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Hattie Caraway

Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway (February 1, 1878 – December 21, 1950) was an American politician who became the first woman elected to serve a full term as a United States Senator. Caraway represented Arkansas. She was the first woman to preside over the Senate. She won reelection to a full term in 1932 with the active support of fellow Senator Huey Long, of neighboring Louisiana.[1][2]

Hattie Wyatt Caraway
Caraway in 1940
United States Senator
from Arkansas
In office
November 13, 1931 – January 3, 1945
Preceded byThaddeus Caraway
Succeeded byWilliam Fulbright
Personal details
Born
Hattie Ophelia Wyatt

(1878-02-01)February 1, 1878
Bakerville, Tennessee, U.S.
DiedDecember 21, 1950(1950-12-21) (aged 72)
Falls Church, Virginia, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse
(m. 1902; died 1931)
Children3, including Paul
EducationEbenezer College
Dickson Normal College (BA)

Early life edit

 
Hattie Caraway in 1914

Hattie Wyatt was born near rural Bakerville in Humphreys County in west-central Tennessee, the daughter of William Carroll Wyatt, a farmer and shopkeeper, and the former Lucy Mildred Burch. At the age of four, she moved with her family to Hustburg in Humphreys County. Despite her family's relative poverty, she had always hoped to pursue higher education, which was made possible through the generosity of a wealthy aunt.[3] After attending a one-room schoolhouse and Ebenezer Church in Hustburg, she transferred to Dickson (Tennessee) Normal College, wherein 1896 she received her Bachelor of Arts degree. She taught school for a time before in 1902 marrying Thaddeus Caraway, whom she had met in college. They had three sons: Paul, Forrest, and Robert; Paul and Forrest became generals in the United States Army. The couple settled in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where he established a legal practice while she cared for the children, tended the household and kitchen garden, and helped to oversee the family's cotton farm.[4][page needed]

The Caraways established a second home Riversdale at Riverdale Park, Maryland. Thaddeus was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1912, and he served in that office until 1921 when he became a U.S. senator. Although she took an interest in her husband's political career, Hattie Caraway avoided the capital's social and political life as well as the campaign for women's suffrage. She recalled that "after equal suffrage I just added voting to cooking and sewing and other household duties."[5]

U.S. Senator edit

Thaddeus Caraway died in office in 1931. Following the precedent of appointing widows to temporarily take their husbands' places, Arkansas governor Harvey Parnell appointed Hattie Caraway to the vacant seat, and she was sworn into office on December 9.

Elections edit

January 1932 edit

With the Democratic Party of Arkansas's backing, she easily won a special election in January 1932 for the remaining months of the term, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate.[6]

1932 edit

In May 1932, Caraway surprised Arkansas politicians by announcing that she would run for a full term in the upcoming election, joining a field already crowded with prominent candidates who had assumed she would step aside. She told reporters, "The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job."[7] When she was invited by Vice President Charles Curtis to preside over the Senate she took advantage of the situation to announce that she would run for reelection. Populist former Governor and Senator Huey Long of neighboring Louisiana traveled to Arkansas on a seven-day campaign swing on her behalf. She was the first female senator to preside over the body as well as the first to chair a committee (Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills).[8] Lacking any significant political backing, Caraway accepted the offer of help from Long, whose efforts to limit incomes of the wealthy and increase aid to the poor she had supported. Long was also motivated by sympathy for the widow and his ambition to extend his influence into the home state of his party rival, Senator Joseph Robinson, who had been Al Smith's vice-presidential candidate in 1928. Bringing his colorful and flamboyant campaign style to Arkansas, Long stumped the state with Caraway for a week just before the Democratic primary. He helped her to amass nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent.[4][page needed]

Long effectively used a method to quiet crying babies at campaign stops in Arkansas to encourage voter interest:

Mrs. Caraway would never forget nor cease to laugh over the plans we made for caring for obstreperous infants in the audience so that their mothers might listen to the speeches without the crowds being disturbed. I remember when I saw her notice one of our campaigners take charge of the first baby. The child began fretting and then began to cry. One of the young men accompanying us immediately gave it a drink of water. The child quieted for a bit and resumed a whimper, whereupon the same campaign worker handed the baby an all-day sucker, which it immediately grasped and soon fell asleep. Mrs. Caraway did not understand that it was a matter of design until it had been repeated several times.[9]

Caraway went on to win the general election in November, with the accompanying victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt as U.S. President.[4][page needed]

1938 edit

In 1938, Caraway entered a tough fight for reelection, challenged by Representative John Little McClellan, who argued that a man could more effectively promote the state's interests using the slogan, "Arkansas Needs Another Man in the Senate!"[3] With backing from government employees, women's groups, and unions, Caraway won a narrow victory in the primary and took the general election with 89.4 percent of the vote over the Republican C. D. Atkinson of Fayetteville in Washington County. In doing so, she became not only the first woman to be elected to the Senate, but also the first to be re-elected.[3]

1944 edit

In her bid for reelection in 1944, Caraway placed a poor fourth in the Democratic primary and lost to freshman U.S. Representative J. William Fulbright of Arkansas's 3rd congressional district. He was the young, dynamic former president of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville who had already gained a national reputation. To claim the seat, Fulbright defeated sitting Governor Homer Martin Adkins and then the Republican Victor Wade of Batesville. The lack of visibility with her constituents may have been the primary reason that Caraway lost the 1944 nomination.[10]

Tenure edit

Caraway's Senate committee assignments included Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, and Enrolled Bills and Library, which she chaired. She sustained a special interest in relief for farmers, flood control, and veterans' benefits, all of direct concern to her constituents, and cast her votes for nearly every New Deal measure. In 1938, she joined fellow Southerners in a filibuster against an anti-lynching bill that year. Although she carefully prepared herself for Senate work, Caraway spoke infrequently and rarely made speeches on the floor but built a reputation as an honest and sincere senator. She was sometimes portrayed by patronizing reporters as "Silent Hattie" or "the quiet grandmother who never said anything or did anything." She explained her reticence as unwillingness "to take a minute away from the men. The poor dears love it so."[11]

During her tenure in the Senate, three other women – Long's widow, Rose McConnell Long, Dixie Bibb Graves, and Gladys Pyle – held brief tenures of two years or less in the Senate, but none of them overlapped, and so there were never more than two women in the body. She supported Roosevelt's foreign policy, arguing for his Lend-Lease bill from her perspective as a mother with two sons in the United States Army. While encouraging women to contribute to the war effort, Caraway insisted that caring for the home and family was a woman's primary task. Yet her consciousness of women's disadvantages was evident as early as 1931, when, upon being assigned the same Senate desk that had been briefly occupied by the first widow ever appointed to take her husband's place, she commented privately, "I guess they wanted as few of them contaminated as possible." Moreover, in 1943, Caraway became the first woman legislator to cosponsor the Equal Rights Amendment.[4][page needed] In early 1944, she was an early sponsor of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the G.I. Bill. However, by supporting the bill, she placed herself in opposition to powerful congressmen who condemned the bill for being socialist.[3]

On her final day in the Senate, she received a rare standing ovation from her all-male colleagues.[3] Roosevelt then appointed her to the Employees' Compensation Commission, and in 1946, President Harry S. Truman gave her a post on the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board, on which she served until suffering a stroke in January 1950.[7][12] She died on December 21 of the same year in Falls Church, Virginia,[7] and was buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in Jonesboro, Arkansas.[12]

Legacy edit

 
Grave of Hattie Caraway

Caraway was a prohibitionist and voted against anti-lynching legislation along with other Southern Democratic senators.[7] She was generally a supporter of the New Deal. Caraway's defiance of the Arkansas establishment in insisting that she was more than a temporary stand-in for her husband enabled her to set a valuable precedent for women in politics. Although she remained at the margins of power, Caraway's diligent and capable attention to Senate responsibilities won the respect of her colleagues, encouraged advocates of wider public roles for women, and demonstrated that political skills were not the exclusive property of men.[4][page needed]

On February 21, 2001, the United States Postal Service issued a 76-cent Distinguished Americans series postage stamp in her honor.[13] Her gravesite at Oaklawn Cemetery in Jonesboro, Arkansas, was listed in 2007 on the National Register of Historic Places.[14]

Notes edit

  1. ^ Kathryn Cullen-DuPont (2009). Encyclopedia of Women's History in America, 2nd ed. Infobase Publishing. pp. 40–41. ISBN 978-1-4381-1033-2. from the original on June 30, 2020. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  2. ^ Snyder, Robert E. (1975). "Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 16 (2): 129. JSTOR 4231456. from the original on November 2, 2020. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Hattie Caraway, the First Woman Elected to the U.S. Senate, Faced a Familiar Struggle With Gender Politics". Smithsonian Magazine. from the original on January 8, 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e Hendricks, Nancy (April 9, 2013). Senator Hattie Caraway: An Arkansas Legacy. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-60949-968-6.
  5. ^ Suzi Parker, "Bill Clinton's native Arkansas no friend to women," Washington Post March 27, 2012 August 18, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ "U.S. Senate: Women Senators". www.senate.gov. Retrieved May 11, 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d "CARAWAY, Hattie Wyatt | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". history.house.gov. from the original on February 15, 2019. Retrieved February 15, 2019.
  8. ^ "Women in Congress: Statistics and Brief Overview" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. December 6, 2019. p. 13. (PDF) from the original on January 23, 2020. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  9. ^ Huey Pierce Long, Jr., Every Man a King: The Autobiography of Huey P. Long (New Orleans: National Book Club, Inc., 1933), pp. 313–314.
  10. ^ Weatherford, Doris (October 13, 2009). American Women during World War II: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-203-87066-2. from the original on January 20, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
  11. ^ Molly A. Mayhead; Brenda DeVore Marshall (2005). Women's Political Discourse: A 21st-Century Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-4616-2244-4.
  12. ^ a b Crawford, Julienne (January 7, 2022). "Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway (1878–1950)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved May 11, 2022.
  13. ^ "Arago: 76-cent Hattie W. Caraway". arago.si.edu. from the original on February 16, 2019. Retrieved February 15, 2019.
  14. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.

Further reading edit

  • Hattie Wyatt Caraway Papers University of Arkansas, Special Collections Department, MS C176

Primary source edit

  • Silent Hattie Speaks: The Personal Journal of Senator Hattie Caraway, edited by Diane D. Kincaid (1979), ISBN 978-0-313-20820-1

References edit

hattie, caraway, hattie, ophelia, wyatt, caraway, february, 1878, december, 1950, american, politician, became, first, woman, elected, serve, full, term, united, states, senator, caraway, represented, arkansas, first, woman, preside, over, senate, reelection, . Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway February 1 1878 December 21 1950 was an American politician who became the first woman elected to serve a full term as a United States Senator Caraway represented Arkansas She was the first woman to preside over the Senate She won reelection to a full term in 1932 with the active support of fellow Senator Huey Long of neighboring Louisiana 1 2 Hattie Wyatt CarawayCaraway in 1940United States Senatorfrom ArkansasIn office November 13 1931 January 3 1945Preceded byThaddeus CarawaySucceeded byWilliam FulbrightPersonal detailsBornHattie Ophelia Wyatt 1878 02 01 February 1 1878Bakerville Tennessee U S DiedDecember 21 1950 1950 12 21 aged 72 Falls Church Virginia U S Political partyDemocraticSpouseThaddeus Caraway m 1902 died 1931 wbr Children3 including PaulEducationEbenezer CollegeDickson Normal College BA Contents 1 Early life 2 U S Senator 2 1 Elections 2 1 1 January 1932 2 1 2 1932 2 1 3 1938 2 1 4 1944 2 2 Tenure 3 Legacy 4 Notes 5 Further reading 5 1 Primary source 6 ReferencesEarly life edit nbsp Hattie Caraway in 1914 Hattie Wyatt was born near rural Bakerville in Humphreys County in west central Tennessee the daughter of William Carroll Wyatt a farmer and shopkeeper and the former Lucy Mildred Burch At the age of four she moved with her family to Hustburg in Humphreys County Despite her family s relative poverty she had always hoped to pursue higher education which was made possible through the generosity of a wealthy aunt 3 After attending a one room schoolhouse and Ebenezer Church in Hustburg she transferred to Dickson Tennessee Normal College wherein 1896 she received her Bachelor of Arts degree She taught school for a time before in 1902 marrying Thaddeus Caraway whom she had met in college They had three sons Paul Forrest and Robert Paul and Forrest became generals in the United States Army The couple settled in Jonesboro Arkansas where he established a legal practice while she cared for the children tended the household and kitchen garden and helped to oversee the family s cotton farm 4 page needed The Caraways established a second home Riversdale at Riverdale Park Maryland Thaddeus was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1912 and he served in that office until 1921 when he became a U S senator Although she took an interest in her husband s political career Hattie Caraway avoided the capital s social and political life as well as the campaign for women s suffrage She recalled that after equal suffrage I just added voting to cooking and sewing and other household duties 5 U S Senator editThaddeus Caraway died in office in 1931 Following the precedent of appointing widows to temporarily take their husbands places Arkansas governor Harvey Parnell appointed Hattie Caraway to the vacant seat and she was sworn into office on December 9 Elections edit January 1932 edit With the Democratic Party of Arkansas s backing she easily won a special election in January 1932 for the remaining months of the term becoming the first woman elected to the Senate 6 1932 edit Main article 1932 United States Senate election in Arkansas In May 1932 Caraway surprised Arkansas politicians by announcing that she would run for a full term in the upcoming election joining a field already crowded with prominent candidates who had assumed she would step aside She told reporters The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job 7 When she was invited by Vice President Charles Curtis to preside over the Senate she took advantage of the situation to announce that she would run for reelection Populist former Governor and Senator Huey Long of neighboring Louisiana traveled to Arkansas on a seven day campaign swing on her behalf She was the first female senator to preside over the body as well as the first to chair a committee Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills 8 Lacking any significant political backing Caraway accepted the offer of help from Long whose efforts to limit incomes of the wealthy and increase aid to the poor she had supported Long was also motivated by sympathy for the widow and his ambition to extend his influence into the home state of his party rival Senator Joseph Robinson who had been Al Smith s vice presidential candidate in 1928 Bringing his colorful and flamboyant campaign style to Arkansas Long stumped the state with Caraway for a week just before the Democratic primary He helped her to amass nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent 4 page needed Long effectively used a method to quiet crying babies at campaign stops in Arkansas to encourage voter interest Mrs Caraway would never forget nor cease to laugh over the plans we made for caring for obstreperous infants in the audience so that their mothers might listen to the speeches without the crowds being disturbed I remember when I saw her notice one of our campaigners take charge of the first baby The child began fretting and then began to cry One of the young men accompanying us immediately gave it a drink of water The child quieted for a bit and resumed a whimper whereupon the same campaign worker handed the baby an all day sucker which it immediately grasped and soon fell asleep Mrs Caraway did not understand that it was a matter of design until it had been repeated several times 9 Caraway went on to win the general election in November with the accompanying victory of Franklin D Roosevelt as U S President 4 page needed 1938 edit Main article 1938 United States Senate election in Arkansas In 1938 Caraway entered a tough fight for reelection challenged by Representative John Little McClellan who argued that a man could more effectively promote the state s interests using the slogan Arkansas Needs Another Man in the Senate 3 With backing from government employees women s groups and unions Caraway won a narrow victory in the primary and took the general election with 89 4 percent of the vote over the Republican C D Atkinson of Fayetteville in Washington County In doing so she became not only the first woman to be elected to the Senate but also the first to be re elected 3 1944 edit Main article 1944 United States Senate election in Arkansas In her bid for reelection in 1944 Caraway placed a poor fourth in the Democratic primary and lost to freshman U S Representative J William Fulbright of Arkansas s 3rd congressional district He was the young dynamic former president of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville who had already gained a national reputation To claim the seat Fulbright defeated sitting Governor Homer Martin Adkins and then the Republican Victor Wade of Batesville The lack of visibility with her constituents may have been the primary reason that Caraway lost the 1944 nomination 10 Tenure edit Caraway s Senate committee assignments included Agriculture and Forestry Commerce and Enrolled Bills and Library which she chaired She sustained a special interest in relief for farmers flood control and veterans benefits all of direct concern to her constituents and cast her votes for nearly every New Deal measure In 1938 she joined fellow Southerners in a filibuster against an anti lynching bill that year Although she carefully prepared herself for Senate work Caraway spoke infrequently and rarely made speeches on the floor but built a reputation as an honest and sincere senator She was sometimes portrayed by patronizing reporters as Silent Hattie or the quiet grandmother who never said anything or did anything She explained her reticence as unwillingness to take a minute away from the men The poor dears love it so 11 During her tenure in the Senate three other women Long s widow Rose McConnell Long Dixie Bibb Graves and Gladys Pyle held brief tenures of two years or less in the Senate but none of them overlapped and so there were never more than two women in the body She supported Roosevelt s foreign policy arguing for his Lend Lease bill from her perspective as a mother with two sons in the United States Army While encouraging women to contribute to the war effort Caraway insisted that caring for the home and family was a woman s primary task Yet her consciousness of women s disadvantages was evident as early as 1931 when upon being assigned the same Senate desk that had been briefly occupied by the first widow ever appointed to take her husband s place she commented privately I guess they wanted as few of them contaminated as possible Moreover in 1943 Caraway became the first woman legislator to cosponsor the Equal Rights Amendment 4 page needed In early 1944 she was an early sponsor of the Servicemen s Readjustment Act of 1944 popularly known as the G I Bill However by supporting the bill she placed herself in opposition to powerful congressmen who condemned the bill for being socialist 3 On her final day in the Senate she received a rare standing ovation from her all male colleagues 3 Roosevelt then appointed her to the Employees Compensation Commission and in 1946 President Harry S Truman gave her a post on the Employees Compensation Appeals Board on which she served until suffering a stroke in January 1950 7 12 She died on December 21 of the same year in Falls Church Virginia 7 and was buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in Jonesboro Arkansas 12 Legacy edit nbsp Grave of Hattie Caraway Caraway was a prohibitionist and voted against anti lynching legislation along with other Southern Democratic senators 7 She was generally a supporter of the New Deal Caraway s defiance of the Arkansas establishment in insisting that she was more than a temporary stand in for her husband enabled her to set a valuable precedent for women in politics Although she remained at the margins of power Caraway s diligent and capable attention to Senate responsibilities won the respect of her colleagues encouraged advocates of wider public roles for women and demonstrated that political skills were not the exclusive property of men 4 page needed On February 21 2001 the United States Postal Service issued a 76 cent Distinguished Americans series postage stamp in her honor 13 Her gravesite at Oaklawn Cemetery in Jonesboro Arkansas was listed in 2007 on the National Register of Historic Places 14 Notes edit Kathryn Cullen DuPont 2009 Encyclopedia of Women s History in America 2nd ed Infobase Publishing pp 40 41 ISBN 978 1 4381 1033 2 Archived from the original on June 30 2020 Retrieved July 11 2016 Snyder Robert E 1975 Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936 Louisiana History The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 16 2 129 JSTOR 4231456 Archived from the original on November 2 2020 Retrieved November 30 2020 a b c d e Hattie Caraway the First Woman Elected to the U S Senate Faced a Familiar Struggle With Gender Politics Smithsonian Magazine Archived from the original on January 8 2020 Retrieved January 17 2020 a b c d e Hendricks Nancy April 9 2013 Senator Hattie Caraway An Arkansas Legacy The History Press ISBN 978 1 60949 968 6 Suzi Parker Bill Clinton s native Arkansas no friend to women Washington Post March 27 2012 Archived August 18 2019 at the Wayback Machine U S Senate Women Senators www senate gov Retrieved May 11 2022 a b c d CARAWAY Hattie Wyatt US House of Representatives History Art amp Archives history house gov Archived from the original on February 15 2019 Retrieved February 15 2019 Women in Congress Statistics and Brief Overview PDF Congressional Research Service December 6 2019 p 13 Archived PDF from the original on January 23 2020 Retrieved January 9 2020 Huey Pierce Long Jr Every Man a King The Autobiography of Huey P Long New Orleans National Book Club Inc 1933 pp 313 314 Weatherford Doris October 13 2009 American Women during World War II An Encyclopedia Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 0 203 87066 2 Archived from the original on January 20 2021 Retrieved November 11 2020 Molly A Mayhead Brenda DeVore Marshall 2005 Women s Political Discourse A 21st Century Perspective Rowman amp Littlefield p 47 ISBN 978 1 4616 2244 4 a b Crawford Julienne January 7 2022 Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway 1878 1950 Encyclopedia of Arkansas Retrieved May 11 2022 Arago 76 cent Hattie W Caraway arago si edu Archived from the original on February 16 2019 Retrieved February 15 2019 National Register Information System National Register of Historic Places National Park Service July 9 2010 Further reading editHattie Wyatt Caraway Papers University of Arkansas Special Collections Department MS C176 Primary source edit Silent Hattie Speaks The Personal Journal of Senator Hattie Caraway edited by Diane D Kincaid 1979 ISBN 978 0 313 20820 1References edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hattie Caraway US Senator United States Congress Hattie Caraway id C000138 Biographical Directory of the United States Congress U S Senate Preceded byThaddeus H Caraway United States Senator Class 3 from Arkansas1931 1945 Served alongside Joseph Taylor Robinson John E Miller G Lloyd Spencer John McClellan Succeeded byJ William Fulbright Preceded byArthur Vandenberg Chair of the Senate Enrolled Bills Committee1933 1945 Succeeded byCharles Andrews Party political offices Preceded byThaddeus H Caraway Democratic nominee for U S Senator from Arkansas Class 3 1932 special 1932 general 1938 Succeeded byJ William Fulbright Portals nbsp Biography nbsp United States nbsp Education nbsp Politics Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Hattie Caraway amp oldid 1180740965, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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