| Sundown towns are those communities from which African Americans have been expelled at some time in the past and in which they were thereafter prevented from living, usually by means of violence or the threat of violence. These acts of expulsion, or racial cleansing, occurred primarily in an era known as the "Nadir" of race relations in America, stretching from about 1890 through the first few decades of the twentieth century. This dissertation constitutes a detailed examination of select instances in racial cleansing in Arkansas, contextualizing these events within developments in the localities themselves, as well as the region and state at large. The first chapter will summarize economic and political developments within the state of Arkansas during the Nadir, especially with an eye toward how they shaped race relations. The next four chapters will examine four distinct geographical regions of Arkansas each: the Ozark Mountains, the Ouachita Mountains, the Arkansas Delta, and the Arkansas River Valley. Each chapter begins with a brief analysis of the region's development, followed by a summary of select instances of racial cleansing; after that will come a detailed case study focusing upon a particular locality and the specific means by which that town or county went sundown. After these four chapters comes one devoted exclusively to providing analysis of the phenomenon of racial cleansing in light of modern theories on ethnic conflict and nationalism, drawing especially from the fields of political science, philosophy, and sociology. The author's contention here is that acts of racial cleansing were largely motivated by the desire to increase life chances during an era when extensive modernization was creating a great deal of social uncertainty. The conclusion seeks to justify this exploration by demonstrating how three of the racial cleansing events discussed in earlier chapters continue to affect the communities and their people many decades after those events occurred. |
