Crossett, Ashley County, Arkansas in the 1960s

Work

Pine, paper, chemicals

The telling fact is scale: Arkansas pulpwood output rose from 604,000 cords in 1950 to 1,524,000 cords in 1959³, and Crossett was one of the enlarged plants. In town, people worked around kraft paper¹, plywood, sawmill, and chemical and pulp-and-paper facilities¹.

Law & power

Company town, city hall

Crossett had been a company town until 1946¹⁴, and that memory still mattered when Georgia-Pacific bought the works in 1962^1,6. Formal town power sat in the municipal building at 307–309 Main Street⁵, with mayoral offices, police, court, and fire department under one civic roof.

Who lived here

Growth and segregation

The town grew from 5,370 people in 1960¹ to 6,191 in 1970¹. But growth did not mean equality: later court records described a segregated industrial workforce, with the paper mill white and the sawmill Black¹³ when Georgia-Pacific arrived.

Faith

Many postwar churches

Church life had visibly expanded before the decade began: a 1959 history counted nine new churches⁴ built since World War II. Earlier company-town planning had even included a church for workers and their families⁷.

In the air

Integration argued locally

School desegregation was not abstract here. In 1965, four of 908 Black students were integrated², and local Black and white leaders’ talks were later credited with school integration in 1968^1,2.

What people feared

Mills and racial risk

The sources opened here do not give accident rates for Crossett’s 1960s mills, but the everyday danger of industrial work is implied by the town’s heavy concentration in kraft paper¹ and chemical and pulp-and-paper facilities¹. Social danger was also real in a town where jobs and schools were organized around segregation, including racially divided plants¹³.

Home & table

Company-built beginnings

The physical town still carried its origin: the lumber company had built houses, a school, and a church⁷ for workers’ families. By the 1960s, however, the company-town system had loosened because the company had begun selling homes and businesses¹⁴ after 1946.

Roads & news

Paper, radio, railway

Local news came through the News Observer⁴, which ran in Crossett throughout the decade. Radio was local too, with KAGH-AM^10,11 already present and KAGH-FM^10,11 added in 1967, while the Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway⁹ connected Crossett’s products outward.

Year by year

1. 1960A proposed sale of the Crossett Lumber Company to Union Bag and Paper was announced and then fell through by fall. here
2. 1960Crossett counted 5,370 residents in the federal census. here¹
3. 1962Georgia-Pacific bought the Crossett Lumber Company assets and made Crossett part of its expanding forest-products system. here^1,6
4. 1963Georgia-Pacific acquired control of the Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway, tying the local rail line more directly to the mill complex. here⁹
5. 1964The Civil Rights Act made school and employment discrimination a national legal issue that reached Crossett’s schools and mills. the country
6. 1965Four Black students entered formerly white Crossett schools under early desegregation reporting. here²
7. 1965The Voting Rights Act became law, changing the political meaning of Black citizenship across Arkansas and the South. the country
8. 1968Crossett schools were described by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas as integrated after talks among Black and white community leaders. here^1,2

Pictures from the time

What the sources say

• Crossett was in western Ashley County and was the county’s largest city, while Hamburg remained the county seat. from the sources^1,8
• Western Ashley County was upland forest country, unlike the Mississippi Alluvial Plain parts of the county, and Crossett grew from that pine-woods setting. from the sources^1,7
• Crossett’s population was 5,370 in the 1960 census and 6,191 in the 1970 census. from the sources¹
• By the 1960s Crossett was already a diversified forest-products center, with a kraft paper mill first built in the mid-1930s. from the sources¹
• A 1960 U.S. Forest Service report said Arkansas pulpwood output had risen from 604,000 cords in 1950 to 1,524,000 cords in 1959, and named Crossett as one of the enlarged pulp-and-paper plants. from the sources³
• Georgia-Pacific bought the Crossett Lumber Company assets in 1962 and made them the Crossett Division of Georgia-Pacific. from the sources^1,6
• After the 1962 sale, Georgia-Pacific immediately began making plywood from Southern yellow pine at Crossett and also operated chemical and pulp-and-paper facilities there. from the sources¹
• At the time Georgia-Pacific acquired the Crossett facilities, later federal litigation described the workforce as segregated: the paper mill was a white plant and the sawmill was a Black plant. from the sources¹³
• Crossett schools were still segregated at the start of the decade; in 1965, four of 908 Black students were integrated, according to a state desegregation timeline. from the sources²
• The Encyclopedia of Arkansas states that talks among Black and white community leaders led to integration of Crossett schools in 1968, though another timeline reports some integration before then. from the sources^1,2
• The Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway served Crossett, and Georgia-Pacific acquired control of it in July 1963; later traffic included lumber, plywood, paper products, and chemicals. from the sources⁹
• Crossett’s municipal building at 307–309 Main Street was built in 1954; in the 1960s it housed city offices, a municipal courtroom, police offices, and the fire department, while the library space was being vacated in the mid-1960s. from the sources⁵
• The Crossett post office at 125 Main Street was a 1940 WPA Art Deco building and served as the town post office until 1968. from the sources¹²
• The News Observer was published in Crossett from 1950 to 1980, giving the town a local paper during the 1960s. from the sources⁴
• KAGH-AM was a Crossett radio station by the early 1960s, and KAGH-FM was assigned its call letters on March 16, 1967. from the sources^10,11
• A 1959 local history said nine new churches of various denominations had been built in Crossett since the end of World War II. from the sources⁴
• The Crossett Lumber Company had helped build houses, a school, and a church for workers and their families in the town’s earlier company-town years. from the sources⁷
• Crossett remained shaped by earlier company power: a scholarly history says it had been a company town until 1946, when the company began selling homes and businesses and encouraging outside investment. from the sources¹⁴
• The local union won the right to establish trade unions after a divisive 1940 lumber-workers strike, and organized labor remained part of Crossett industrial life afterward. from the sources¹
• No open online source found in this quick search gives 1960s Crossett grocery prices, rents, or ordinary household budgets. not known
• No open online source found in this quick search gives a street-by-street description of Crossett’s Black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods in the 1960s. not known
• As across Arkansas in the 1960s, Crossett residents would have followed the civil-rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 through newspapers, radio, churches, schools, and workplaces. inferred

Sources

1. Crossett (Ashley County). Encyclopedia of Arkansas
2. School Desegregation Timeline. Encyclopedia of Arkansas
3. Timber and Industry in Arkansas since the Midcentury. U.S. Forest Service Southern Forest Experiment Station, 1960
4. Crossett, Arkansas, Genealogy Records – 55 Sources. LDS Genealogy
5. Crossett Municipal Building. Encyclopedia of Arkansas
6. Crossett Lumber Company. Encyclopedia of Arkansas
7. Yale Camp Historic District. Arkansas Heritage
8. Ashley County. Association of Arkansas Counties
9. Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway. Wikipedia
10. Radio Annual 1964. Radio Annual, 1964
11. KAGH-FM. Wikipedia
12. Crossett Post Office. Wikipedia
13. Powell v. Georgia Pacific Corp., 535 F. Supp. 713. U.S. District Court case text mirror, 1982
14. The Early Mills, Railroads, and Logging Camps of the Crossett Lumber Company. Arkansas Historical Quarterly / U.S. Forest Service, 2008

Nearby, about the same time