After the Civil War, three African American men represented Lafayette County in the state legislature. Monroe Hawkins, born a slave in North Carolina around 1832, was a minister and laborer, served as a delegate to the 1868 Constitutional Convention, and served in the Arkansas House in 1868-69, 1873, and 1874. Conway Barbour, born a slave in Virginia in 1818, was an insurance agent in 1870 and served in the House of Representatives in 1871. Marshall Murray, born in Alabama in 1856, was a professor who served in the House in the 1883 session.