Cotton Plant blues

Iwas a teenager in the 1970s and just beginning my love affair with rural Arkansas. During visits to my grandparents’ home in Des Arc, I enjoyed going on long drives by myself through the Grand Prairie and Delta.

With its huge fields of row crops, its bayous and irrigation ditches, this part of Arkansas was far different from the rolling, pine-covered hills surrounding my Arkadelphia home.

A frequent destination in those days was Brinkley. I would cross the White River at Des Arc and take Arkansas 38 to Cotton Plant. At Cotton Plant, I would take Arkansas 17 to Brinkley. I loved reading newspapers, and could purchase a copy of that day’s Memphis Commercial Appeal at Brinkley. It somehow seemed exotic to read an out-of-state newspaper after supper back at the big house in Des Arc.

Cotton Plant and Des Arc were the same size back then. Cotton Plant had 1,657 residents in the 1970 census, and Des Arc had 1,714. By 2020, Des Arc was up to 1,933 and Cotton Plant was down to just 529. Like other communities across the Arkansas Delta, Cotton Plant is becoming a ghost town.

I drove through Cotton Plant recently, thinking back to those Saturday and Sunday afternoon excursions almost half a century ago, and feeling the history that still hangs so heavily over this place. This area was once bottomland hardwoods, attracting settlers from states to the east for its good hunting and rich soil. In 1832, a group of settlers arrived from Kentucky. Fourteen years later, William Lynch came from Mississippi and brought cotton seeds with him.

“The plant was a novelty in the area and created much interest,” Paula Harmon Barnett writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “People began calling the community Cotton Plant. When the town applied for a post office in 1852, another settlement had already claimed the previous name of Richmond. Application was made and granted for Cotton Plant.”

Forests were soon being cleared for cotton. A Civil War battle took place at Hill’s Plantation when Union troops marching from Batesville to Helena fought an outnumbered Confederate force on July 7, 1862.

“Soldiers from both sides who died there were buried in Indian mounds behind the plantation’s main house,” Barnett writes. “The federal government later removed the bodies of Union soldiers. Two additional encounters took place near Cotton Plant in 1864, resulting in a Union victory on April 21 and a Confederate victory on April 22.”

The Brinkley & Batesville, a narrow-gauge railroad, built a line to Cotton Plant in 1881. By 1890, up to 7,000 bales of cotton and 2,000 tons of cottonseed were being shipped from Cotton Plant each year. By 1920, there were four cotton gins, a cotton compress and several cotton warehouses. Cotton production grew as forests were cleared. Those virgin forests also fueled a booming timber industry.

Standard Stave & Hoop opened a facility at Cotton Plant in 1909, soon after the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad completed its track from Helena. By 1920, there were five sawmills, seven woodworking factories and the largest veneer plant in the state, complementing the cotton facilities. The city’s population soared from 458 in the 1900 census to 1,661 in the 1920 census. Cotton Plant reached its highest population at 1,838 in 1950.

“Cotton Plant was a cultural center in the early 1900s,” Barnett writes. “The Frances Opera House provided entertainment. Music and literary clubs, including the Hypsion Club, were organized. Residents gathered for balls, dances and performances. Many residents were proficient in piano and violin.”

Large numbers of former slaves remained in the area. In the 1880s, the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen, part of what was known as the Northern Presbyterian Church, opened Cotton Plant Academy as former slaves from states to the east flocked to the area. Classes first were held in a home and then moved to a church near the railroad tracks.

“According to the Board of Missions for Freedmen’s report in 1890, a ‘good substantial’ building had been constructed for the school and was being used by 200 students,” Nancy Snell Griffith writes in a history of Cotton Plant Academy. “The building provided a girls’ dormitory and living space for female teachers, as well as for the principal and his family. It also contained a kitchen, dining room, chapel, library and sitting room.

“The effort had been funded almost entirely by Presbyterian women from Illinois. The land was a donation from the Young People’s Christian Endeavor Society of Carrollton, Ill. Rev. Frank Potter was the principal and was assisted by two teachers. Enrollment remained high. By 1893, there were five teachers and 212 students. By 1895, enrollment stood at 198. A six-room house was constructed to provide living quarters for male students. This proved too small. Some students boarded with a local resident.”

In the early 1900s, a two-story building for girls was constructed and named Nicolls Hall in honor of Rev. S.J. Nicolls of St. Louis, who had been on the church’s Board of Aid. In 1915, enrollment was 175 with 146 elementary students, 29 secondary students and 27 boarders.

“Although part of the 13-acre campus was farmed for profit and there was some income provided by boarding students, the school still was primarily funded by the Presbyterian Church,” Griffith writes. “In the early 1930s, the church began questioning its role in the education of Blacks in the South. As a result, Cotton Plant Academy merged with Arkadelphia Academy. The campus was in Cotton Plant. … The academy remained in operation until 1950.”

Well-known Black pianist and composer Florence Price once taught there. Dorothy Foster, an academy graduate who later taught there for eight years, became assistant secretary of the church’s Board of National Missions. Albert McCoy, another graduate, became the Presbyterian Church’s Sabbath School missionary for a district covering seven Southern states.

“Cotton Plant suffered during the Great Depression,” Barnett writes. “The price of cotton dropped to between five and 10 cents a pound from a high of 30 cents. Stave mills closed, and two banks closed. Things were almost as bad during World War II when the town’s young men went off to war. After the war, Cotton Plant rebounded, experiencing its greatest prosperity in the 1950s.”

Soon, however, agricultural mechanization began draining the region of residents. When the Cotton Plant School District was integrated in 1968, white flight exacerbated the problem. White families moved to Des Arc and Brinkley. In 2004, Cotton Plant’s schools were consolidated with those in Augusta. The high school closed that year. The elementary school closed in 2014.

“By the 21st century, Cotton Plant had no industry and few businesses,” Barnett writes. “Much of the historic downtown has been demolished, and only a few of the old homes remain.”

In March 2018, The New York Times ran a story about Cotton Plant headlined “A Dying Southern Town Needed a Miracle. Marijuana Came Calling.”

Richard Fausset wrote: “Mayor Willard C. Ryland looked everywhere for salvation for his dying town. He tried luring a vegetable packing company. An Asian carp processor. A Dollar General store. But he struck out again and again. Then came marijuana—and hope. Arkansas voters decided in 2016 to legalize the plant for medical use, giving the state an opportunity both to develop a new industry and to address nagging social problems.

“The state’s licensing program encourages growers to set up shop where the jobs are needed most, in perennially poor communities. … The fact that Cotton Plant, a small Delta city hollowed out by racism and the forces of economic change, may soon host one of the state’s first five licensed growing operations illustrates the novel streak of social engineering in America’s piecemeal rollout of state-sanctioned marijuana.”

The Bold Team facility has failed to stop population losses. The city’s population dropped from 649 to 529 from 2010 to 2020. The current estimated population is below 500.