Political Issues & Controversies

Sub-Topics
Act 401 of 1951
aka: Communist Registration Act
Also called the Communist Registration Act, Act 401 was approved in...
Act 910 of 2019
aka: Transformation and Efficiencies Act of 2019
Act 910 of 2019 was a piece of signature legislation for Governor A...
Agricultural Adjustment Act
The experimental Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was the cornerstone farm legislation of President Franklin ...
Amendments 19 and 20
aka: Futrell Amendments
Amendments 19 and 20 to the Arkansas Constitution, which are common...
Joseph J. Anthony (1780?–1837)
Joseph J. Anthony, a soldier, politician, and Arkansas pioneer, fell victim to one of the most extraordinary a...
Joseph J. Anthony (Murder of)
The only recorded violent death on the floor of the Arkansas General Assembly occurred on December 4, 1837, in...
Arkansas Freedom of Information Act
aka: Freedom of Information Act
aka: FOIA
The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), signed into law by ...
Arkansas Loan and Thrift
Arkansas Loan and Thrift Corporation (AL&T) was a hybrid bank that operated for three years outside state ...
Arkansas Peace Society
The Arkansas Peace Society was a loose affiliation of local anti-Confederate groups that formed in response to...
Arkansas Plan
The 1976 proposal known as the “Arkansas Plan” represented an important innovation in the relationship bet...
Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L)
The Arkansas Power and Light Company (AP&L) was the primary electrical utility company for much of Arkansa...
Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal
The Arkansas prison blood scandal resulted from the state’s selling plasma extracted from prisoners at the C...
Arkansas Project
The Arkansas Project was a reporting venture in the mid-1990s undertaken with the aim of discrediting Presiden...
Arkansas Real Estate Bank
In 1836, the establishment of the Real Estate Bank of Arkansas became the initial act to pass the first state ...
Arkansas Scholarship Lottery
The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery is a system of games of chance, implemented to generate revenue to fund the s...
Arkansas State Bank
The Arkansas State Bank (1836–1843) was one of two banks created by the newly formed Arkansas state legislat...
Arkansas State Boundaries
Arkansas’s boundaries have been the subject of international treaties, treaties with Native American tribes,...
Back-to-Africa Movement
The Back-to-Africa Movement mobilized thousands of African-American Arkansans who wished to leave the state fo...
George Stuart Benson (1898–1991)
George Stuart Benson was the second president of Harding College (now Harding University) in Searcy (White Cou...
Big Lake Wars
Competition and contention over an abundant (and unregulated) storehouse of northeastern Arkansas wildlife fro...
Black Power Movement
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker Willie Ricks coined the “black power” slogan in Ju...
Blue Laws
Arkansas’s first blue laws, also called Sunday-closing laws, were enacted in 1837, only a year after Arkansa...
Boodle Prosecutions
aka: Boodle Scandal of 1905–1908
The Boodle Scandal of 1905–1908 dealt with pervasive bribery (“...
Bracero Program
To ensure that U.S. farmers had sufficient labor, the U.S. State Department and the Mexican Foreign Affairs De...
Brooks-Baxter War
The Brooks-Baxter War, which occurred during April and May 1874, was an armed conflict between the supporters ...
Effect of the California Gold Rush
The California gold rush did not have the positive impact on Arkansas envisioned by its promoters, who hoped f...
Capital Punishment
aka: Death Penalty
The death penalty was practiced in Arkansas even before the state w...
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags
“Carpetbaggers” is a slang term denoting men who adhered to the newly formed Republican Party, which follo...
Chicot County Race War of 1871
aka: Chicot County Massacre
In late 1871, Chicot County was taken over by several hundred Afric...
Civil Rights Movement (Twentieth Century)
The 1957 desegregation crisis at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) is often viewed as the mo...
Cleburne County Draft War
The Cleburne County Draft War was one of three violent encounters in World War I–era Arkansas that occurred ...
The Clinton Chronicles
The Clinton Chronicles: An Investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton is a 1994 video ...