Robert C. Knox (1892–1947)

Robert C. Knox, scion of a southern Arkansas family of politicians and lawyers, built a thirty-year legal and political career on advocacy for the Democratic Party and its powerful leaders—notably Governors Charles Hillman Brough and Homer M. Adkins. Adkins appointed Knox in 1942 to his final and preeminent job, justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He was a justice for twenty months, although a heart attack and its impairments limited his service. Before that, he had been the mayor of Monticello (Drew County), briefly the county judge, a chancery judge, an assistant attorney general, a state senator from Pulaski and Perry counties, and chairman of the Arkansas Corporation Commission.

Robert Carr Knox was born on April 19, 1892, in Plantersville, a town north of Monticello, to James Calvin Knox and Effie Matthews Knox. His father had been a lawyer and a state representative from Lincoln County (1903–1904) and had been appointed to fill a chancery judgeship vacancy briefly. His grandfather, a Confederate war veteran, had been a county and probate judge. Knox received an undergraduate degree at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and a law degree from Harvard College and returned to Monticello in 1914 to practice law with his father.

By 1916, at age twenty-four, Knox was the mayor of Monticello and dabbling in higher-stakes politics. At the Democratic State Convention that year, he seconded the nomination of Brough for governor. Governor Brough returned the favor the next year by appointing him county judge of Drew County to fill a vacancy. Attorney General John D. Arbuckle appointed him assistant attorney general in 1919, and he rendered many opinions and also appeared before the Arkansas Supreme Court on several appeals, including the two cases arising from the Elaine Massacre of 1919. Twelve Black men were convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of several white men in a racial confrontation, which resulted in the estimated deaths of hundreds of Black people—the exact number is not known—and a few white vigilantes. Ultimately, all twelve men went free, although the state Supreme Court’s record on the appeals was mixed.

Having moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) for that job after the death of his father and law partner, Knox started a law firm and became attorney for the new Arkansas Corporation Commission and then chairman. In 1922, he ran successfully for an Arkansas Senate seat from Pulaski and Perry counties. It was a pivotal election—and unusually colorful—because it was the peak of the ascendancy of the Ku Klux Klan and the launching of several major political careers. It was considered hopeless that year to run for political office in much of the state—especially Pulaski County—without being a member of the Klan or without its support.

In that campaign, Knox formed a permanent alliance with Homer Adkins, the Klan candidate for Pulaski County sheriff and the dominant force in Arkansas politics during the Great Depression and World War II. Knox was the Klan candidate for the state Senate seat and won handily, along with Adkins. The day of the Democratic primary, the Arkansas Gazette carried a breathless front-page story about the giant Klan rally at City Park (later MacArthur Park) with music, a passionate speech against Catholics and other undesirables by the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, and shorter speeches by candidates such as Knox and Adkins.

Although the newly elected governor, the progressive Thomas C. McRae, was not a Klan member, the new senator from Little Rock said he would support some of McRae’s proposals, including a severance tax on oil and gas production. The tax turned out to be minuscule. Knox had already established a reputation for his legal work in the booming oil business of southern Arkansas. He formed a partnership in the Quapaw Oil Company with C. Hamilton Moses, the future president of the vast regional electric monopoly, Middle South Utilities and Arkansas Power and Light Company (AP&L), its subsidiary.

While he was still representing Pulaski County in the state Senate, Knox moved to El Dorado (Union County), started a law practice with two other lawyers, and married Georgia Boughton. El Dorado was the heart of Arkansas’s booming oilfields, which were the objects of perpetual litigation. He developed a reputation as the most knowledgeable and successful litigator of conflicts involving energy industries. By the 1930s, he was in demand in nearly every election. He was on the Democratic State Committee and then state chairman of the Democratic Party when Homer Adkins was elected governor in 1940. (Adolphine Fletcher Terry of Little Rock was vice chair.) When Adkins appointed him to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1943, the Gazette reported that, among the many appeals of oil disputes in state and federal courts, Knox had successfully defended the constitutionality of the ancient Arkansas statute abolishing the fellow-servant rule, which shielded corporations from lawsuits by injured employees.

His appointment to the court was the capstone of his career but also an unsettling end to a sequence of tragedies. Justice Basil Baker had held the seat since 1934 but was stricken by heart disease and died in office in September 1941. Adkins appointed his friend and supporter Karl Greenhaw to serve until the 1942 election. Ben Carter was elected to the position, but three months into his term he had a fatal heart attack at the age of forty-eight. Soon after Knox’s appointment to the court, he suffered a heart attack. Though sickly, Knox remained on the court until his term ended.

Heart troubles weakened him until he died at a hospital at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on December 8, 1947. He is buried in Oaklawn Memorial Park in El Dorado.

For additional information:
“Exciting Scenes as Campaign Ends.” Arkansas Gazette, August 8, 1922, p. 1.

“Long Illness Takes Robert C. Knox.” Arkansas Gazette, December 9, 1947, p. 9.

“Robert Knox Named to High Court.” Arkansas Gazette, April 21, 1943, p. 1.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas