Entries - County: Desha - Starting with J

On October 4, 1877, an African-American man named Henry Jackson was shot by a masked mob near Watson (Desha County) for allegedly murdering a justice of the peace referred to only as Mr. O’Neil. However, the circumstances of the event speak to the broader efforts in post-Reconstruction Arkansas to remove black elected officials from office. While it is impossible to identify O’Neil, there were two African Americans named Henry Jackson living in Desha County in 1870. The first was a twenty-nine-year-old farmer living in Red Fork Township who had personal property worth $500 and real estate valued at $250. The second was a twenty-seven-year-old farmer who was living in Jefferson Township and had personal property worth $125 and real estate …

Anthony “Andy” Johnson, an African American man described as a “desperado,” was hanged at Dumas (Desha County) on June 21, 1895, for murdering his wife’s lover in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). The 1880 federal census shows laborer Andy Johnson, age twenty-eight, living in Pine Bluff with his wife Rose, twenty-seven, and their three daughters. Laborer Howard Johnson, twenty-five, also lived in Pine Bluff with his wife Mattie, twenty-three, and their three children. Andy Johnson was enslaved by Joseph William Bocage of Pine Bluff but after the Civil War became deeply involved in local Reconstruction politics. Although he was described as “quarrelsome, loud-mouthed and uneducated” and “a desperado…universally feared by his race,” he was elected as the bonded constable of Jefferson …

John H. Johnson rose above abject poverty and racial discrimination to build a publishing empire that helped forever change the perception of African Americans in the United States. Johnson Publishing Company became the largest Black-owned and -operated publishing company in the world and launched Ebony and Jet, two very successful magazines that gave a voice to millions of Black Americans. Born Johnny Johnson on January 19, 1918, in Arkansas City (Desha County) to Leroy Johnson and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson, a cook in a Mississippi River levee camp, John Harold Johnson was a third-generation descendent of slaves. After the death of Johnson’s father in a sawmill accident when Johnson was eight years old, his mother married James Williams, who helped raise him. …