The city is best known as the location of the Elaine massacre of September 30 – October 1, 1919, in which an estimated 237 black people were killed in the rural county by rampaging white mobs.

[5][6] Phillips County was developed in the antebellum years for cotton plantations, which relied on the labor of enslaved African Americans.

Cotton continued to be the major commodity crop into the 20th century in this area but, after the war, blacks often had to work as sharecroppers or tenant farmers.

By the turn of the century, Arkansas and other southern states had disenfranchised most blacks, excluding them from the political system, and imposed Jim Crow laws.

On September 30, 1919, two white men, including a local deputy, tried to break up a meeting of black sharecroppers who were trying to organize a farmers' union.

After a white deputy was killed in a confrontation with guards at the meeting, word spread to town and around the area.

Governor Charles Hillman Brough requested federal troops to stop what was called the Elaine massacre.

White mobs spread throughout the county, killing an estimated 237 blacks before most of the violence was suppressed after October 1.

[7] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.5 square miles (1.3 km2), all land.

Agriculture includes rice production, which uses seasonal migrant laborers from Mexico and Latin America in the town, nearby Lake View, and the Helena area.