Arkansas is a state in the South Central region of the United States. Its name is from the Osage language, a Dhegiha Siouan language, and referred to their relatives, the Quapaw people.
Previously part of French Louisiana and the Louisiana Purchase, the Territory of Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836. Much of the Delta had been developed for cotton plantations, and landowners there largely depended on enslaved African Americans’ labor. In 1861, Arkansas seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. On returning to the Union in 1868, Arkansas continued to suffer economically, due to its overreliance on the large-scale plantation economy. Cotton remained the leading commodity crop, and the cotton market declined. Because farmers and businessmen did not diversify and there was little industrial investment, the state fell behind in economic opportunity. In the late 19th century, the state instituted various Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise and segregate the African-American population. During the 1950s, during the civil rights movement, Arkansas and particularly Little Rock were major battlegrounds for efforts to integrate schools.
White interests dominated Arkansas’s politics, with disfranchisement of African Americans and refusal to reapportion the legislature. Only after the civil rights movement and federal intervention were more African Americans able to vote. The Supreme Court overturned rural domination in the South and other states that had refused to reapportion their state legislatures or retained rules based on geographic districts. In the landmark ruling of one man, one vote, it held that states had to organize their legislatures by districts that held approximately equal populations, and that these had to be redefined as necessary after each decade’s census.
After World War II, Arkansas began to diversify its economy and see prosperity. During the 1960s, the state became the base of the Walmart corporation, the world’s largest retailer.