Slavery in Arkansas #1

Arkansas Tech University professor Kelly Houston Jones’s new book, A Weary Land: Slavery on the Ground in Arkansas, was recently published by the University of Georgia Press. Among other things, the book analyzes the racial and ethnic dynamics that paved the way for the growth of slavery in Arkansas. Native American Indians were first removed from the land; white settlers then colonized the land; and then black enslaved labor developed the land. As Jones puts it: “Native Americans and their tribal governments [were forced] off Arkansas’s ground…in order to force captive African Americans onto it.”