Arkansas

Arkansas voters were the first to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Senate.

Hattie Wyatt Caraway (1878-1950)

    Frances Hunt, elected in 1922, was the first woman in the Arkansas General Assembly, but Hattie Caraway is more significant:  in 1932, she became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

    Born in Bakersville, Tennessee in 1878, Hattie Wyatt graduated from Dickson Normal College in 1896; she taught school before marrying attorney Thaddeus H. Caraway and moving to Jonesboro, Arkansas.  He was elected to Congress in 1912, and she divided her time between Washington and Arkansas while rearing their children and running the family farm.  Like many in the South at that time, the Caraways were Democrats.

    When her husband died unexpectedly in November 1931, she won a special election for his Senate seat on January 12, 1932.  This made her the first woman elected to the US Senate, but everyone expected that she would serve as a caretaker until the regularly scheduled elections later that year.  Caraway surprised them, though:  while setting another precedent by presiding over the Senate on May 9, 1932, she announced that she would be running for re-election.

    America was in the depths of the Great Depression in 1932, and that year’s election probably was the most important of the century.  Along with other New Deal Democrats, Caraway won; her chief support came from women, labor union members, and veterans.  World War I veterans admired Senator Caraway because she stood up for them early that year, when they demonstrated for bonuses and President Herbert Hoover sent the military to force them out of Washington.

    She supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the impoverished state of Arkansas benefited greatly from his New Deal.  Her Senate colleagues respected Caraway’s quiet but attentive demeanor.  She made a point of never missing a vote, and in 1933, became the first woman to chair a Senate committee.  Unlike her female colleagues in the House, she also supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

    Populist Louisiana Senator Huey Long took credit for getting Caraway elected in 1932, but she demonstrated her independent political skills in 1938.  She defeated Representative John L. McClellan, who campaigned with the slogan that Arkansas needed another man in the Senate.  When the United States entered World War II in 1941, she supported the entrance of women into the military, and in 1943, set another precedent by becoming the Senate’s first female president pro tempore.

    Busy in wartime Washington, she failed to take seriously her opponent in the Democratic primary of 1944.  Arkansans replaced her with an even more liberal man, young intellectual William Fulbright.  Despite this setback, her career in public service was not over. President Roosevelt appointed her to the Federal Employees’ Compensation Commission, and later to the Employees’ Compensation Appeals Board.  He died from a stroke in 1945, but President Harry Truman maintained Caraway’s appointment until a 1950 stroke led to her resignation.  She died later that year and was buried with her husband in Jonesboro.

    Several Arkansas sites honor her.  Hattie Wyatt Caraway was a true pioneer for women in Congress.  She demonstrated political skill that was little short of superlative.