Editing Missouri Bootheel (section)

==History==
When Missouri was admitted to the Union as part of the [[Missouri Compromise]], its original border was proposed as an extension of the [[36°30′ parallel north]] that formed the border between [[Kentucky]] and [[Tennessee]]. That would have excluded the Bootheel. [[John Hardeman Walker]], a pioneer planter in what is now [[Pemiscot County, Missouri|Pemiscot County]], argued that the area had more in common with the Mississippi River towns of [[Cape Girardeau, Missouri|Cape Girardeau]], [[Ste. Genevieve, Missouri|Ste. Genevieve]] and [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]] in Missouri than with its proposed incorporation in the [[Arkansas Territory]].  The border was dropped about 50 miles to the [[36th parallel north]]. It follows that parallel west about 30 miles until intersecting the [[St. Francis River]], then follows that river north to about the 36°30′ parallel just west of [[Campbell, Missouri]].

According to an apocryphal story in various versions, the Bootheel was added to the state because of the request of John Hardeman Walker to remain in the state "as he had heard it was so sickly in Arkansas", "...full of bears and panthers and copperhead snakes, so it ain't safe for civilized people to stay there over night even." Another legend has the adaptation made by a lovestruck surveyor to spare the feelings of a widow living 50 miles south of the Missouri border, but unaware of it. At one time, the area was known locally as "Lapland, because it's the place where Missouri laps over into Arkansas".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Randolph |first=Vance |title=The Talking Turtle and Other Ozark Folk Tales |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1957 |pages=36–38, 191–192 |oclc=499781 }}</ref>

During the [[American Civil War]], a number of battles took place in this area, most notably the [[Battle of Island No. 10]].

Until the early 20th century, the district was largely covered by [[wetland]]s and swamps, but otherwise was a wheat-growing area of family farms. Lumbering was important in the 1890s until the most valuable trees were taken.

In 1905, the Little River Drainage District built an elaborate network of ditches, canals, and levees to drain the swamps, as people believed, not understanding about the important function of wetlands in modifying river flooding, that the highest use was for agriculture.

From 1880 to 1930, the population in the area more than tripled as many workers were brought in. Cotton became the chief commodity crop.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Bonnie |last=Stepenoff |title='The Last Tree Cut Down': The End of the Bootheel Frontier, 1880-1940 |journal=Missouri Historical Review |year=1995 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=61–78 |url=https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/mhr/id/47737/rec/4 }}</ref> Meanwhile, the [[boll weevil]] ruined the cotton crop in Arkansas, and planters moved into the Bootheel, bought up the new lands or leased them from insurance companies that had invested in the area, and recruited thousands of black sharecroppers as workers.<ref name="Inside the Fifty States Today" />

During the 1910s, the Bootheel experienced a surge in racial violence as white tenant farmers attacked black workers who were imported by landowners from the South.  This competition between white laborers and black laborers resulted in a period of extreme racial violence which took the form of lynchings in [[New Madrid, Missouri|New Madrid]], [[Charleston, Missouri|Charleston]], and [[Caruthersville, Missouri|Caruthersville]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thelen |first1=David |title=Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri |date=1986 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |pages=92–102 |isbn=0-19-503667-0 }}</ref><ref name="minstrel">{{cite web |url=http://www.thiscruelwar.com/black-minstrel-lynched-in-new-madrid/ |title=A Black Minstrel Lynched in New Madrid, Missouri (1902) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180616103322/http://www.thiscruelwar.com/black-minstrel-lynched-in-new-madrid/ |archive-date=2018-06-16 |work=This Cruel War blog |date=16 February 2017 |url-status=usurped |access-date=12 April 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://cousin-collector.com/projects/index.php/saline-county/history/1754-lynching-in-missouri |title=Lynching in Missouri |publisher=Saline County, Missouri/MOGenWeb Project, 1996-2018 |access-date=12 April 2018 }}</ref>

In contrast to the other cotton-growing areas of the South, where blacks had been [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchised around the turn of the century]], they were allowed to vote in Missouri and played a political role in this area.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Will |last=Sarvis |title=Black Electoral Power in the Missouri Bootheel, 1920s-1960s |journal=Missouri Historical Review |year=2001 |volume=95 |issue=2 |pages=182–202 |url=https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/mhr/id/52179 }}</ref> In the main, political power was held by white power brokers, especially Democrat [[J. V. Conran]] from the 1930s to 1960s. He worked closely with blacks in the region. An ally of Senator and President [[Harry S. Truman]], Conran packed the ballot boxes but did bring efficiency and government services, and helped improve economic and social conditions.<ref>{{cite book |first=Will |last=Sarvis |title=J.V. Conran and Rural Political Power: Boss Mythology in the Missouri Bootheel |location=Lanham |publisher=Lexington Books |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-7391-6985-8 }}</ref>

During the [[Great Depression]], the [[Farm Security Administration]] said that the Bootheel was a "paradox of rich land and poor people." In 1935, three-fourths of all farms were operated by tenants, most of them black.<ref>{{cite book |publisher=Farm Security Administration |title=Southeast Missouri: A Laboratory for the Cotton South |location=Washington |date=December 30, 1940 |oclc=39634483 }}</ref> Radicals in the [[Southern Tenant Farmers Union]] organized protests by hundreds of sharecroppers in early 1939, alleging that landlords had evicted masses of tenants because they did not want to share federal AAA checks with them. The [[Farm Security Administration]], a [[New Deal]] agency, responded by providing low-cost rental housing for 500 cropper families. It awarded $500,000 (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US-GDP|0.5|1939|fmt=c|r=0}} million in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}) in grants to 11,000 families in 1939. The protest fizzled out as [[Communist Party USA|Communist]] and [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist]] elements battled for control.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Louis |last=Cantor |title=A Prologue to the Protest Movement: The Missouri Sharecropper Roadside Demonstration of 1939 |journal=[[Journal of American History]] |year=1969 |volume=55 |issue=4 |pages=804–822 |doi=10.2307/1900154 |jstor=1900154 }}</ref>