severely restricted its taxing & spending powers - Arkansas greatly relied on federal relief during the 1927 flood that devastated the state - FERA, AAA, & WPA poured money into the economy & employed thousands of Arkansans - AAA helped revitalize & control the agricultural economy & help it become more productive & profitable - Arkansas turned away from the desire for state government to control them & shifted to the reliance & Acceptance of the federal government

Busing

- The integration of public schools spurred a white flight movement as many white people moved out of the city to suburbs and opened private schools - It was a way to end/address racial segregation in schools & promote integration by putting students (mainly black) on buses & transporting them to schools miles away - Eroded neighborhood cohesion in black & white communities & placed added burden on kids moving to unfamiliar locations.

Daisy Bates

- The most famous of Arkansas activists in the postwar period & was actively involved in the attempts to bring desegregation to Little Rock. Her & her husband owned a black newspaper in Little Rock which they used to write editorials covering a wide range of issues that blacks faced

Mechanical Cotton Harvester

- Was a response to the labor shortage during WWII when mechanization provided a way to make up for the shortage - Labor shortage during war played a major role in the mechanization of agriculture - Dramatically reduced the need for farm labor - Marked a transition to capital-intensive agriculture

Thomas Hindman

-Lead the regiment of confederate soldiers in the Battle of Prairie Grove which resulted in a demoralizing defeat for the Confederates. Believed in slavery & that the protection of slavery was the central political issue of the day. Was super enthusiastic about the Civil War & told Arkansans to burn their crops & everything that the Union soldiers might be able to use

Elaine Twelve

12 innocent black men who were sentenced to death for their involvement in the Elaine Race Riot in 1919 but were released later released. They were condemned to death largely on the basis of coerced testimony in trials that lasted only minutes. Illustrated that the vision of a New Arkansas didn't include blacks, which were a large portion of the states population. Represents the fact that at the time whites couldn't comprehend equality, they felt like blacks would overpower them & do to them what the whites did to blacks

Winthrop Rockefeller

A New Yorker who moved to Arkansas and was elected governor. He brought more moderate views to social issues like race & captured 90% of the black vote. He wanted to reform the state's prison system which was terrible & also wanted to reform the educational system to attract industry. During his term blacks made significant gains.

Convict-Lease System

A system that victimized the poor of both blacks & white because conditions in convict camps were primitive & brutal. Majority were black & because of this it gained the reputation for imposing "slavery by another name"

Fracking

An extractive industry that is the process of injecting water mixed w/ chemicals into the earth to extract trapped deposits of oil or natural gas. It resulted in new revenue for the state but caused many environmental concerns because some people associate fracking with causing earthquakes

SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

An organization who sent people into Arkansas to promote integration of public facilities & eventually voting rights mainly in the Delta. They peacefully boycotted businesses that discriminated against blacks. Their work drove the civil rights movement within Arkansas & in the south as a whole & helped put pressure on Congress to end segregation & disfranchisement

Flood of 1927

The greatest natural disaster to hit the state since the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. For the 1st time in a natural disaster the radio was used to coordinate rescue efforts & airplanes were used to locate refugees. Without the communication & technological advances of the day, the death toll could have been much higher than it was.

Powell Clayton

Union officer who remained in Ark. after the Civil War. He was considered by many Arkansas Confederates to be the best Union officer west of the Mississippi River & became governor after the war. He wanted to essentially put the state back together by ending the widespread violence, protecting the rights of newly freed black Arkansans, to rebuild/restructure the economy, & establish a lasting Republican Party