Lakeport Legacies · September 28 · The Polks’ Plantations and the Creation of Cotton Kingdom in the Old South · Dr. Kelly Jones (Austin Peay State University)

Lakeport Legacies · September 28 · The Polks’ Plantations and the Creation of Cotton Kingdom in the Old South · Dr. Kelly Jones (Austin Peay State University)

The prominent Polk family moved at the center of the historical processes that created King Cotton in the newest parts of the Old South. James K. Polk himself invested in cotton, while his relatives, including his uncle William Polk, ran cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta. The Polks’ ventures, as well as their kin and business networks, represent patterns of cotton investment that characterized the late 1840s and early 1850s and built the slave empire of the Old Southwest.

Dr. Jones is an Assistant Professor of History at Austin Peay State University specializing in the history of slavery. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in 2014. Her most recent work will appear by the end of this year in Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840-1950, edited by Guy Lancaster.

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