Charles A. “Charlie” Fleming (1877–1954)

An Irish American born into abject poverty in western Tennessee, Charlie Fleming came to the Arkansas Delta in 1900 as a beggar. His passion for charity and for fighting what he saw as the oppression of the aged and the working poor drove him into politics. He ran for political offices for two decades during and after the Great Depression—for the state legislature and county judge in the 1930s and for governor in 1948—and was elected once to the Arkansas House of Representatives and four times as the county judge of St. Francis County. His only race for a major office, a quixotic campaign for governor in 1948, was a predictable failure. He finished fifth in a nine-man race in the Democratic primaries, eventually won by Sid McMath. He had considered races for governor in 1932 and 1936 under slightly more propitious political circumstances but backed down both times.

Charles Archer Fleming was born on February 7, 1877, at Covington, Tennessee, north of Memphis, across the Mississippi River from St. Francis County. His father, Matt Fleming, had migrated from Ireland during the great famine in the middle of the nineteenth century and found his way to eastern Tennessee, where he married Mary Carr, a Kentucky native. Fleming’s parents farmed and reared seven children, who on federal censuses were recorded as farm laborers, although on one census Fleming’s father identified himself as a “saloon keeper.”

Fleming’s parents eventually separated and led itinerant lives, often with members of their brood, working on farms or in other forms of manual labor, or just begging (“bumming” as Fleming called it)—two years in one place, one season in another. In a rambling memoir that apparently was composed shortly before his death, Fleming described in tedious detail the nature of the labors and of begging and tricking people into supplying him with food or a few cents. He and a friend took a peripatetic journey around Tennessee, into Arkansas, and into Missouri, begging and doing odd jobs. (“I bummed my first meal here and slept in a seed house,” he said.) He described how he once hid an arm in his shirt and pretended to have lost it in a dynamite explosion so a sorrowful housewife would give him some food. He eventually gave up farm labor and worked for a while on railroads in Arkansas and Texas as a “foreman” supervising Black laborers. In 1906, he married Lessie Clark from Hernando, Mississippi; they had five children.

Fleming eventually settled on Crowley’s Ridge, got a farm, opened a small business in the community of Round Pond northeast of Forrest City (St. Francis County), and briefly partly owned a cotton gin. His memoir said he had the equivalent of about one year of school as a youngster but that, while he was working for a railroad as a young man, he took courses at a business college in Dallas, where he used an adding machine and learned how capitalism worked. Fleming soon developed an intellect, a grasp of government policy, and a passion for writing and speaking. For twenty years, the Arkansas Gazette and other newspapers published long letters (thirty-five in the Gazette) raging about the failure of legislators, executive-branch officials, utilities, and big businesses to address the problems of the Great Depression—starvation, floods, government incompetence, and the plight of the aged. He had his own solutions, including income taxes, roadbuilding, cheap power, hot meals for all schoolchildren, stronger regulation and, incongruously, smaller government.

In 1930, when the region was recovering from the Flood of 1927 and then drought, he ran for and was elected state representative from St. Francis County. He was not a meek freshman. He immediately introduced a bill to abolish the state Highway Commission, replace commissioners appointed by governors with commissioners popularly elected from congressional districts, require regular audits, and prohibit commissioners from having a personal interest in any contract. After leaving office in 1933, he called for a special legislative session to enact highway reforms, anticipating the highway audit of 1951 and the Mack-Blackwell Amendment of 1952. He became deeply and bitterly embroiled in the creation of levee districts, the issuance of levee bonds, and the levying of property taxes for levee improvements.

When the 1931 legislative session adjourned without taking up reform bills that Fleming and others demanded, he tried to organize a mass protest demanding that the governor call a special session to cut government spending and waste. Governor Harvey Parnell called Fleming and the others “braying wild jackasses.” In 1932, Fleming did not seek reelection and was elected county judge instead. But he continued to demand reforms from the legislature, although he said he would not be caught dead in the Arkansas legislature. While he was elected county judge, opponents contested his nomination, claiming that he was not a “simon-pure Democrat” but a “fair-weather Democrat.” The state Democratic Party rejected petitions that urged that he be denied the nomination. It had come out that he had voted for Republican Herbert Hoover for president in 1928, which he did not deny.

When he took office as county judge in January 1933, flooding again covered much of the county, and he obtained 150 tents at Little Rock (Pulaski County) and offered tents to anyone who would sign a bond to return it. He set out to use county funds to buy farmland close to Forrest City and move tenants at the county’s remote poorhouse close to Forrest City, where they could receive medical services and daily visits from the county health nurse. He lost his reelection race in 1934 by a narrow margin that was disputed in court for a year owing to hundreds of invalid ballots cast for both candidates, but he regained his position in the 1936 election. He served until 1943. His memoir claimed that he had built 400 miles of gravel roads in the county so that buses could get poor children to school and that he had supplied a thousand garments to poor school children.

Fleming considered running for governor while he was in the House but ran for county judge instead. He announced that he was planning to run for governor in 1936 but yielded to his friend R. A. Cook, who lost to Carl E. Bailey. When he ran for governor in 1948, it was a one-man effort, without any financial or manpower help. He ran as the poor man’s candidate. It was a mantra he used most of his life. After the primaries, Fleming sided with Governor Ben Laney, who endorsed South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond for president on the Dixiecrat (States’ Rights Democratic Party) ticket. Fleming then pronounced himself a Dixiecrat.

He died on May 27, 1954, and is buried at Hughes Cemetery on Crowley’s Ridge north of Forrest City. His tombstone carries the words: “The Poor Man’s Friend.”

For additional information:
“Autobiography of Chas. A. Fleming.” Unpublished manuscript held by descendants, seventeen pages.

“Farm for St. Francis County Paupers Urged.” Arkansas Gazette, March 7, 1933, p. 2.

“Judge Fleming Dies at Home at Forrest City.” Arkansas Gazette, May 28, 1954, p. 1B.

“Legislator Would Abolish Present Commission and Expel All Its Employees.” Arkansas Gazette, March 24, 1932, p. 1.

“Refunding Bill up in House Monday.” Arkansas Gazette, March 26, 1932, p. 3.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas