Hughes, Arkansas

A town of burned houses and abandoned buildings. Population apex reached in 1980 (1,919). The town’s water tower was built in 1936 by a Chicago company and paid for by the federal Works Project Administration.

The 2010 census population was 1,441, a decrease of 22.8% from the 2000 census. In Hughes, 67.76% of the population is black, 29.41% white. Almost 32% of families and 38% of the overall population is below the federal poverty line.

In 2015, the Arkansas Board of Education combined the Hughes school district into West Memphis district.

Hughes is in St. Francis County, population 26,196. Racial demographics show 49.01% black and 48.36% white. Twenty-three percent of families and 27.5% of the overall county population exists below the federal poverty line.

Heavyweight boxing champion was born in St. Francis County. Wikipedia says: “Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston was born into a sharecropping family who farmed the poor land of Morledge Plantation near Johnson Township, St. Francis County, Arkansas. His father, Tobe Liston, was in his mid-40s when he and his wife, Helen Baskin, who was almost 30 years younger than Tobe, moved to Arkansas from Mississippi in 1916. Helen had one child before she married Tobe, and Tobe had 13 children with his first wife. Tobe and Helen had 12 children together. Sonny was the second youngest child.^”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Liston