After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, African Americans gained their freedom and the right to vote.

However, the rise of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s and early 1900s led to a period of segregation and discrimination that lasted into the 1960s.

By World War I, there was steady emigration from farms to nearby cities such as Little Rock and Memphis, as well as to St. Louis and Chicago.

Women such as Daisy Bates, who played a significant role in the integration of Little Rock Central High School, and Lottie Shackelford, the first Black woman elected to the Little Rock City Board of Directors, helped to bring about significant change in the state.

Today, Black women in Arkansas continue to face challenges related to systemic racism and discrimination.

[1][2] Reconstruction in Arkansas was the period 1865–1874 when the United States government, using the Army, worked to rebuild the South and tried to ensure that the newly freed slaves were granted equal rights and protections under the law.

When the Union army occupied the state in 1864, Blacks were granted legal freedom, and many began to work towards economic and social independence.

White supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, were active in the state and used violence and intimidation to try to suppress Black voting and political power.

In 1912 Julius Rosenwald, multi-millionaire head of Sears, set up a program to fund black schools across the South.

The famous black educator Booker T. Washington helped Rosenwald design a program that stimulated local support.

The American Missionary Association, a northern Protestant charity, set up numerous schools for freed slaves all across the South starting in the Civil War.

Trouble began on September 30, 1919, when African American sharecroppers in the area met at a church to discuss ways to demand better prices for their cotton crops.

Word of the meeting spread, and local white planters became concerned that the sharecroppers were organizing to demand better wages and working conditions.

[11] The ensuing violence lasted for several days, as white vigilantes and federal troops were brought in to suppress the sharecroppers.

They each volunteered when the state NAACP, led by Daisy Bates, obtained federal court orders to integrate the prestigious Little Rock Central High School in September, 1957.