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FIRST INTERLUDE Why Arkansas? The basic assumption that informs this little survey is that Arkansas has been, fairly or unfairly, peculiarly singled out among the fifty states for derision and caricaturing, that the very phrase “Arkansaw image” conjures up widely shared visions in a way that “South Dakota image” or “Ohio image” or “Florida image” or even “Tennessee image” does not. Our premise also assumes that the visions conjured involve some combination of moonshine crockery, toothlessness, flop-eared hounds, barefootedness, shiftlessness, and yokelicity. This assumption may be a product of our own myopia; perhaps someone this very minute sits in Vermont wondering why the rest of the country picks on the Green Mountain State so. Maybe it’s a product of Arkansas’s hypersensitivity; perhaps as a state we’ve never progressed beyond the adolescent girl stage and thus suspect that all those muffled whispers wafting inland from the coasts are jokes and snide comments about our acne and bad hair. Maybe there really is no Arkansaw image and what follows is an exercise in futility. But assuming, at least for the amount of time it takes to read this book, that Arkansas has historically occupied the outhouse on this farmstead we call the United States—that folklorist James R. Masterson was correct when he opined of Arkansas: “Her ill fame has marked her, more than any other State in the Union, as a target for reproach and ridicule”—why is this so?1 What about this state has so distinguished her from her neighbors ? Why Arkansas? Not surprisingly, there would appear to be no simple answer. This lack of clarity on the issue is not for lack of effort. Arkansas’s image problem has been a favorite topic for many years, to the point that considering Arkansaw’s origins and nuances has become a sort of rite of passage among historians of the state. The sheer volume of historians’ energies devoted to unraveling the intricacies of the Arkansaw image suggests the enduring power of legend, myth, and stereotype, as well as what Bob Lancaster has termed our state’s “preoccupation with self-justification.”2 In the spirit of avoiding our penchant for blind defensiveness, perhaps we should begin with a bit of selfflagellation . It is no stretch to say that the Arkansaw image has at times and in places been a representation of reality only slightly tinged with exaggeration . If you’ve lived in Arkansas for any length of time, you probably have some appreciation for our “Thank God for Mississippi” statistical record. 37 BLEVINSfinalpages:Layout 1 4/28/10 3:50 PM Page 37 (Dear Mississippians: It is not my purpose here to use the tried-and-true defense of “Yeah, we may be bad, but look at so-and-so.” I realize that you have your own image problems and suspect that you have uttered the phrase “Thank God for Arkansas” more often than did George H. W. Bush’s speechwriters in 1992.) As historian Foy Lisenby has observed: “Unfortunately, statistics over the years reveal the ‘backward state’ image has been pretty well rooted in actuality.” But we now know that poverty and backwardness long predated the statistical proofs of their presence. In his study of colonial Arkansas, Morris S. Arnold finds that “Arkansas was undeveloped compared to its neighbors in the rest of Louisiana.” A combination of physical limitations and colonial governmental blunders rendered Arkansas Post insignificant and impoverished in comparison with such younger settlements as St. Louis and New Orleans. Thus, argues Arnold, “many of the recurrent themes of Arkansas history, especially its persistent poverty and relative cultural backwardness , have their roots deep in the eighteenth century.” Similarly, historian S. Charles Bolton has uncovered a factual basis for the developing image in the early nineteenth century. “The Bear State concept was real,” writes Bolton, “in the sense that crudeness, violence, and a penchant for hunting were very much a part of life in Arkansas, real also in that it reflected the settlement of Arkansas by southern people, many of whom lived in a manner that was looked down upon by northern visitors.”3 Historians and writers have compiled a litany of reasons for Arkansas’s negative reputation. Lisenby cites as culprits fundamentalism, provincialism , indifference to social justice, racial prejudice, a barbaric prison system, and poor schools. Of course, as Lisenby himself observes, Arkansas has never cornered the market on any of these characteristics, and all of them at one time or another have been highlighted...

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