Arkansas, state, United States: The Postwar Era

The decline of industrial output after the war was offset by the vigorous efforts of a state development commission formed in 1955 to attract new industry to Arkansas. Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas became a center of national and world attention in 1957 when he resisted the desegregation of public schools in Little Rock (see integration). Arkansas has long been dominated by the Democratic party, but in 1966 Winthrop Rockefeller (see under Rockefeller, John Davison was elected the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction. Although reelected in 1968, Rockefeller lost the governorship to a Democrat, Dale Bumpers, in 1970.

In 1971, Arkansas and Oklahoma joined in the Arkansas River Navigation System, a project that developed the Arkansas River basin to provide water transportation to the Mississippi. In the early 1990s, the Arkansas-based Wal-Mart merchandise chain, founded by Arkansan Sam Walton in 1962 as a small-town discount store, became the largest retailer in the United States. His daughter, Alice, established the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which opened in their hometown of Bentonville in 2011.

Bill Clinton served as the governor of Arkansas (1979–81, 1983–92), before being elected president of the United States in 1992. In the mid- to late 1990s national attention focused on Arkansas as Clinton associates, including Jim Guy Tucker, his successor as governor, were embroiled in Whitewater and other scandals; Tucker resigned following his conviction on fraud charges. Republican Mike Huckabee, the lieutenant governor, became governor, and was reelected in 1998 and 2002. In 2006, Mike Beebe, a Democrat, was elected to the post; he was reelected in 2010. Republican Asa Hutchinson was elected governor in 2014 and reelected in 2018, who pursued a conservative agenda, including limiting abortion rights and instituting work requirements for Medicaid recipients.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• The Postwar Era
• Hard Times
• Reconstruction
• The Civil War
• Early History to Statehood
• Government, Politics, and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures
• Bibliography

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