History of Arkansas

The history of Arkansas began millennia ago when humans first crossed into North America. Many tribes used Arkansas as their hunting lands but the main tribe was the Quapaw, who settled in the Arkansas River delta upon moving south from Illinois. Early French explorers gave the territory its name, a corruption of Akansea, which is a phonetic spelling from the Illinois language word for the Quapaw. This phonetic heritage explains why "Arkansas" is pronounced so differently than the U.S. state of "Kansas" even though they share the same spelling.

What began as a rough wilderness inhabited by trappers and hunters became incorporated into the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and later became the Arkansas Territory from 1819 to 1836. Upon gaining statehood on June 15, 1836, Arkansas had begun to prosper under a plantation economy that was heavily reliant on slave labor. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), Arkansas was a poor rural state, whose main economic base revolved around agriculture based chiefly on cotton production. In the late 19th century, the state instituted various Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise and segregate the African American population. This would last until federal legislation was passed in the 1960s. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Arkansas and particularly Little Rock, were major battlegrounds for efforts to integrate schools.