Phillips County is a county located in the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2010 census, the population was 21,757. The county seat is Helena-West Helena. Phillips County is Arkansas's seventh county, formed on May 1, 1820, and named for Sylvanus Phillips, the area's first-known white settler and representative to the first Territorial Legislature of the Arkansas Territory. 237 people were lynched there in 1919 during the Elaine race riot, making Phillips County the site of the largest number of lynchings in U.S.