Entries - Entry Category: Government and Politics - Starting with M

Elias Bryan Moore was a Civil War veteran and a local and state Democratic Party leader. He was also a newspaperman for much of his life. In 1884, he was elected to the office of Arkansas’s secretary of state, his only statewide elected office. He served two terms in that position. Elias Moore was born on January 23, 1842, in Sparta, Tennessee, one of nine children of William Ward Moore and Isabella Bryan Moore. In 1858, the family relocated to Fayetteville (Washington County), where his father, a tailor, operated a store and a sawmill. As a youth, he attended the schools of Sparta and area private schools. While in Fayetteville in 1859, Moore apprenticed as a compositor (or typesetter) for …

James Sayle Moose Jr. was an American Foreign Service officer and diplomat. A specialist in the Middle East, he represented the United States in a number of positions in that region, playing an important role in both World War II and early Cold War diplomacy. Over the course of a career spanning more than three decades, he served in posts across the Middle East, joining a select group of diplomatic figures who represented the United States to five or more foreign governments or international organizations. James S. Moose Jr. was born on October 3, 1903, in Morrilton (Conway County) to James S. Moose and Ellen Howard Moose. He received his early education in the local schools before attending Kentucky Military …

Henry Morehart was a leader of the third-party agrarian political rebellion in Pulaski County during the late 1880s and early 1890s and served as an agrarian legislator in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1889. His political career illustrates the fierce opposition that the agrarian insurgency engendered among Arkansas’s Democratic Party chieftains and conservative elites, who were willing to use fraudulent means when necessary to maintain their primacy. Henry Morehart was born near Greencastle, Ohio, to Henry Morehart and Mary Plotner on October 30, 1841. He was the second of twelve children. After spending his youth on his parents’ farm, he left home to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He enlisted in Company C, 114th Ohio Volunteers, …

Winfield Scott Morgan (better known as W. Scott Morgan) lived in Arkansas for most of his life. As a writer, editor, lecturer, and political activist, he played an important role in farmers’ organizations and third-party politics at the state and national levels. Even after those organizations and parties disintegrated, Morgan maintained true to his reformist ideals, as evidenced by his published writings well into the twentieth century. Born on August 25, 1851, in Columbus, Ohio, W. Scott Morgan moved with his family to Chillicothe, Missouri, when he was fourteen. Four years later, he married Retta Gilliland, with whom he would have five children. Morgan initially supported his family by teaching school for an annual salary of $200. He also began …

Elias Camp Morris was an African-American minister who, in 1895, became president of the National Baptist Convention (NBC), the largest denomination of black Christians in the United States. Recognized by white Arkansans and the nation as a leader of the black community, he often served as a liaison between black and white communities on both the state and national level. He was also an important leader in the Arkansas Republican Party. Morris was born a slave on May 7, 1855, in Murray County, Georgia, the son of James and Cora Cornelia Morris. In 1864–1865, he simultaneously attended grammar schools in Dalton, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. From 1866, he attended school in Stevenson, Alabama, and in 1874–1875, he attended Nashville Normal …

Herwald “Hal” Morton was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, spending most of his career working in the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). In a career spanning over thirty years—and which culminated in his earning the rank of Career Minister—he lived in five different countries while visiting more than 100 as a representative of the United States. He is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. Hal Morton was born on July 19, 1931, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the youngest of Rachel and James Morton’s five children. He grew up in Little Rock and was the valedictorian of Dunbar High School’s Class of 1948. (He later recalled getting his first job as a ten-year-old, lying about his …

Colter Hamilton (Ham) Moses served as secretary to governors George W. Donaghey, George W. Hays, and Charles Hillman Brough prior to becoming general counsel, president, and chairman of the board of Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L). Well known as an eloquent speaker, Moses represented the Governor’s Office in an entourage that traveled around the country promoting Arkansas; however, his greatest contribution to Arkansas resulted in the state moving from an agricultural economy to an industrial one during the post–World War II years. Although the state’s economy grew monumentally because of Moses’s efforts, he credited the people of Arkansas for the success of his “Arkansas Plan.” C. Hamilton (Ham) Moses, the eldest of Angelus Gaston “A. G.” Moses and Mary Eulodia …

David Wiley Mullins Jr. was a prominent economist whose professional experience includes stints working in both the Department of the Treasury and as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, as well as in the private sector. David W. Mullins Jr. was born on April 28, 1946, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of three children of David Wiley Mullins, who was a longtime educator, and Eula Elizabeth Harrell Mullins. Mullins’s family lived in Alabama, where his father worked for Auburn University. In 1960, his father became president of the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), and David Mullins Jr. attended high school in Fayetteville, graduating from Fayetteville High School in 1964. Mullins earned a BS …

The State of Arkansas recognizes its incorporated communities in three separate categories: cities of the first class (or first-class cities), cities of the second class (or second-class cities), and towns. These categories are mostly determined by the population of the communities and the size of the city or town government. According to the Arkansas Municipal League, there are 502 incorporated cities and towns in Arkansas as of October 2019. According to Arkansas statutes as of 2019, a first-class city has more than 2,500 residents (although a second-class city with more than 1,500 residents may vote to become a first-class city). A second-class city has from 500 to 2,500 residents (although a town may vote to become a second-class city). A town …

George Washington Murphy’s career as a soldier and lawyer spanned sixty years and included an ideological journey from defending the Confederacy and slavery to seeking the liberation of twelve innocent Black men who had been sentenced to death following the events of the Elaine Massacre of 1919. Murphy was elected attorney general of Arkansas twice at the beginning of the twentieth century and, in 1913, ran for governor, unsuccessfully, on the Progressive Party ticket. George Murphy was born on January 8, 1841, in Huntingdon, Tennessee, north of Memphis, to Joseph Robertson Murphy and Grace Leslie Murphy. A few weeks before Tennessee formally seceded from the Union, in June 1861, Murphy, then twenty years old, enlisted in the Confederate army. He …

Isaac Murphy was a teacher, attorney, and eighth governor of Arkansas. After years of relative obscurity, he became nationally famous when, at the Arkansas Secession Convention on May 6, 1861, he not only voted against secession but also resolutely refused to change his vote despite enormous crowd pressure. In 1864, he became the first elected governor of Union-controlled Arkansas. Isaac Murphy was born outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 16, 1799, to Hugh Murphy and Jane Williams Murphy. His Murphy ancestors came to the United States from the Dublin, Ireland, area between about 1737 and 1740. His father was a paper manufacturer who died during Isaac’s childhood. The executor saw to Murphy’s education but squandered the estate before committing suicide. …

Nap Murphy, who sold gasoline and Fords in the Ashley County towns of Crossett and Hamburg, spent thirty-six years in the Arkansas House of Representatives. Murphy chaired the House Agriculture and Economic Development Committee for most of his tenure, but his most newsworthy battles were over such matters as gambling and the racial labeling of blood donors. Napoleon Bonaparte (Nap) Murphy was born on September 16, 1921, in Crossett, the third youngest of eight children of Charles Edward Murphy and Isadee Maxwell Murphy. He graduated from Crossett High School in 1940 and married Maxine James two years later. They had three children. He first worked for the Ashley, Drew and Northern Railway, which was bought much later by the Georgia-Pacific …

Isaac Taylor (Ike) Murry was a lawyer and politician whose surging career before, during, and after World War II climaxed in a historic confrontation with Governor Sid McMath. Murry was the state’s attorney general who in 1952 led an effort to prosecute McMath or his aides for corruption and mismanagement in the state highway program. McMath tried twice to resurrect his career, losing both times, and the brutal investigation and election ended Murry’s political career as well as McMath’s. Ike Murry was born on May 8, 1913, in Fordyce (Dallas County), the youngest of six children of Isaac Taylor Murry and Addie Pearl Harris Murry. Robust and handsome, Murry was the center and defensive tackle of the Fordyce High School …

Tom Murton is best known for his attempts to reform the Arkansas prison system during the governorship of Winthrop Rockefeller. Intelligent and conscientious with a dry sense of humor, Murton could also prove abrasive and uncompromising with others, especially his superiors. His uncovering of three skeletons at Cummins prison farm in early 1968 gained national attention, and his handling of the matter drew the ire of the Rockefeller administration. Murton wrote a bestselling book about his time in Arkansas, Accomplices to the Crime (1969), on which the 1980 movie starring Robert Redford was loosely based. Thomas Orhelius Murton was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 15, 1928, the son of Oregon native Edmund T. Murton and Oklahoma native Bessie Glass Stevens …