Until the 1920s, the district was a wheat-growing area of family farms. Following the invasion of the boll weevil, which ruined the cotton crop in Arkansas, planters moved in. They bought up the land for conversion to cotton commodity crops, bringing along thousands of sharecroppers. After mechanization of agriculture and other changes in the 1930s, many black families left the area to go North in the Great Migration. These counties have predominantly white populations in the 21st century, although a few have significant minorities of blacks.