Henry M. Britt (1919–1995)

Henry M. Britt was the first Republican to be elected as a trial judge in Arkansas since Reconstruction. He served for sixteen years, but his Republican label thwarted his other ambitions for public office in what was a solidly Democratic state at that time. He was the Republican nominee for governor in 1960, but Governor Orval E. Faubus soundly defeated him (although Britt had done better than Republican gubernatorial candidates usually had for the previous seventy years). He helped Winthrop Rockefeller in his four races for governor (two of them successful), and, as Garland County’s circuit judge, he was credited with helping Rockefeller halt casino gambling in Hot Springs (Garland County).

Henry Middleton Britt was born on June 9, 1919, in the village of Olmstead in Pulaski County, Illinois. His father, also Henry Middleton Britt, was a car dealer, and his mother, Sarah Theodosia Roach Britt, was the company’s bookkeeper. He received a BA and a law degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, after putting his studies on hold to serve as an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps during World War II.

Britt married Barbara Jean Holme in 1942 and was admitted to practice law in 1947. His parents and a cousin had moved to Hot Springs, and he opened a law practice there after he moved there with his wife in 1948. The couple would have three daughters. He became an assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Arkansas.

The Britts were diehard and publicly assertive Republicans, at the time a rarity anywhere in the state outside of northwestern Arkansas. At least on the issue of race, they were admirers of Abraham Lincoln, the Illinoisan who went to war to restore the union and free slaves, and of their own contemporary, Senator Everett Dirksen, who ended the Southern filibuster in 1964 and helped enact the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968 during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.

Sometimes with his older cousin, Garrett H. Britt, who also had migrated from Pulaski County, Illinois, Britt championed integrating professional and collegiate sports, notably baseball. After acquiring the Hot Springs Bathers, a longtime team in the Class C Cotton States League with Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), El Dorado (Union County), Helena (Phillips County) and cities in northern Louisiana and Mississippi, the Britts became national newsmakers by trying to play two celebrated Black pitchers from Florida, Jim and Leander Tugerson, against the wishes of the rest of the league, especially the Mississippi franchises, which insisted that the Mississippi state constitution prohibited integration in any form, including athletic teams. When the Tugersons arrived in 1953 in time for a game against Jackson, Mississippi, the league commissioner ordered that Hot Springs forfeit the game if the Black men were listed in the pregame lineup. The battle continued for months as the Britts offered to play the Tugersons only in games against Pine Bluff and El Dorado, where the franchises did not like the idea but agreed to play, at least in games that were played at Hot Springs. The league then expelled the Bathers, but the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues reversed the order, as it did each time the Cotton States League took some action against the Bathers and its Black players. The Britts eventually capitulated and sent the Tugersons to a Class D franchise out of state. In 1955, the Cotton States League folded, but the reason primarily was lack of attendance at the games, a reason that the Britts had used for playing the Tugersons, which brought out big crowds at the Hot Springs ballpark.

Henry Britt also took an interest in local Black athletes—youngsters at Langston, the Black Hot Springs high school, notably Bobby Mitchell, the star of the school’s football, basketball, and track teams, and an older teammate, Charles Butler, a giant lineman. Black athletes in the 1950s could not attend state colleges except those exclusively for Black students. Butler and Mitchell were inclined to attend a Southern college for African Americans, but Britt recruited both for his alma mater, the University of Illinois, where both became Big Ten stars. Mitchell would star at Illinois in track as well as football, setting national and world records with his speed. He went on to play for the Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns.

Politics was Britt’s other passion and a two-party state his goal. Winthrop Rockefeller, whom Faubus had appointed chairman of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission (now the Arkansas Economic Development Commission), had avoided politics, but he ended his bipartisanship and revealed his plans for public office by announcing his endorsement of Britt in his race against Faubus in 1960. After his defeat by Faubus in November, Britt sought the chairmanship of the state Republican Party but was defeated by the conservative William L. Spicer of Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Britt became the party’s general counsel and persuaded Rockefeller that he ought to become the party chairman and launch his own bid for the governorship, which Rockefeller did, first in 1964 and then in three succeeding elections.

Britt was elected circuit judge of the Eighteenth District after promising to use the office to go after illegal gambling, which he said was the scourge of the community. He and Rockefeller were sworn in a few days apart. Another cousin, Maurice L. “Footsie” Britt, a football star and World War II Medal of Honor winner, was persuaded in 1966 to switch parties and run for lieutenant governor as Rockefeller’s running mate. He won and was sworn in with Rockefeller. The Britt cousins, Rockefeller, and John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison (Boone County) in the Third District congressional election were lonely Republican victors in that historic election. Ten years later, in the summer of 1976, when U.S. District Judge (and former congressman) Oren Harris retired, Hammerschmidt urged President Gerald Ford to appoint Henry Britt to the vacant judgeship in the Western District. Democratic senators held up judicial nominations until after the election, so when Georgia governor Jimmy Carter won the presidency in November, the judgeship in the Western District went to Elsijane Trimble Roy of Little Rock (Pulaski County).

As a trial judge, one of Britt’s first orders was for the sheriff’s office and the Arkansas State Police to investigate “bust-out joints”—gambling operations set up to make a quick profit and move on. He collaborated with Rockefeller’s efforts, including Arkansas State Police raids, to shut down the casinos. Britt would claim credit for the “actual closing of the Las Vegas atmosphere” in the county.

Britt directed a stern courtroom, and his rulings made news more often than any court in Arkansas outside Little Rock. In 1978, he barred Ginger Shiras, an Arkansas Gazette reporter, from his chambers when the court adjourned to decide whether to admit a police officer’s testimony in a murder trial. The Gazette asked the state Supreme Court to direct Britt not to exclude reporters and the public from proceedings outside jurors’ hearing. The Supreme Court a year later said Britt should not have excluded the reporter from the in-chambers hearing. Britt said he would run his courtroom as he saw fit.

In 1982, he was defeated for a fifth term by Walter G. Wright. Britt died on February 17, 1995. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Hot Springs.

For additional information:
Associated Press. “Hot Springs Ball Club to Reorganize.” Arkansas Gazette, May 23, 1953, p. 9.

Bailey, Jim. “When the Big 10 Looked South, There Was Mitchell.” Arkansas Gazette, January 16, 1977, p. 3B.

“Britt Still in Contention for Judgeship, Lawmaker Says.” Arkansas Gazette, March 17, 1976, p. 3A.

“Bathers Put Tugersons on Block, Attempt to Stymie Pitcher’s Suit.” Arkansas Gazette, July 22, 1953, p. 15.

Jennings, Jay. “The Black Bathers.” Arkansas Times, July 1991, pp. 40–43, 52–57.

“Negro Players Barred.” New York Times, April 2, 1953, p. 36.

Parker, Suzi. “Henry Middleton Britt.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 18, 1995, p. 6B.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas