Hughes is one of the second-largest towns in St. Francis County. Located halfway between Mud Lake and Greasy Corner, Hughes is part of Arkansas’s Delta region, near the Mississippi River, and a center of agricultural production. It was the birthplace of many great blues musicians, including Johnny Shines. In 1836, with the earlier opening of the Military Road in east Arkansas, white people settled the area. According to historians, farmers who were named Hughes lived near the present-day town in the early 1800s, including John J. Hughes, who farmed 1,000 acres, and Elijah C. Hughes, who planted 2,000 acres. But the settlement was formally named for the family of Robert Hughes, a native of Senatobia, Mississippi, who in 1907 never moved to …show more content…
The Missouri-Pacific Railroad arrived in east Arkansas to survey a cutoff between Marianna and Memphis, Tennessee. Hughes was surveyed into different lots and sold to the settlers, who called the cutoff the “mud line’ as it ran through town, separating the whites from the black community. The black population of Hughes outnumbered the white population throughout the twentieth century. A few white families possessed most of the property. Hotels and schools were built on land donated by large landowners and by 1920s Hughes had stores, permanent homes, and a …show more content…
About 4,000 refugees who were displaced by the flood waters were cared for by the Red Cross. At the beginning of the Great Depression, it led to significant poverty and desperate need, three years after the great flood of 1927. Representatives from the Red Cross visited the workers of the farms near Hughes on Christmas Day and found that few of the farm workers had sufficient food for the holiday. Of the thirty-seven families visited, only six had received rations. A prisoner of war branch work camp was established near Hughes in 1944. The camp housed approximately 250 prisoners from Germany and provided workers of the area farms replacement workers for those serving in the