Lakeport Plantation is a historic antebellum plantation house near Lake Village, Arkansas. It is on the west side of the Mississippi River and across from Greenville, Mississippi.
In the early 21st century, five acres of land remain associated with the mansion. Restored between 2003 and 2008, it is operated as a museum and Arkansas State University Heritage Site.
The plantation was established in 1831 by Joel Johnson, from a prominent planter family in Scott County, Kentucky. He developed it with slave labor as a cotton plantation. He died in 1846, leaving the plantation's ownership in legal dispute; his son Lycurgus Johnson acquired clear title in 1857. By 1860, Johnson held more than 150 enslaved African Americans at Lakeport and his other Arkansas properties.
The plantation's mansion was built circa 1859 for Lycurgus Johnson. It was designed in the Greek Revival architectural style.
The plantation was highly profitable as cotton prices increased with European demand, though the Civil War took a toll on Johnson's fortunes. Confederate forces burned 158 bales of the plantation's cotton in 1862 to prevent its capture by Union forces. By 1864 tax records show the number of people enslaved at Lakeport had declined to 24, as many people left after the Emancipation Proclamation freed them. Some joined Union lines or gathered in contraband camps.
The end of the Civil War resulted in the emancipation of the remaining slaves. Within a few years, many of the freedmen worked for Johnson either as paid laborers or as sharecroppers, as other jobs were few in the agricultural delta.
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