[4] Lazarist missionaries from Saint Mary's of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville, Missouri had started arriving in Arkansas in 1824 to minister to Native American converts and European settlers.

In 1894, Fitzgerald dedicated the first church in Arkansas for African-Americans at Pine Bluff, where the diocese had previously established an industrial school for that group.

In 1906, Pope Pius X named John B. Morris of the Diocese of Nashville as coadjutor bishop to assist Fitzgerald.

[14] In 1911, Morris founded St. John Home Missions Seminary at Little Rock College; he considered it as his greatest accomplishment.

[16] Morris erected separate parishes for African Americans in El Dorado, Fort Smith, Helena, Hot Springs, Lake Village, Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Pine Bluff;[16] Morris also opened an African-American orphanage at Pine Bluff.

[16] Morris was confronted with a resurgence of anti-Catholicism early in his tenure, and during World War I many German American Catholics and German-speaking priests in Arkansas found themselves under suspicion.

[17] Morris, who was strongly patriotic and sold bonds during the war, helped mitigate such bigotry through his friendship with Arkansas Governor Joseph Robinson.

He was a staunch advocate of racial desegregation, supporting the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Fletcher reprimanded Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus for attempting to prevent court-ordered racial desegregation at Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

Fletcher closed St. John Seminary in Little Rock in 1967 after some of its faculty publicly questioned the church's stance on birth control and papal infallibility.

[22] He established an anti-abortion office in the diocesan curia and led the annual March for Life each January in Little Rock.

He reached out to other denominations in Arkansas throughout his tenure, and once assisted in promoting a Billy Graham crusade at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in 1989.

Pope John Paul II in 2000 named J. Peter Sartain of the Diocese of Memphis as the next bishop of Little Rock.

As of 2023, the current bishop of the Diocese of Tulsa is Anthony B. Taylor, named by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.

[27][28] Following the issuance of Pope Francis's July 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes, Taylor announced that the diocese would no long offer the Tridentine Mass at its parishes.

[29] In September 2018, the Diocese of Little Rock released a "preliminary" list of eight diocesan priests who were "credibly accused" of engaging in sex abuse of minors.

[30][32] The list also contained the names of four additional priests transferred by other dioceses to Little Rock to avoid sexual abuse allegations.

McDaniel committed the alleged abuse while serving as an associate pastor at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Church in Little Rock.

[33] In August 2019, another alleged victim filed a lawsuit against the diocese and St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Tontitown.