Arkansas's hillbilly image is examined in a new book (UALR Public Radio) - From the earliest days of radio and film, Arkansas has had a distinctive image in the national mind, and Brooks Blevins looks at that image in the aptly-titled "Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good-ol-boys Defined a State." Blevins says the reputation was largely created by the earliest visitors to brave Arkansas's eastern swamps and isolated hills.

"These were mainly educated urbane Easterners or Europeans who were traveling thru the state, and they weren't terribly impressed with the sort of rough and uncultured folk they came across. And most of them did sort of look down on this a kind of a decline of Western society," said Blevins.

There were other viewpoints, too.

"There were some who had a more romantic inclination who found these people, these back-country, bear-hunter people to be fascinating and refreshing, and close to nature," said Blevins.

The image persisted into the 20th Century, though Blevins says the state's most famous product, Bill Clinton, challenged the stereotype.

"A lot of these educated and often very politically-correct national media members don't really know what to do with him," said Blevins. "It's obvious they would like to make fun of Arkansas, but at the same time, here's this very educated, very well-spoken young politician from Arkansas, who's as skillful a politician as any of them have ever seen."

In 1942, Time magazine said Arkansas had developed a mass inferiority complex, and Blevins says that has sometimes worked to the state's disadvantage.

"A lot of Arkansans through the years have made a big show of jumping on anyone who defames Arkansas's honor in any way. And what it's done ironically is tended to blow out of proportion the bad things that people have said about us, and has ignored the good things that people have said about us," said Blevins.

Author Brooks Blevins lives in Izard County Arkansas, but is a professor of Ozark studies at Missouri State University. He'll discuss his book and sign copies Monday at noon at Little Rock's Old Statehouse Museum.
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