Leaders Wonder If Northwest Arkansas, Delta Can Collaborate In Stronger Fashion

(TB&P) — March 24, 1966. Then Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus wrote a letter to Melvin and Charlotte Schexnayder, the leaders of the Dumas Clarion newspaper in southeast Arkansas. Charlotte would later serve as a state representative for the region.

Faubus was responding to an editorial the Schexnayders had written asking for his help in steering money to their area of the Delta for economic development. The governor, who was in the final year of his 12-year tenure, was sympathetic to the Schexnayders’ pleading for Delta help. Still, he claimed there were more desperate parts of Arkansas that needed the attention of the money he controlled.

“The mountain areas generally are much poorer than the Delta region. That is only natural because of the rich soil and fine crops in the Delta, whereas in the mountains, the land is so poor and rough that farming is very minor, compared to the Delta region. Also, six of the poorest counties in America are located in the Ozark Mountain region north of the Arkansas River. Frankly, there is more justification for the program in the mountain region, but there is also sufficient justification for such a program in the Delta region,” Faubus wrote.

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