The chart to the left shows the home counties of the Branch Normal students in fall 1880. More than half of the students were from Pine Bluff and the surrounding county. With a handful of exceptions, the other students were from other southeastern counties 

Census population numbers tell the story of the growth Pine Bluff and the surrounding county. Before Arkansas became a state in 1836, the population of Jefferson county was tiny, less than one thousand people. Between 1840 and 1860, many people moved to the county to take advantage of the availability of cheap, high-quality farmland.

The devastation of the Civil War brought a halt to growth for roughly a decade. The population grew rapidly from 1880 to 1890, but the nature of the change was different than the antebellum. The increase was largely driven by a growing Black population that was predominately freed people from other slave states who were drawn to Arkansas by the availability of farm land and the milder political climate.

Population growth came to a halt again in the 1890s. This was a time when the political climate became much harsher as white politicians enacted a series of laws stripping Black people of their rights and enforcing strict Jim Crow segregation. Seeking to escape the increasingly oppressive atmosphere, many Black families left Arkansas for northern cities.

The racial dynamic in Jefferson County becomes even more clear when we look at percentages. The Black population grew rapidly during the antebellum as white settlers brought in enslaved workers for their plantations, but it remained majority white until the Civil War broke out. After the war, the county become majority Black. In the late nineteenth century, approximately three out of every four residents were Black. The county remained majority Black in 1900, but by this point, the political and economic power within the county was fully in the hands of the white minority.

Jefferson County was largely a rural farming community. The main crops grown were cotton and corn. Corn was largely grown as food, while cotton was the main cash crop.

The graphs to the left show cotton and corn production in Jefferson County. The trends displayed mirror broader trends in the county economy. During the antebellum (from 1830 to 1861), the economy grew rapidly as settlers set-up farms and plantations. The economy collapsed during the Civil War. The economy grew steadily in the post-war period, but it took four decades for cotton production to reach the level it was at in 1860. Corn production recovered more rapidly as farming was increasingly dominated by small farms focused on subsistence rather than the large plantations that had been developing in the antebellum.