Entries - Entry Category: Government and Politics

State Treasurer, Office of

aka: Office of Treasurer

The treasurer of Arkansas is the state’s financial officer and one of seven constitutional officers elected at large. Responsibilities of the treasurer, who is part of the executive branch of state government, include receiving and keeping monies collected by the state, managing and investing funds, and disbursing funds according to state law. In 1819, the territorial legislature created the position of treasurer, and the first to serve as territorial treasurer was James Scull. The constitution of 1836 established the position of state treasurer, though it was not a popularly elected position. Instead, the treasurer was selected by a vote of the Arkansas General Assembly. William E. Woodruff, publisher of the Arkansas Gazette, was the first to serve as state treasurer. …

States’ Rights Democratic Party

aka: Dixiecrats

The States’ Rights Democratic Party, popularly known as the Dixiecrats, mounted an unsuccessful third-party bid for the presidency in 1948. This effort was rooted in opposition to the shift in the national Democratic Party’s stance on the issue of civil rights, making Arkansas an important battleground in the 1948 presidential election. The combination of the fall 1947 release of the report of the President’s Commission on Civil Rights (titled “To Secure These Rights”), President Harry Truman’s January address on civil rights, and Truman’s executive order desegregating the armed forces served to bring the issue of race to the forefront of political concerns as 1948 elections approached. Also during this time, federal court rulings had invalidated the Democratic Party’s historic white …

Steelman, John Roy

John Roy Steelman, the son of lower-middle-class cotton farmers, rose to become one of President Harry S. Truman’s best friends and top advisors. He performed valuable government services, sometimes without official title, during the administrations of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Born on June 23, 1900, on a farm near Thornton (Calhoun County) to Pleasant (Ples) Cydney Steelman and Martha Ann Richardson Steelman, John Roy Steelman was the oldest child in a family of six boys and one girl. He finished high school and, through the Department of War’s Student Army Corps established during World War I, was able to attend Henderson-Brown College in Arkadelphia (Clark County). After discharge from the army, he managed to stay …

Stephens, Witt

aka: Wilton Robert Stephens

Wilton Robert Stephens founded Stephens Inc., which once was the largest brokerage firm off Wall Street. He was a prime mover in the development of the natural gas industry after World War II and exerted great influence on the political and economic fortunes of Arkansas during the second half of the twentieth century. Witt Stephens was born on September 14, 1907, in Prattsville (Grant County), the second of six children of A. J. “Jack” Stephens and Ethel Pumphrey Stephens. His father was a farmer and politician who served two terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives from Grant County, as would Witt thirty years later (being elected to two terms in the House starting in 1961). The elder Stephens directly …

Stephenson, M. L.

M. L. Stephenson, a Union officer from Illinois, fought in several major Civil War battles in Missouri and Arkansas, was wounded three times, and eventually settled on a law career in Arkansas that climaxed in a very brief but eventful term on the Arkansas Supreme Court, where he participated in one of the critical episodes and law cases of the post–Civil War era—the dispute that became the Brooks-Baxter War. Stephenson was one of the Republican justices who ruled that Joseph Brooks, not Elisha Baxter, had been elected governor in 1872—a decision that President Ulysses S. Grant effectively reversed. Marshall Lovejoy (M. L.) Stephenson was born on March 29, 1838, in rural Nicholas County, Kentucky, northeast of Lexington. His parents, Robertus …

Stirman, Erasmus Irving

Arkansas native Erasmus Irving Stirman was a Confederate colonel during the Civil War who, after the hostilities, became a successful politician and lawyer. Erasmus Irving Stirman was born in Benton County on April 16, 1839, soon after his parents, Alfred Addison Stirman and Pauline Fry Stirman, had crossed the state line, moving from Palmyra, Missouri, to Fayetteville (Washington County), where they would establish a mercantile business. Ras Stirman was orphaned at a young age but attended Arkansas College in Fayetteville and worked as a store clerk as he studied to prepare to attend the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Those plans ended when Arkansas seceded from the Union, and he enlisted as a sergeant in the “Pike Guards,” which …

Stovall, Bill H. III

Bill H. Stovall III was a leader of the Arkansas House of Representatives in the early part of the twenty-first century. After term limits restricted his time in office, he served on the staff of the House Speaker for almost a decade. Bill H. Stovall III was born on February 21, 1960, in Blytheville (Mississippi County) to Bill H. Stovall Jr. and Vivian Lee Stovall. He earned an Associate of Arts degree from Pulaski Technical College, a BA in political science from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and a Master of Liberal Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Stovall later settled in Quitman (Cleburne and Faulkner counties). In 1992, he won the first of …

Stroger, John Herman, Jr.

John Herman Stroger Jr. was an Arkansas native who became a powerful figure in Illinois government and politics, especially in Chicago. He became the first African-American president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. John H. Stroger Jr. was born on May 19, 1926, in Helena (Phillips County) to Ella Stroger and John H. Stroger Sr. He attended the local all-black elementary school as well as Eliza Miller High School, from which he graduated in 1949. He attended the Catholic and historically black Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana, receiving a BS in business administration in 1953. After graduation, Stroger briefly taught school, coached, and worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). However, at the urging …

Stuck, Dorothy

Dorothy Stuck became a newspaper publisher, civic activist, and governmental official in the latter half of the twentieth century. Both as a private citizen and journalist, she was a consistent and unwavering voice calling for equal rights for all in Arkansas in the 1950s and 1960s. Dorothy Willard Davis was born on February 5, 1921, in Gravette (Benton County) to Floyd Davis and Mimi Davis. She spent most of her youth in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and graduated from high school there in 1939. She then returned to Arkansas to attend the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), from which she graduated in 1943. While at UA, she majored in history and was a member of the Pi Beta Phi …

Sundown Towns

aka: Racial Cleansing

Between 1890 and 1968, thousands of towns across the United States drove out their black populations or took steps to forbid African Americans from living in them. Thus were created “sundown towns,” so named because many marked their city limits with signs typically reading, “Nigger, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On You In Alix”—an Arkansas town in Franklin County that had such a sign around 1970. By 1970, when sundown towns were at their peak, more than half of all incorporated communities outside the traditional South probably excluded African Americans, including probably more than a hundred towns in the northwestern two-thirds of Arkansas. White residents of the traditional South rarely engaged in the practice; they kept African Americans down …

Sunken Lands

The term “sunken lands” (also called “sunk lands” or “sunk country”) refers to parts of Craighead, Mississippi, and Poinsett counties that shifted and sank during the New Madrid earthquakes which took place between 1811 and 1812. Because the land was submerged under water, claims to property based on riparian rights by large landowners generated controversy which lasted decades and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. When the New Madrid earthquakes began in December 1811, the territory which is today northeastern Arkansas was sparsely populated. An early chronicler described the earthquakes’ effect as the ground moving like waves on the land, when suddenly the earth would burst, sending up huge volumes of water and sand, leaving chasms where the earth had …

Supreme Court of Arkansas

aka: Arkansas Supreme Court

The jurisdiction and power of the Arkansas Supreme Court is controlled by Article VII, Section 4 of the Arkansas constitution as amended in 2000 by Amendment 80. Under this section, the Arkansas Supreme Court generally has only appellate jurisdiction, meaning it typically hears cases that are appealed from trial courts. The Arkansas Supreme Court also has general superintending control over all inferior courts of law and equity. The Arkansas Supreme Court’s jurisdiction includes all appeals involving the interpretation or construction of the state constitution; criminal appeals in which the death penalty or life imprisonment has been imposed; petitions relating to the actions of state, county, or municipal officials or circuit courts; appeals pertaining to election matters; appeals involving attorney or …

Tackett, Boyd Anderson

Boyd Anderson Tackett was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fourth District of Arkansas in the Eight-First and Eighty-Second Congresses, serving from 1949 to 1953. Boyd A. Tackett was born near Black Springs (Montgomery County) on May 9, 1911, to John Stark Tackett and Myrtle Sandlin Tackett. As a young boy, he moved with his family to Glenwood (Pike County). He attended Arkansas Polytechnic College (now Arkansas Tech University) in Russellville (Pope County) from 1930 to 1932, as well as Ouachita College (now Ouachita Baptist University) in Arkadelphia (Clark County) during the 1932–33 school year. He graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1935. Later that same …

Tahlonteskee

aka: Tolluntuskee

Tahlonteskee, whose name is roughly translated as “Common Disturber” or “Upsetter,” was the principal civil chief of the Arkansas Cherokee when they coalesced in the Arkansas River Valley about 1812. As the Arkansas Cherokee’s most respected member until his death in 1819, he represented them in their struggle to acquire legal control over lands in Arkansas and to secure relief from threats from both Osage and American settler incursions. Son of a mixed-race couple, Tahlonteskee was Lower Town Cherokee (a group located primarily in what is now western South Carolina) and a supporter of efforts to stop American advances into Cherokee country after the Revolutionary War. In Cherokee opinion, Americans failed to keep previous agreements and treaty provisions and relentlessly …

Takatoka

aka: Ticketoke
aka: Ta-Ka-To-Kuh
aka: De'gata'ga
aka: Degadoga

Takatoka (whose name is spelled various ways in records of the time and in later histories) was one of the leaders of the Cherokee nation in Arkansas during the early years of the nineteenth century. He led warriors in battle against the Osage living in Arkansas, and he also represented the Cherokee in meetings and in negotiations with the U.S. government. Details of Takatoka’s early life are not available, but he was estimated to be around sixty-five years old when he met with Christian missionary Cephas Washburn in 1820. Takatoka was evidently a member of the group led by Tahlonteskee that crossed the Mississippi River to settle in the Missouri Territory, as encouraged by the U.S. government. The New Madrid …

Taylor, Charles Edward

Charles Edward Taylor, Progressive reform mayor of Little Rock (Pulaski County) from 1911 to 1919, brought a new sense of responsibility to city government and directed a wide range of reforms that transformed Little Rock from a nineteenth-century river town into a twentieth-century modern municipality. Charles Taylor was born on September 15, 1868, in Austin, Mississippi, the son of William Arbuckle and Mary Perkins Taylor. During the mid-1870s, the Taylors moved to eastern Arkansas, where W. A. Taylor died. The family then moved to Little Rock when Charles was around twelve. After attending Scott Street High School and taking a bookkeeping course at a local business school, Taylor went to work to help support his mother and sister. He clerked …

Taylor, Chester William

Chester William Taylor was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Sixth District of Arkansas in the Sixty-Seventh Congress, serving from 1921 to 1923. Chester W. Taylor was born in Verona, Mississippi, on July 16, 1883, to Samuel Mitchell Taylor and Mary Bell Taylor. The family moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in 1887, and Taylor received his early education in the public schools. Upon graduation from high school, he studied law at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Returning to Arkansas after completing his legal studies, he worked in the wholesale lumber business for a number of years. From there, he embarked on a career in state government, serving as deputy state auditor from 1908 …

Taylor, George Edwin

George Edwin Taylor was a native of Arkansas and the first African-American standard-bearer of a national political party to run for the office of president of the United States. George Edwin Taylor was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on August 4, 1857, to Bryant (Nathan) Taylor, a slave, and Amanda Hines, a “free Negro” woman; he had eleven siblings, none of whom are known by name. Nothing is known about his parents, except Amanda Hines was forced to leave Arkansas in 1859 in compliance with the state’s Free Negro Expulsion Act, signed into law on February 12, 1859. She fled with infant Taylor to Alton, Illinois, a major center of the Underground Railroad. Little is known about Taylor’s time …

Taylor, Samuel Mitchell

Samuel Mitchell Taylor was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Sixth District of Arkansas in the Sixty-Third through the Sixty-Sixth Congresses, serving from 1913 to 1921. The oldest of ten children, Samuel Mitchell Taylor was born on May 25, 1852, near Fulton, Mississippi. His parents were Louisa Keyes Taylor and Clark W. Taylor, owners of a large successful plantation near Fulton. With the Civil War affecting the family’s finances, Taylor received what education he could in the local public schools before pursuing the study of law. He was admitted to the state bar in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he started a practice in 1876. Initially, he was associated with Judge W. D. Jones in the …

Tebbetts, Jonas March

Jonas March Tebbetts of Fayetteville (Washington County) was a prominent lawyer, judge, and politician known for his abhorrence of slavery and support for the Union during the Civil War. His aid to Union forces led to his later arrest by Confederates, who condemned him to death. But fortuitous circumstances led to his freedom, and he lived a long life. Jonas M. Tebbetts was born on January 5, 1820, in Rochester, New Hampshire, one of five sons of Enoch Tebbetts and Anne Roberts Tebbetts. Tebbetts attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. At sixteen, he was working as a marketing agent selling copies of The Family Expositor by English religious nonconformist Philip Doddridge. As a salesman, he traveled throughout New England, …

Ten Percent Plan (Reconstruction)

The Ten Percent Plan was the first official Reconstruction policy unveiled by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. The policy was announced by President Lincoln in December 1863 and was aimed at shortening the war by offering comparatively merciful terms for Confederate states to leave the Confederacy and rejoin the Union. Through this plan, Arkansas Unionists would begin the process of forming a new, loyal state government recognized by federal officials. After the fall of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County) to the Union army in 1863, Arkansas was effectively split into zones under Union control and Confederate control. Unionists were emboldened by the success of the U.S. Army and began working to solidify the collapse …

Term Limits

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the American political scene was swept by a growing anti-incumbent fervor. Individually, incumbents at both the state and national level continued to win reelection in overwhelming numbers, but reformers sought to address the discontent by seeking legislation and constitutional amendments, usually through statewide referenda, that sought to impose strict term limits on office holders at both the state and congressional levels. Between 1990 and 1994, more than twenty states, including Arkansas, chose to impose limits on the length of time their representatives could serve in both the state legislature and in Congress. In a November 1992 referendum, the Arkansas electorate approved a measure that became Amendment 73 to the state constitution, which imposed …

Terral, Thomas Jefferson

Lawyer and politician Thomas Jefferson Terral served the state of Arkansas as a two-term secretary of state and a governor from 1925 to 1927. Terral used his governorship to push for economic reforms and stability. Thomas Jefferson Terral was born in Union Parish, Louisiana, on December 21, 1882, to George W. and Celia Terral. His father was a planter and merchant. Terral had numerous siblings. At the time of his death in 1946, two sisters and three brothers were living in Arkansas. Beginning his education at the University of Kentucky, Terral transferred to the law school at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). Graduating in 1910, Terral quickly entered the Arkansas bar, establishing a law practice in …

Terry, David Dickson

David Dickson Terry was a U.S. congressman for nine years. His most important contributions in that body were directed toward his home city of Little Rock (Pulaski County), where his family had a history of active involvement in political and community affairs. His work in the U.S. House of Representatives helped establish a series of Arkansas River dams. He is also remembered for his long association with local institutions such as the Little Rock Boys Club. Born in Little Rock on January 31, 1881, David D. Terry was the son of William Leake Terry, a lawyer and U.S. congressman, and Mollie C. Dickson Terry. He had two brothers, as well as a half sister born to his father’s second wife …

Terry, William Leake

William Leake Terry was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fourth District of Arkansas from 1891 to 1901, beginning in the Fifty-Second Congress and extending through the Fifty-Sixth Congress. William L. Terry was born on September 27, 1850, near Wadesboro, North Carolina, to William Leake Terry and Mary Parsons Terry. Terry and his family moved to Tippah County, Mississippi, in 1857. After his mother’s death in 1861, he and his father moved to Pulaski County, Arkansas. Terry was orphaned by 1865 and became the ward of his uncle, Colonel Francis A. Terry, who provided for his education, first at Bingham’s Military Academy in North Carolina and then at Trinity College in North Carolina. He …

Thompson, Green Walter

Green Walter Thompson was a major African-American political leader and businessman in Little Rock (Pulaski County) from the end of the Civil War until his death. Green Thompson was born Green Elliott, a slave on the Robert Elliottt farm in Ouachita County. Nothing is known of his early life, though his tombstone lists a birth date of August 15, 1847. A birth year of 1848 is estimated from documents accumulated later in his life. The 1880 census records him as a “mulatto,” so it is likely a white man fathered him. His mother eventually married a slave named Thompson, and Green Elliott took his stepfather’s name. While a teenager, he married a slave named Dora Hildreth; they soon had a …

Thornton, Raymond Hoyt (Ray), Jr.

Law professor Raymond (Ray) Hoyt Thornton Jr. was an Arkansas entrepreneur, lawyer, attorney general, U.S. representative, university president, and Arkansas Supreme Court justice. Thornton also played a key role in fashioning the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon concerning the Watergate cover-up. Ray Thornton was born on July 16, 1928, in Conway (Faulkner County), one of two children of Raymond Thornton Sr. of Sheridan (Grant County) and Wilma Stephens Thornton of Prattsville (Grant County); his mother was the sister of noted business figures Witt Stephens and Jackson T. Stephens. His parents attended Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in Conway (Faulkner County) and eventually returned to Sheridan to live. Thornton’s father served as superintendent of …

Tillman, John Newton

John Newton Tillman was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Third District of Arkansas in the Sixty-Fourth through the Seventieth Congresses, serving from 1915 to 1929. John N. Tillman was born near Springfield, Missouri, on December 13, 1859, to Newton J. Tillman and Mary Mullins Tillman. The family moved to Arkansas when he was a child, and he attended the local common schools before graduating from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1880. Following graduation, Tillman taught school while also studying law. He read law in the office of Judge J. M. Pittman until Pittman was elected circuit court judge, at which point Tillman studied with local lawyers Holsinger and …

Tinhiouen

There were actually two men with the name of Tinhiouen, a father and son, who were hereditary chiefs, or caddi, of the Kadohadacho Caddo in the late eighteenth century. After Spain took control of Louisiana, these two chiefs became increasingly important figures in diplomatic and economic affairs among colonial authorities, Creole inhabitants, and the many Native American tribes who lived in and around Spanish Louisiana and Texas. The two men shaped relationships between Spanish colonists and Indian tribes, and they gave the Caddo a favored political position in troubled times. The Kadohadacho were viewed by all other Caddo tribes, and by non-Caddo Indian neighbors, as direct descendants of the mythical or semi-mythical ancient ancestors of all Caddo people. The home …

Townsend, Wallace

Wallace Townsend was both a prominent lawyer and a prominent leader in the Arkansas Republican Party. Townsend was a leading member of the “lily-white” faction that helped alienate African Americans from the Grand Old Party (GOP). Wallace Townsend was born on August 20, 1882, in DeWitt, Iowa, the son of John R. Townsend and Italia James; he had a brother named A. E. “Jack” Townsend, who was the assistant postmaster in Little Rock (Pulaski County) for several decades. Townsend moved to Little Rock with his family in November 1894 and received his BA from Hendrix College in 1902, after which he entered the field of public education. His most noteworthy service as an educator was his tenure as principal of …

Trail of Tears

“Trail of Tears” has come to describe the journey of Native Americans forced to leave their ancestral homes in the Southeast and move to the new Indian Territory defined as “west of Arkansas,” in present-day Oklahoma. Through coerced or fraudulent treaties, Indians had been given the choice of submitting to state jurisdiction as individuals or moving west to preserve their sovereign tribal governments. The metaphoric trail is not one distinct road, but a web of routes and rivers traveled in the 1830s by organized tribal groups from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. All of these trails passed through Arkansas. During the decade after passage of the federal Indian Removal Act in 1830, an estimated 60,000 Indians, African …

Trammell, Bobby Lee

Bobby Lee Trammell was known as a boisterous performer of boogie-woogie-flavored rockabilly music with such songs as “Arkansas Twist” and “You Mostest Girl.” He was later elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives and the Craighead County Quorum Court. Trammell’s high-energy music has been compared to that of fellow Arkansan Sonny Burgess, while his onstage antics drew comparisons to Jerry Lee Lewis. Bobby Lee Trammell was born on January 31, 1934, in Hergett, a small unincorporated community in Craighead County near Jonesboro. He was one of four children born to Wiley and Mae Trammell, who were cotton farmers. His parents were also musicians, with his father playing fiddle and his mother playing the church organ. Trammell was exposed to gospel …

Treaty of Council Oaks

On June 24, 1823, Acting Governor Robert Crittenden of Arkansas Territory met with a group of Arkansas Cherokee; the place of their meeting been described in many sources on the south side of the Arkansas River  in the vicinity of modern Dardanelle (Yell County), though this is debatable, as the agent for the Cherokee, Edward W. DuVal, was likely headquartered north of the river, the land south of the river having been reserved for the Choctaw. The leaders present included John Jolly (who was likely the most influential member of the group and would soon be elected principal chief of the Arkansas Cherokee), Black Fox, Wat Webber, Waterminnow, Young Glass, Thomas Graves, and George Morris. Each group came to the meeting with …

Trimble, Jackson Stewart (J. S.)

Jackson Stewart Trimble was an influential figure in the development of Independence County in Arkansas’s early years.  J. S. Trimble was born on March 28, 1815, in Smithland, Kentucky, to James Trimble and Elizabeth Stewart Trimble. In 1817, the family left Kentucky and ventured into what would become Arkansas, settling in an area about five miles southwest of Batesville (Independence County). Trimble grew up there and received his early education in the county’s common schools and at Batesville. After his formal schooling ended, Trimble became a farmer. In 1850, he married Catherine P. Hamilton. The couple had a daughter, Elvira.  That same year, Trimble entered politics, successfully biding to represent Independence County in the lower house of the Arkansas General Assembly. A devotee of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, he ran as a Democrat. In …

Trimble, James William

James William Trimble was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Third District of Arkansas in the Seventy-ninth through the Eighty-ninth Congresses, serving from 1945 to 1967. James W. Trimble was born in Osage (Carroll County) on February 3, 1894, the oldest of four sons and six daughters born to Allen Trimble and Ana McFarlane Trimble. He attended a variety of rural schools that operated on three-month terms, but he overcame this inconsistent preparation to graduate from high school in Green Forest (Carroll County) in 1913. He then worked his way through the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) as a janitor, receiving his degree in 1917. After graduation, Trimble taught history at …

Troxell, Leona

Leona Troxell was a political activist who played a major role in the development of the Republican Party in Arkansas, her adopted home. She was also involved with the Republican Party at the national level. Leona Anderson was born on April 22, 1913, in Johnstown, New York, to Frank and Clara Anderson. When she was young, the family moved to Iowa, settling in LeMars. Her father was the executive secretary of the Iowa Baptist Convention for sixteen years. Anderson graduated from North High School in Des Moines in 1930 and then attended Drake University in Des Moines. Active in the student community, she was president of the Drake University YWCA. She graduated from Drake in 1934 with a liberal arts …

Tuberville, Tommy

Tommy Tuberville was a successful college football coach who, in 2020, was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. Tuberville held the position of head coach at several major universities but began his career coaching high school football at Hermitage (Bradley County). His first college coaching position was in 1980 as an assistant at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County). Thomas Hawley (Tommy) Tuberville, youngest of three children of Charles and Olive Tuberville, was born on September 18, 1954, in Camden (Ouachita County). He was raised in Ouachita County and graduated from Harmony Grove High School in 1972. He attended Southern State College (now Southern Arkansas University) in Magnolia (Columbia County), where he lettered for …

Tucker, Betty Jeane Allen

Betty Jeanne Allen Tucker is the wife of Jim Guy Tucker (the forty-third governor of Arkansas) and was the state’s thirty-eighth first lady. Outside of politics, she is best known for her work with the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Betty Jeanne Allen was born on February 28, 1943, in Jackson, Mississippi, to Emmett Allen and Gertrude Allen; she was raised in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Her father served during World War II as an aviator and later practiced law in Brookhaven. During the war, Allan lived with her mother’s parents, who owned a farm and had a lucrative cotton-trading business. She married Lance Alworth in 1958 and …

Tucker, Francis William (Frank)

Francis William (Frank) Tucker came to Arkansas from Massachusetts, first settling in Lawrence County, where he managed (and later co-owned) the Clover Bend plantation. He later moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he became chair of the state Republican Party and served as U.S. Collector of Revenues. Frank W. Tucker was born on December 3, 1843, at Canton, Massachusetts, to Francis William Tucker and Prudence Hoyt Tucker. As an adult, he went by the name Frank and also appears in documents as Captain or Colonel F. W. Tucker. In August 1862, he enlisted in the Fiftieth Massachusetts Infantry. His daughter Ruth wrote in her unpublished biography of family friend Alice French (an author who wrote under the name Octave …

Tucker, Jim Guy, Jr.

aka: James Guy Tucker Jr.

James Guy Tucker, the forty-third governor of Arkansas, had a brief gubernatorial career that abruptly ended due to criminal conviction. His administration carried Arkansas from the end of the Bill Clinton administration, during which Tucker essentially acted as governor the last year because of Clinton’s campaigning for president, to the beginning of the Mike Huckabee gubernatorial administration, which remained in power long enough to be stopped only by term limits. In his personal life, Tucker weathered political challenges, survived health problems, and faced a criminal indictment. Jim Guy Tucker was born on June 13, 1943, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to James Guy and Willie Maude (White) Tucker. His family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) when he was a child, …

Turner, Grover White “Buddy,” Jr.

G. W. “Buddy” Turner Jr. was an influential member of the Arkansas House of Representatives in the latter part of the twentieth century who helped shape state policy throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Grover White Turner Jr. was born on August 15, 1923, in Thornton (Calhoun County) to Grover White Turner and Ollie Robinson Turner. He grew up in Rison (Cleveland County), where he helped his family on the farm his father had bought during the Great Depression. In addition to picking and chopping cotton on the farm, he worked at the family store, which, in addition to a sawmill, his father had also acquired. Eventually, Turner became an accomplished meat cutter. By the time he graduated from Rison …

Turner, Jesse

Jesse Turner, a North Carolina native, was a lawyer and politician who played a major but fickle role in Arkansas’s long odyssey through slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. He finally turned to economic development, principally railroads. He was a leader of the Whig Party in Arkansas until its disintegration during the Civil War, and he then took a respite from politics; during Reconstruction, he returned as a Democrat. Turner was elected to both houses of the Arkansas General Assembly, was the federal prosecuting attorney in the new United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, and served briefly as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He spent most of his life in Van Buren (Crawford …

Tutt-Everett War

aka: King-Everett War

The Tutt-Everett War began as a struggle over political power in Marion County in the 1840s. Though centrally involving the Tutt and Everett families, the contest attracted many county residents to one side or the other. It spanned nearly a decade of increasingly violent confrontations, claiming the lives of up to fourteen people. The Arkansas legislature created Marion County in 1836. In its early politics, the Everetts and their supporters became identified with the Democratic Party, while the Tutts and their supporters were associated with the Whig Party. The two sides clashed repeatedly as they competed for electoral office and thus control of the county. Driving the conflict was the knowledge that if “their side” held political power, one could …

Tyer, Gaylord Arlo

Arlo Tyer was an Arkansas businessman and politician who served as a county official in his native Randolph County in the 1960s and in two separate stints in the Arkansas House of Representatives in the 1960s and 1970s. A previously low-key county official, Tyer fired one of the opening shots of the culture wars that would erupt in the 1980s. Gaylord Arlo Tyer was born on September 15, 1911, in the Water Valley community of rural Randolph County, the oldest of five children of Silas Lafayette and Emma Mae Vermilye Tyer. After military service and his marriage to Mary Lou Mock in 1946, Tyer engaged in farming and small business until his election to the Arkansas House in 1952, where …

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock District

Although technically a part of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has played a vital role in the development of civilian transportation infrastructure and water resources since Congress passed the first river and harbors bill in 1824 and charged the corps with maintaining navigational channels. Work on the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers received first priority, but as settlers moved farther west, attention soon focused on other navigable streams. Until 1916, Congress authorized only navigational improvements on rivers. Flood control only entered the corps’ mandate indirectly, as levees were considered navigational aids. However, as agricultural and transportation needs grew and the national economic importance of the lower Mississippi River Valley became evident, politicians found it easier …

U.S. Term Limits Inc. v. Thornton

The case U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (514 U.S. 779, 1995) began as a conflict over term limitations placed on those elected to the House of Representatives (three terms in office) and the U.S. Senate (two terms in office) from the state of Arkansas. It ended with the U.S. Supreme Court interpreting the role of the states in the federal structure created by the U.S. Constitution. The Court resolved the dispute by ruling that the qualifications for those elected to the U.S. Congress listed in the U.S. Constitution are exclusive. Thus, states may not impose additional qualifications upon candidates for the U.S. Congress either directly, or, as in the case of Arkansas, indirectly. Arkansas imposed term limitations through Amendment …

Union Labor Party

The Union Labor Party (ULP) participated in only two election years in Arkansas (1888 and 1890), yet during that brief span, it mounted the most serious challenge that the state’s Democratic Party faced between the end of Reconstruction and the rebirth of the Republican Party in the mid-1960s. The ULP appealed to farmers and industrial workers and drew significant support from white and black voters alike. The party’s failure to topple the Democrats from power underscored the failure of democracy itself in Arkansas while shedding light on some of the ugliest episodes in the history of American politics. Origins The national Union Labor Party was formed in Cincinnati, Ohio, in February 1887 by some 300 to 600 delegates at a …

Union Occupation of Arkansas

At the Arkansas Secession Convention in May 1861, only Isaac Murphy, among seventy total delegates, refused to repudiate Arkansas’s bonds with the United States. The total delegation was representative of the wishes of many Arkansans, but Unionist sentiment ran deep in some regions, and eagerness for secession was not wholly unanimous among ordinary Arkansans expected to rally to the Confederate cause. During the war, these same ordinary Arkansans were pressed by Union and Confederate armies for conscription and forage, and devastation wrought by irregular partisans hastened a complete breakdown of civilized society in many parts of the state. Union forces were successful in reestablishing law and order as they pushed into Arkansas but were largely restricted to the area around their …

Unionists

Unionists were Arkansans who remained loyal to the United States after the state seceded from the Union during the American Civil War, often suffering retaliation from Confederate forces and guerrillas. A significant number of Arkansas Unionists served in the Federal army, and loyal Arkansans formed a Unionist government in 1864. Of the more than 111,000 African Americans held in slavery in 1860, the overwhelming majority should be considered Unionists, and thousands flocked to the protection of Union armies at their first opportunity. As the possibility of disunion arose following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Arkansans were not wholeheartedly in favor of secession. Arkansas had been a state for only twenty-five years and had benefited from the presence of …

United Confederate Veterans (UCV)

When the Civil War ended in 1865, thousands of Confederate veterans returned home to Arkansas. Many of these veterans remained in the state and slowly rebuilt their lives after four long years of war. A national organization for Confederate veterans was not established until 1889, when some Confederate veterans’ groups met in New Orleans, Louisiana, and organized the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). It was the counterpart to the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a national organization of Union veterans that had been established in 1866, although the UCV never had the political power or the prestige of the GAR. However, the UCV did have the power to directly affect the lives of its members at a local level. The …