Government and Politics

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Entry Category: Government and Politics - Starting with L

Labor Movement

Soon after Arkansas’s 1836 admission to the Union, wage workers in the state began uniting for their mutual economic and political benefit. Throughout the nineteenth century, these associations—commonly called trade unions—tended to be short lived and unstable, reflecting the dominance of agriculture in Arkansas’s economy. But in the twentieth century, as industry began gaining a toehold in the state, the labor movement began improving the lives of wage workers through collective bargaining and by securing passage of legislation in the interest of all workers. Although weak when compared with their counterparts in more industrialized states, Arkansas’s trade unions were at the forefront of every significant wave of reform in the state during the twentieth century—the Progressive Era, the New Deal, …

Lafferty, John

John Lafferty was, according to several sources, the first known white settler of record in Izard County and an eyewitness to the effects of the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812 along the White River. John Lafferty was born in Donegal, Ireland, in 1759. His parents’ names are unknown. Lafferty grew up in Rutherford County, North Carolina. Lafferty signed the papers of the First Council of Safety of the Revolutionary Party in South Carolina in November 1775 and enlisted in a volunteer company of militia under Captain William Fullwood during the American Revolutionary War. For his service, he recived a land grand of 1,000 acres in the Camden District of South Carolina. At some point, Lafferty married Sarah Lindsey, who was …

Lake Dick

The area of Lake Dick, a U-shaped oxbow lake in Jefferson County, was the site of a New Deal program in agriculture during the first administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The experiment involved the “resettlement” of struggling urban and farm families. How the lake got its name has been a source of speculation. Located one mile west of Arkansas Highway 88 and four miles south of Altheimer (Jefferson County), Lake Dick was at one time the site of farmsteads for some eighty white families who had been moved into the area. In 1936, the Resettlement Administration—later to be made a part of the Farm Security Administration—acquired 3,453 acres of farmland in Jefferson County with the twin goals of establishing …

Laman, William Fewell “Casey”

William Fewell “Casey” Laman exerted a vigorous—albeit dictatorial—style of leadership during his sixteen-and-a-half-year reign as mayor of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). Serving four terms from 1958 through 1972, and the balance of an unfilled mayoral term from 1979 through 1980, he modernized one of the state’s most populous cities by directing millions of federal, state, and local dollars for housing, education, recreation, and infrastructure. Casey Laman was born on October 20, 1913, on a farm north of Jacksonville (Pulaski County) to James Newton Laman and Anna Fewell Laman; he had two siblings. His father was a machinist-helper for the Missouri Pacific Railway Company and later opened a furniture store and served as an alderman in North Little Rock, where …

Lampkin, Sheilla Joyce Ezelle

Sheilla Lampkin was a state representative from Monticello (Drew County) who served in the Eighty-eighth, Eighty-ninth, and Ninetieth Arkansas General Assemblies from 2011 to 2016.  Sheilla Joyce Ezelle was born on August 23, 1945, in Rohwer, an unincorporated community in Desha County, to Lettie Lucille McIntyre Ezelle and James Edward Ezelle. She received her early education in the Desha Central Schools and graduated as salutatorian from Dumas High School. In 1966, Ezelle graduated magna cum laude from the Arkansas Agricultural and Mechanical College (now the University of Arkansas at Monticello) with a BS in education degree in social studies, and in 1981, she earned a master’s degree in special education from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County).   Ezelle, who had wanted to be a teacher since she was six years old, began her classroom career immediately after graduation. While teaching at McGehee Elementary School in McGehee (Desha County) in 1967, she married Damon Ray Lampkin, who ran …

Laney, Benjamin Travis, Jr.

Benjamin Travis Laney Jr. served two terms as governor of Arkansas. His most notable achievement was the state’s 1945 Revenue Stabilization Law, which prohibited deficit spending. Though he once said, “I am not a politician,” his conservative views put him in the spotlight at a time when the Democratic Party was becoming more liberal. Although he opposed desegregation, the University of Arkansas School of Law became the South’s first all-white public institution to admit black students during his tenure. Ben Laney was born on November 25, 1896, in Jones Chapel (Ouachita County), the son of Benjamin Travis Laney and Martha Ellen Saxon. He was one of eleven children, and his father was a farmer. He entered Hendrix College in Conway …

Langley, Isom P.

During the 1880s and early 1890s, Isom P. Langley was a leading figure in the farmer and labor movements in Arkansas. Active in organizations such as the Agricultural Wheel, which was founded in Des Arc (Prairie County) in 1882, and the Knights of Labor, he ran for the U.S. Congress twice. In 1891, he left Arkansas for Missouri, where he spent the second half of his life and served in the state legislature. Born in Clark County, Arkansas, on September 2, 1851, to Samuel S. Langley and Mary J. Browning Langley, Isom Langley grew up on a farm and was educated in county schools. In 1868, he earned a license to preach, and the following year he became an ordained …

League of Women Voters of Arkansas

aka: Arkansas League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters (LWV), a nonpartisan political organization, encourages informed, active participation in government for all citizens. Although it never supports or opposes any party or candidate, it seeks to influence public policy through education and advocacy. The national League of Women Voters Education Fund is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization that coordinates elections and educational outreach. The League of Women Voters of Arkansas first formed in 1920. However, it folded and reemerged two times, with the last incarnation forming in 1953, organized by Esther Clark. By 2012, in addition to the state league, there were also five local leagues, in Benton County, Fairfield Bay (Van Buren and Cleburne counties), Fort Smith (Sebastian County), Pulaski County, and Washington …

Ledbetter, Calvin Reville (Cal), Jr.

Calvin Reville (Cal) Ledbetter Jr. was a professor, author, politician, and philanthropist. He taught political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) from 1960 to 1997, after which he was named Professor Emeritus of Political Science. He also served five consecutive terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives, from 1967 to 1977. Ledbetter is widely remembered for his dedication to higher education as well as his efforts to foster constitutional reform in Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s. Cal Ledbetter was born on April 29, 1929, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Virginia Ledbetter and Cal Ledbetter Sr. (II); his father served as president of the Boyle Realty Company. Ledbetter received his undergraduate degree from the Woodrow Wilson School …

Levine, Sam M.

Sam M. Levine was a lawyer and politician in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) who served two stints in the Arkansas General Assembly, first in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, each time in the House of Representatives and then the Senate. A leader in the second-largest Jewish community in the state, Levine made history by delivering a filibuster in the Senate in the final minutes of the biennial legislative session in March 1959 that undermined the last efforts of Governor Orval E. Faubus and white supremacists to keep Little Rock (Pulaski County) schools closed to avoid integrating. Levine’s famous thirty-three-minute speech, which began as the clock in the Senate ticked toward noon and adjournment sine die on March 12, …

LGBTQ+ Movement

The social movement in Arkansas in support of rights for LGBTQ+ people (an umbrella term that covers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and more; LGBT was also used in the past) has historically been represented by such legal organizations as Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Lambda Legal, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). This was followed by an increasing organization of LGBTQ+ people in Arkansas, primarily in the emergence of student groups at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and other institutions of higher education. Despite statewide and nationwide strides toward equality under the law, LGBTQ+ Arkansans still face ongoing discrimination—and the fight for rights, safety, and acceptance is far from over. Legal Issues …

Lieutenant Governor, Office of

The office of lieutenant governor did not exist in territorial Arkansas or in the Arkansas constitution of 1836. Instead, the office was first added in 1864 with the Unionist government led by Governor Isaac Murphy. Governors and lieutenant governors (along with several other statewide offices) were to be elected by the voters of the state to four-year terms. The Reconstruction-era constitution of 1868 also included the office of lieutenant governor. The two principal tasks of the lieutenant governor are to preside over the Arkansas Senate and to replace the governor should the governor die in office or resign (as several governors have resigned to assume other elected offices, most often United States senator). On the first occasion when this provision …

Lightfoot, Claude M.

Claude Lightfoot was an Arkansas-born Communist who became involved in politics after moving to Chicago, Illinois. A frequent candidate for public office in Chicago from the 1930s to the 1950s, Lightfoot represents the impact of the Great Migration out of Arkansas and both the possibilities and limitations of black liberation in northern cities. Claude M. Lightfoot was born on January 19, 1910, in Lake Village (Chicot County). His grandmother, who separated from her husband, acquired a farm of her own and raised her twelve children to adulthood. Shortly after Lightfoot’s birth, his parents moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County), where his father worked for a railroad company and his mother as a domestic worker, while young Claude stayed with his …

Lily White Republicans

The post-Reconstruction “Redemption” era witnessed Democratic Party forces sweeping Republicans from all branches of state government in Arkansas. Their regime instituted so-called progressive reforms such as the Election Law of 1891, which disenfranchised many African-American voters, who traditionally supported the Republican Party. From the late 1890s onward, the stigmatized biracial Republican Party remained hopeless underdogs in every statewide electoral contest—and most local ones. Practically the only way Republicans could hope to hold public office remained through federal political patronage appointments. Former governor and state Republican Party leader Powell Clayton controlled the distribution of these federal civil service jobs, which he extended to supporters including African Americans who won his confidence during Reconstruction. By the 1880s, distinct friction had developed between …

Lincoln, Blanche Lambert

Blanche Meyers Lambert Lincoln was a United States senator whose career was marked by firsts and by a desire for bipartisanship. She was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Arkansas since Hattie W. Caraway in 1932, the youngest woman elected to the Senate, and was mentioned as a possible running mate for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in the 2004 election. Blanche Meyers Lambert was born on September 30, 1960, in Helena (Phillips County), hailing from a seventh-generation Arkansas farm family that grew rice, wheat, soybeans, and cotton. Her parents were Jordan Lambert Jr., a farmer, and Martha Kelly Lambert, a homemaker. She attended Helena public schools, and her first elective office was president of the Helena Central …

Lindsey, Bruce Robert

Bruce R. Lindsey is a prominent Arkansas attorney and longtime friend and associate of Bill Clinton. Having first met Clinton when they both worked in the office of Senator J. William Fulbright, Lindsey went on to serve as one of the president’s top aides. Bruce Robert Lindsey was born on March 27, 1948, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Robert Sours Lindsey and Grace Grimme Lindsey. He has one sister. Lindsey’s father was one of the most influential attorneys in Little Rock, as well as a major figure in the city’s Presbyterian Church. Lindsey grew up in Little Rock and received his undergraduate degree from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, followed by a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington …

Little Rock Censor Board

aka: Little Rock Board of Censors
The Little Rock Censor Board operated in Arkansas’s capital city for nearly seventy years trying to regulate forms of entertainment—from literature to movies—to protect citizens from influences perceived to be immoral. As social mores changed and the legality of the board was challenged, it saw its influence diminish, until it quietly disbanded. In the early twentieth century, officials around the country attempted to censor salacious or obscene materials. For example, Memphis’s Board of Censors, created in 1911, was notorious for its harsh rulings, and Maryland established its censor board in 1916, which remained influential until its demise in 198l. The Little Rock Censor Board was created in 1911 by Mayor John S. Odom and the city council in response to …

Little Rock City Hall

Little Rock City Hall is located on the northwestern corner of West Markham and Broadway in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Designed by noted architect Charles L. Thompson, it has been the seat of government for the state’s largest municipality since 1908. Interestingly, the Arkansas Gazette heavily opposed the building’s construction, even suing the city to stop it. The old Little Rock City Hall, constructed in 1867, was located at 120–122 Markham Street, the current location of the Statehouse Convention Center. Twenty years after its construction, the old city hall was in ruins, and calls for a new city hall were voiced. Arkansas Gazette editors wrote at the time, “It is to be noticed too, that our worthy council have not …

Little, John Sebastian

John Sebastian Little was active in Arkansas Democratic Party politics for thirty years, holding the positions of prosecuting attorney, judge, congressman, and finally being elected governor in 1906. Persistent health problems ended his gubernatorial term very early, prompting accelerated efforts to provide the state with an elected lieutenant governor. Born in Jenny Lind (Sebastian County), on March 15, 1851, Little was reputedly the first male child born in the newly created Sebastian County. Known was “Bass” Little, he was the son of Jesse and Elizabeth Tatum Little, pioneer settlers in western Arkansas. He grew up on the family’s farm and attended local schools. In 1871–72, he spent a single term at Cane Hill College in Washington County. For the next …