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Cabot


tim2462

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The city of Cabot is a growing suburb of Little Rock, on the Pulaski County border in Lonoke County.

It is about 20 miles northeast of Little Rock along the Hwy. 67/167 freeway. The 2000 census was 15,261.

The 2004 census estimate was 19,607. MetroPlan currently estimates the population to be around 23,000.

With Cabot growing so rapidly, the Cabot Chamber of Commerce expects to see great things happening to the city in 2006. In 2005, more than 106 new businesses filed for licenses to operate in the city of Cabot.

Some businesses that have recently opened: Home Depot, Colton

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Maybe Northeast between Jacksonville and Cabot, and possibly up towards Searcy. I really can't see it growing much to the east...there aren't any cities to the east...except Lonoke. The eastern part of Little rock could grow, but only if they clean it up.

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The city of Cabot is a growing suburb of Little Rock, on the Pulaski County border in Lonoke County.

It is about 20 miles northeast of Little Rock along the Hwy. 67/167 freeway. The 2000 census was 15,261.

The 2004 census estimate was 19,607. MetroPlan currently estimates the population to be around 23,000.

With Cabot growing so rapidly, the Cabot Chamber of Commerce expects to see great things happening to the city in 2006. In 2005, more than 106 new businesses filed for licenses to operate in the city of Cabot.

Some businesses that have recently opened: Home Depot, Colton

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Right now they may go to North Little Rock, but as the city grows, they will gain their own retail, just as Conway has. As a matter of fact, a lot of Cabot residents now shop in Conway. Most new residents to Cabot are from out of state, it is not white flight from Little Rock. Why do you insist on making everything about race? And what do test scores have to do with the growth there?

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Right now they may go to North Little Rock, but as the city grows, they will gain their own retail, just as Conway has. Most new residents to Cabot are from out of state, it is not white flight from Little Rock. Why do you insist on making everything about race? And what do test scores have to do with the growth there?

Not everything is about race but Cabot's growth has alot to do with it. There are black people in Little Rock that will not visit Cabot. There are people living in Cabot that moved there because of the Air Base but more than that picked Cabot to raise their children because of the notion of a good school system. Little Rock does a better job, just check the scores. tim2462 how much do you know about what is going on in Cabot? What happened to the teacher that was having sex with one of her students? As for future retail growth the difference between it and Conway is very important. Conway can draw from the west, south and north. Cabot is only 10 miles or so from Jacksonville and about 25 from Searcy.

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And yet, it's still growing and opening new businesses every day. I saw black kids riding bikes with white kids while I was there a few days ago. This notion that black people won't visit Cabot is a stupid joke among black people because they know it's mostly white. They used to say the same thing about Conway...now it's 12% black. You know, blacks and whites are different. Blacks as a race have usually liked living in the inner city...whites have always liked living on the fringes...both races like to be separate and live where people of their race live. What "White Flight" goes on is because those people want to live in smaller cities where there is less crime...a lot of black people want that as well, which is why more blacks are moving to the suburbs. But, most blacks would rather live in the city. White people are not moving to the burbs to simply get away from black people...that is just silly.

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And yet, it's still growing and opening new businesses every day. I saw black kids riding bikes with white kids while I was there a few days ago. This notion that black people won't visit Cabot is a stupid joke among black people because they know it's mostly white. They used to say the same thing about Conway...now it's 12% black. You know, blacks and whites are different. Blacks as a race have usually liked living in the inner city...whites have always liked living on the fringes...both races like to be separate and live where people of their race live. What "White Flight" goes on is because those people want to live in smaller cities where there is less crime...a lot of black people want that as well, which is why more blacks are moving to the suburbs. But, most blacks would rather live in the city. White people are not moving to the burbs to simply get away from black people...that is just silly.

How can you say blacks perfer the inner city. Because they have been paid less wages this is the only place they could afford. Also, I wouldn't call blacks not going to Cabot a stupid joke. When was the last time you went to College Station or spent some evening at MLK and Wright Ave. in LR? Why would blacks be moving to the suburbs, when as you said they like the inner city? Blacks fear of going to Cabot is like blacks in Detroit not going past 7 Mile. I lived in Detroit(across the freeway from Greektown) during the mid 80's and it amazed me that a large number of blacks I worked with never went past the city limits. It was no different than in Paragould when blacks came around. Take them out to the Ridge for a good hanging. During the 60's only two black families lived there. Their kids were sent to Jonesboro for school. They lived in an alley in two small houses. Being a shoe shine boy didn't pay much. If you would look at when the towns surrounding LR started to grow you will see this happened when crosstown busing took effect for the schools. This was also the time private schools began to develop.

I'm did not say moving to the burbs was a way to get away from blacks but this was one of the major reasons the burbs started their growth. Housing cost are less but how much money will be saved when gas reaches four dollars? How much time is lost driving to work from Cabot to LR? They are talking about 67/167 being under construction for the next 10 years. One local radio station even calls 67/167 "the White Flight" during their traffic reports.

How long will it take to fill up the space left when the new Wal-mart opens? As for Home Depot there is hardly anyone ever there. The local builders use Ridout or Whit-Davis.

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Just out of curiosity I looked it up...

Little Rock 55% White 40% Black 2.7% Hispanic

Cabot 96.6% White 0.3% Black 0.4% Native American 0.9% Asian

Yeah, there's no white flight there. :wacko:

Conway and Benton are mostly white but have African-American communities that are decades-old. Lonoke and Scott, which are also in Lonoke Co, do as well. Jacksonville, which borders Cabot, has a decent black population. Cabot is lily-white, though, that's inarguable. To me it's really not a desirable community. I'm a city boy but if I were a commuter Bryant is close and has a lot to offer. Maumelle moreso but it's so close it's barely commuting. Conway is terrific and offers a lot more than the other surrounding cities but that commute is a little too brutal.

I have family that lives way the hell out at Greystone and I never will understand that. They just drive in to NLR daily, almost 30 min each way.

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There are a lot of cities in AR and around the country that are almost all white...some places are 100%...it's not because they flocked there because they're white, the cities were just always mostly white.

Why would black people fear going to Cabot? There's virtually no crime there...there are black people livng there who have no problems.

I said black people prefer the city because they do. They've always been city-dwellers, while white people always wanted to "Live in the country" I don't know what your problem is, but you are way off. A city being mostly white does not and should not imply that the KKK runs the town. Why don't we get the deck of race cards out and play? As long as people like you are out there causing sh*t where there isn't any, we're going to have racial problems. The black race makes up only 14% of Arkansas' population...wouldn't you expect that there are going to be a lot of areas with mostly white populations? I'm gay, and people say, don't go to Cabot...again...stupid, as there are many gay people in Cabot. Oh, and what radio station is this that refers to that as white flight hwy or whatever? I listen to all the traffic reports and have never heard this. Tell me which one it is so I can listen and call them. I'm betting you made that up.

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There are a lot of cities in AR and around the country that are almost all white...some places are 100%...it's not because they flocked there because they're white, the cities were just always mostly white.

Why would black people fear going to Cabot? There's virtually no crime there...there are black people livng there who have no problems.

I said black people prefer the city because they do. They've always been city-dwellers, while white people always wanted to "Live in the country" I don't know what your problem is, but you are way off. A city being mostly white does not and should not imply that the KKK runs the town. Why don't we get the deck of race cards out and play? As long as people like you are out there causing sh*t where there isn't any, we're going to have racial problems. The black race makes up only 14% of Arkansas' population...wouldn't you expect that there are going to be a lot of areas with mostly white populations? I'm gay, and people say, don't go to Cabot...again...stupid, as there are many gay people in Cabot. Oh, and what radio station is this that refers to that as white flight hwy or whatever? I listen to all the traffic reports and have never heard this. Tell me which one it is so I can listen and call them. I'm betting you made that up.

My wife told me about the radio station. She is in Dallas right now when she gets back I'll let you know. You ought to read the book 'Rising Tide" maybe you will learn something about the southern movement of blacks to the inner cities of the north. You may be gay but you are a stupid one by making the statements that blacks perfer the city because they live there. Blacks have not always been city dwellers. They did not live in cities in Africa nor were the majority of them brought to America to live in cities. If white people always wanted to "live in the county" why are there farming towns that hardly exist anymore. Why has New England, outside of the cities gone back to woodland? Why has the Great Plains lost population over the last fifty years? I am only telling it the way I see it. If you don't understand history then you know nothing about they way things are. In the 60's Hall High School in LR was 95%+ white and now it is almost opposite. There is free choice for schools in LR and Hall is not in an black area so why did it change? Where did the white kids go?

This will be easy to come up with an ending. Why don't you do a survey? Go to University Mall and ask the first 25 blacks you see if they would have a problem going to Cabot and if they would live there.

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People will live where they are gong to live. There is no reason for black people to avoid Cabot...that's like saying white people shouldn't live in Pine Bluff...Pine Bluff is 67% black...anyway, this topic is about growth and development in Cabot...not about race.

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Again, I named several other bordering communities with decent black populations. Meanwhile Cabot has grown from a one-gas station town to almost 20k people while being even less black than South Park, CO (I guess that kid you saw was Token). The entirety of that growth has been white. White flight happens almost everywhere - Dallas, Atlanta, Memphis, Little Rock, Ft Smith, Pine Bluff and believe it or not just as often in the North in places like Detroit and Cleveland.

Does the KKK run it or are they afraid to let blacks in town? No, that's silly. Do black families have any desire to move to Cabot because of how lily-white it is? Of course not. The argument that blacks prefer to live in cities is partially true but doesn't explain why the cities I mentioned (Jacksonville, Conway, Lonoke, etc have decent percentages of blacks) - especially since Jacksonville and Lonoke border Cabot. There are also a sizable number of middle class blacks in Maumelle.

I do think a lot comes back on the schools. As Skirby said white flight does exist and it is a great irony that whites in LR schools do better on standardized tests than whites in the suburbs. Some people can't stomach sending their kids to schools that are 1/2 to 2/3 black and most of these people can't afford private schools. I still think the major impetus of suburban growth is cheap housing, you can get the same house for 60% of what it costs in LR and the majority of the new housing in LR proper is in the extreme West and is vfairly high end. I also think amongst middle class blacks there isn't the same false impression of suburban schools offering better education and they are more prone to stay in LR because of this. There are some great mostly black middle class neighborhoods like Boyle Park and Twin Lakes as well, something tim may have been alluding to.

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Sure it exists, but I'm saying that you cannot say that all of the Cabot population is white flight from Little Rock. A lot of things are fueling the growth there. Little Rock is growing, but it's not growing so fast that it could keep up with all of the white people supposedly leaving. Cabot gained 5,000 people in a year...Little Rock did not lose that many people...the growth rate isn't high enough to have kept up with that kind of loss. Skirby obviously has some issues with race. I just don't like things being turned into racial issues. I know race is still a problem with some people, but I don't want it thrown up everytime I turn around. I guess he missed the news report of the several black families that moved to Cabot from New Orleans that had no problem with the town being mostly white...and the whites welcomed them.

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Sure it exists, but I'm saying that you cannot say that all of the Cabot population is white flight from Little Rock. A lot of things are fueling the growth there. Little Rock is growing, but it's not growing so fast that it could keep up with all of the white people supposedly leaving. Cabot gained 5,000 people in a year...Little Rock did not lose that many people...the growth rate isn't high enough to have kept up with that kind of loss. Skirby obviously has some issues with race. I just don't like things being turned into racial issues. I know race is still a problem with some people, but I don't want it thrown up everytime I turn around. I guess he missed the news report of the several black families that moved to Cabot from New Orleans that had no problem with the town being mostly white...and the whites welcomed them.

I think a lot of times fringe growth is simply because people moving to a metro for jobs from small towns are prone to choose the least urban place within reasonable commuting distance that they can. That happens here in DFW as well and I think that's a lot of the appeal in Cabot. There are a lot of people out there that grew up in small towns out there and it definitely has a small town feel.

I also hate to say this, but a lot of Cabot's growth is because it's a good place to slap up a trailer - much like Jacksonville used to be. The community's area is huge (Greystone is halfway to Vilonia and is still in city limits). It has its share of decent and even occasionally upscale housing, sure, but that's a part of the equation. You can't put trailers in LR.

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I didn't see any trailers while I was there...It's mostly subdivisions and lots of apartments.

There are more trailers up toward ward and beebe though.

You didn't drive around enough or didn't stray far from the interstate. Cabot has relatively few apts compared to Benton, Bryant, Maumelle, and Conway and believe me, it has MORE than it's share of trailers.

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Actually, it has a lot more apartments than Benton, as Benton is way underserved by apartments...but I think that is about to change. I drove around the first exit where the huddle house used to be...there's a lot of apt development going on there. I drove up 365 for several miles before going back out to the freeway. I drove up Hwy. 5, then over on Hwy. 89 to come out by the supercenter. They built a lot of apartments right behind the wal-mart. There's also several in town. But yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of trailers on the fringe...I know there are a lot around ward and up toward beebe. I did not see all of the town though...one thing is for sure, they're going to have to widen those roads.

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A good portion of my family lives up there, they originally came from the Vilonia area and most ended up in Conway or Cabot so I know the area well. The weirdest thing every is to take the road from Cabot to Vilonia and halfway there is Greystone - you'll see a large gated golf-course Country Club community made up of $300k to $1.5 mil dollar homes with literally no development aside from a few cheap ranch houses and trailers within 5 miles of it. It always perplexed me, they are more than 15-20 min from the nearest grocery store or Wal-mart out there.

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White Flight obviously does play a role in Cabot's ethnic stats:

Little Rock 55% White 40% Black 2.7% Hispanic

Cabot 96.6% White 0.3% Black 0.4% Native American 0.9% Asian

Clearly, also, white flight is not the only thing fueling Cabot's growth.

To deny white flight exists in Cabot is ridiculous and only shows ignorance to the actual topic.

To say white people prefer tend to prefer the country while blacks prefer the city is ridiculous, if not racist. (And I don't mean racist in the hateful way, but the ignorant way.) I know far many white fellow students who would prefer to move some day to the big city as opposed to the country. The same goes for blacks.

Anyways, I know you don't want to talk about it any more, so here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

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Like I've said before though...Cabot has always been that white...black people have never lived there. Arkansas is only 14% black...so most cities are mostly white.

How many cities of 20k are only 0.3% black or less, though? This region has a substantial black population. I can understand that happening in NWA which has never had much of a black population but even those cities have more black residents than that because of influx/efflux.

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True. I'm sure there are many 95%+ white communities in Arkansas that are not that way because of white flight, especially in the Ozarks and Ouachitas.

But because of Cabot's proximity to Little Rock (half an hour), a major metropolis with a large black population, it was a prime location for white flight. Unlike, say, Jasper, Arkansas in the Boston Mountains three hours away.

Here's some history from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabot,_Arkansas

Controversy Over Growth

In 1982, the Little Rock School District, slow to comply to the 1954 US Supreme Court case Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, was forcibly ordered by federal courts to immediately desegregate the school district. This desegregation was ordered to achieve racial balances between white children and non-white children, which resulted in massive busing of students.

The results of the court-ordered busing have been controversial. Critics claim the forced integration has destroyed the School District and any concept of "neighborhood schools": for example, black students from far east Little Rock (predominantly black), were sent to high schools in far west Little Rock (predominantly white). Supporters claim that the forced integration has fostered more diversity and better learning environments. Whatever the result, during the 1980s and 1990s Little Rock teachers repeatedly went on strike, and many residents relocated to the smaller communities around Little Rock, including Cabot, Benton, Bryant, Conway, and Maumelle. With time, new arrivals to the state chose to live in these towns (now veritable suburbs) because, by some educational indicators, their school districts were more successful.

Cabot received many families relocating during this time period. A 'commuter culture' developed as many residents lived in Cabot, sent their children to schools in Cabot, but worked in Little Rock. The Cabot School District steadily developed into one of the richest, most populous and top-performing districts in the state.

Critics of Cabot's growth, such as the Little Rock-based newspaper Arkansas Times, accused these residents of "white flight": simply giving up on an integrated Little Rock school district. While Cabot (and northern Lonoke County as a whole) has historically been predominantly white, nearby towns, such as Austin, Ward, Vilonia, and Searcy, also lack diversity. The resulting "whiteness" of the area (just like the Ozark Plateau or the pre-1990s Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers area) seemingly owes itself more to historical migration patterns and historical slave ownership. Currently, the Cabot School District encompasses the north end of Lonoke County. The bulk of the county's population today can be found in approximately the same area, containing the county's most populous and fourth most populous cities — Cabot and Ward, respectively.

Yeah, the author of the Cabot entry doesn't agree with the Arkansas Times.

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In general through history, there has never been a black population anywhere in the northern half of the state, with the exception of Blytheville. Even Jonesboro never had much of one until recent years.

Cabot and Conway are in the northern half of the state and never had a black population. Conway has just in recent years gained a good bit of black population, and Cabot will follow.

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I read that part of the reason why the population was so white in the Northwestern half of the state (other than the obvious lack of plantations back in the slavery era) was because white people within Arkansas that used to live in the Delta moved to the hills once slaves were emancipated.

And because of its reputation, black people were/are afraid to move to that area for the most part. Harrison, Arkansas, is the self-proclaimed headquarters of the KKK....and I know a few blacks who won't even travel in that general area.

It's not a far-fetched idea, at all.

Here's some info: http://asms.k12.ar.us/armem/daymart/KKK.htm

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is probably the most well known White Supremacy group in the world. Even though its pinnacle of influence was at the beginning of the century, the Klan has continued to thrive in the US, particularly the Deep South such as Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas. The largest faction of the Klan, The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan(KKKK), is headquartered in Harrison Arkansas. Arkansas also has a greater number of Klan members than any other state. The Klan has affected Arkansas in various ways since its formation in post Civil War South.

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