Hattie Caraway
Encyclopedia
Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway (February 1, 1878 – December 21, 1950) was the first woman elected to serve as a United States Senator
. Senator Caraway represented Arkansas
.
, in Humphreys County
, the daughter of William Carroll Wyatt, a farmer and shopkeeper, and Lucy Mildred Burch. At the age of four she moved with her family to Hustburg, Tennessee. After briefly attending Ebenezer College in Hustburg, she transferred to Dickson (Tenn.) Normal College, where she received her B.A. degree in 1896. She taught school for a time before marrying in 1902 Thaddeus Horatius Caraway, whom she had met in college; they had three children, Paul Caraway
, Forrest, and Robert; Paul and Forrest became Generals in the United States Army
. The couple moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas
where she cared for their children and home and her husband practiced law and started a political career.
The Caraways settled in Jonesboro where he established a legal practice while she cared for the children, tended the household and kitchen garden, and helped to oversee the family's cotton
farm. The family eventually established a second home Riversdale at Riverdale Park, Maryland
. Her husband, Thaddeus Caraway, was elected to the United States House of Representatives
in 1912, and he served in that office until 1921 when he was elected to the United States Senate
where he served until he died in office in 1931. Following the precedent of appointing widows to temporarily take their husbands' places, Arkansas governor Harvey Parnell
appointed Hattie Caraway to the vacant seat, and she was sworn into office on December 9. With the Arkansas Democratic party's backing, she easily won a special election in January 1932 for the remaining months of the term, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate. Although she took an interest in her husband's political career, Hattie Caraway avoided the capital's social and political life as well as the campaign for women's suffrage. She recalled that "after equal suffrage I just added voting to cooking and sewing and other household duties."
Charles Curtis
to preside over the Senate she took advantage of the situation to announce that she would run for reelection. Populist Louisiana
politician Huey Long
travelled to Arkansas on a 9-day campaign swing to campaign for her. She was the first female Senator to preside over this body as well as the first to chair a Committee (Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills). Lacking any significant political backing, Caraway accepted the offer of help from Long, whose efforts to limit incomes and increase aid to the poor she had supported. Long was also motivated by sympathy for the widow as well as by his ambition to extend his influence into the home state of his rival, Senator Joseph Robinson
. Bringing his colorful and flamboyant campaign style to Arkansas, Long stumped the state with Caraway for a week just before the Democratic primary, helping her amass nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent. She went on to win the general election in November.
Caraway's Senate committee assignments included Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, and Enrolled Bills and Library, which she chaired. She sustained a special interest in relief for farmers, flood control, and veterans' benefits, all of direct concern to her constituents, and cast her votes for nearly every New Deal
measure. Her loyalty to President Franklin D. Roosevelt
, however, did not extend to racial issues, and in 1938 she joined fellow southerners in a filibuster
against the administration's antilynching bill. Although she carefully prepared herself for Senate work, Caraway spoke infrequently and rarely made speeches on the floor of the Senate but built a reputation as an honest and sincere Senator. She was sometimes portrayed by patronizing reporters as "Silent Hattie" or "the quiet grandmother who never said anything or did anything." She explained her reticence as unwillingness "to take a minute away from the men. The poor dears love it so."
In 1938 Caraway entered a tough fight for reelection, challenged by Representative John L. McClellan, who argued that a man could more effectively promote the state's interests. With backing from government employees, women's groups, and unions, Caraway won a narrow victory in the primary and took the general election by a large margin. During her tenure in the Senate, three other women - Rose McConnell Long
, Dixie Bibb Graves
, and Gladys Pyle
- held brief tenures of two years or less in the Senate, but none of them overlapped, and so there were never more than two women in the body. She supported Roosevelt's foreign policy, arguing for his lend-lease
bill from her perspective as a mother with two sons in the army. While encouraging women to contribute to the war effort, Caraway insisted that caring for the home and family was a woman's primary task. Yet her consciousness of women's disadvantages was evident as early as 1931, when, upon being assigned the same Senate desk that had been briefly occupied by the first widow ever appointed to take her husband's place, she commented privately, "I guess they wanted as few of them contaminated as possible." Moreover, in 1943, Caraway became the first woman legislator to cosponsor the Equal Rights Amendment
.
In her bid for reelection in 1944, Caraway placed a poor fourth in the Democratic primary, losing her Senate seat to freshman congressman J. William Fulbright
, the young, dynamic former president of the University of Arkansas
who had already gained a national reputation. The lack of visibility with her constituents may have been the primary reason that she lost the 1944 election .Roosevelt then appointed her to the Employees' Compensation Commission, and in 1946 President Harry Truman gave her a post on the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board, where she served until suffering a stroke in January 1950. She died on December 21 of the same year in Falls Church, Virginia, and was buried in West Lawn Cemetery in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
ist and voted against anti-lynching
legislation along with many other Democratic Senators. She was generally a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic recovery legislation. Caraway's defiance of the Arkansas establishment in insisting that she was more than a temporary stand-in for her husband enabled her to set a valuable precedent for women in politics. Although she remained at the margins of power, Caraway's diligent and capable attention to Senate responsibilities won the respect of her colleagues, encouraged advocates of wider public roles for women, and demonstrated that political skills were not the exclusive property of men.
She loved her family and paid her debts; in the 1930s, one of her sons was visiting a relative in West Tennessee, in the little town of Newbern. The child was thrown from a horse, mortally wounded, in front of the house of local banker Bush Crenshaw. Crenshaw had tried to save the farmers from foreclosure during the Great Depression but his monkeying with papers to do so had incurred a sentence to the federal penitentiary. In gratitude for Mr. Bush's kindness to her son, Senator Caraway intervened with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to get a presidential pardon for Bush Crenshaw. On February 21, 2001, the United States Postal Service
issued a 76¢ Distinguished Americans series
postage stamp in her honor. Her gravesite was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
on September 20, 2007.
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
. Senator Caraway represented Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
.
Biography
Hattie Wyatt was born near Bakerville, TennesseeBakerville, Tennessee
Bakerville is a rural unincorporated community in Humphreys County, Tennessee, United States, several miles south of the county seat of Waverly. It is quite near the confluence of the Buffalo and Duck Rivers.-History:...
, in Humphreys County
Humphreys County, Tennessee
Humphreys County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of 2000, the population was 17,929. The 2005 Census Estimate placed the population at 18,212. Its county seat is Waverly.-Geography:According to the U.S...
, the daughter of William Carroll Wyatt, a farmer and shopkeeper, and Lucy Mildred Burch. At the age of four she moved with her family to Hustburg, Tennessee. After briefly attending Ebenezer College in Hustburg, she transferred to Dickson (Tenn.) Normal College, where she received her B.A. degree in 1896. She taught school for a time before marrying in 1902 Thaddeus Horatius Caraway, whom she had met in college; they had three children, Paul Caraway
Paul Caraway
Paul Wyatt Caraway was a United States Army Lieutenant General and the 3rd High Commissioner of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands. He was the son of two influential Arkansas Senators, Hattie Caraway and Thaddeus Caraway. Caraway graduated from the United States Military...
, Forrest, and Robert; Paul and Forrest became Generals in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
. The couple moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas
Jonesboro, Arkansas
Jonesboro is a city in and one of the two county seats of Craighead County, Arkansas, United States. According to the 2010 US Census, the population of the city was 67,263. A college town, Jonesboro is the largest city in northeastern Arkansas and the fifth most populous city in the state...
where she cared for their children and home and her husband practiced law and started a political career.
The Caraways settled in Jonesboro where he established a legal practice while she cared for the children, tended the household and kitchen garden, and helped to oversee the family's cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
farm. The family eventually established a second home Riversdale at Riverdale Park, Maryland
Riverdale Park, Maryland
Riverdale Park is a town in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The population was 6,690 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Riverdale Park is located at ....
. Her husband, Thaddeus Caraway, was elected to the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
in 1912, and he served in that office until 1921 when he was elected to the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
where he served until he died in office in 1931. Following the precedent of appointing widows to temporarily take their husbands' places, Arkansas governor Harvey Parnell
Harvey Parnell
Harvey Parnell was the 29th Governor of Arkansas from 1928 to 1933.Harvey Parnell was born in Orlando in Cleveland County, Arkansas. Parnell attended public schools and graduated from Warren High School in Warren, Arkansas...
appointed Hattie Caraway to the vacant seat, and she was sworn into office on December 9. With the Arkansas Democratic party's backing, she easily won a special election in January 1932 for the remaining months of the term, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate. Although she took an interest in her husband's political career, Hattie Caraway avoided the capital's social and political life as well as the campaign for women's suffrage. She recalled that "after equal suffrage I just added voting to cooking and sewing and other household duties."
U.S. Senator
In May 1932 Caraway surprised Arkansas politicians by announcing that she would run for a full term in the upcoming election, joining a field already crowded with prominent candidates who had assumed she would step aside. She told reporters, "The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job." When she was invited by Vice PresidentVice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis was a United States Representative, a longtime United States Senator from Kansas later chosen as Senate Majority Leader by his Republican colleagues, and the 31st Vice President of the United States...
to preside over the Senate she took advantage of the situation to announce that she would run for reelection. Populist Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
politician Huey Long
Huey Long
Huey Pierce Long, Jr. , nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928–1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D...
travelled to Arkansas on a 9-day campaign swing to campaign for her. She was the first female Senator to preside over this body as well as the first to chair a Committee (Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills). Lacking any significant political backing, Caraway accepted the offer of help from Long, whose efforts to limit incomes and increase aid to the poor she had supported. Long was also motivated by sympathy for the widow as well as by his ambition to extend his influence into the home state of his rival, Senator Joseph Robinson
Joseph Taylor Robinson
Joseph Taylor Robinson was an American politician from Arkansas, of the Democratic Party. He was a state representative, U.S. Representative, 23rd Governor of Arkansas, U.S...
. Bringing his colorful and flamboyant campaign style to Arkansas, Long stumped the state with Caraway for a week just before the Democratic primary, helping her amass nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent. She went on to win the general election in November.
Caraway's Senate committee assignments included Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, and Enrolled Bills and Library, which she chaired. She sustained a special interest in relief for farmers, flood control, and veterans' benefits, all of direct concern to her constituents, and cast her votes for nearly every New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
measure. Her loyalty to President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, however, did not extend to racial issues, and in 1938 she joined fellow southerners in a filibuster
Filibuster
A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is the right of an individual to extend debate, allowing a lone member to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal...
against the administration's antilynching bill. Although she carefully prepared herself for Senate work, Caraway spoke infrequently and rarely made speeches on the floor of the Senate but built a reputation as an honest and sincere Senator. She was sometimes portrayed by patronizing reporters as "Silent Hattie" or "the quiet grandmother who never said anything or did anything." She explained her reticence as unwillingness "to take a minute away from the men. The poor dears love it so."
In 1938 Caraway entered a tough fight for reelection, challenged by Representative John L. McClellan, who argued that a man could more effectively promote the state's interests. With backing from government employees, women's groups, and unions, Caraway won a narrow victory in the primary and took the general election by a large margin. During her tenure in the Senate, three other women - Rose McConnell Long
Rose McConnell Long
Rose McConnell Long was a United States Senator and the wife of Huey Long. She was Louisiana's first female senator....
, Dixie Bibb Graves
Dixie Bibb Graves
Dixie Bibb Graves was a United States Senator and former First Lady from the state of Alabama. The first woman Senator from Alabama, she was appointed to the Senate by her husband, then Governor Bibb Graves, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Hugo L. Black...
, and Gladys Pyle
Gladys Pyle
Gladys Pyle was a South Dakota politician and the first woman elected to the United States Senate without having previously been appointed to her position; she was also the first female senator to serve as a Republican and the first female senator from South Dakota...
- held brief tenures of two years or less in the Senate, but none of them overlapped, and so there were never more than two women in the body. She supported Roosevelt's foreign policy, arguing for his lend-lease
Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease was the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of war in Europe in...
bill from her perspective as a mother with two sons in the army. While encouraging women to contribute to the war effort, Caraway insisted that caring for the home and family was a woman's primary task. Yet her consciousness of women's disadvantages was evident as early as 1931, when, upon being assigned the same Senate desk that had been briefly occupied by the first widow ever appointed to take her husband's place, she commented privately, "I guess they wanted as few of them contaminated as possible." Moreover, in 1943, Caraway became the first woman legislator to cosponsor the Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time...
.
In her bid for reelection in 1944, Caraway placed a poor fourth in the Democratic primary, losing her Senate seat to freshman congressman J. William Fulbright
J. William Fulbright
James William Fulbright was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from 1945 to 1975.Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist who supported the creation of the United Nations and the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
, the young, dynamic former president of the University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
who had already gained a national reputation. The lack of visibility with her constituents may have been the primary reason that she lost the 1944 election .Roosevelt then appointed her to the Employees' Compensation Commission, and in 1946 President Harry Truman gave her a post on the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board, where she served until suffering a stroke in January 1950. She died on December 21 of the same year in Falls Church, Virginia, and was buried in West Lawn Cemetery in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Legacy
Caraway was a prohibitionProhibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
ist and voted against anti-lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
legislation along with many other Democratic Senators. She was generally a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic recovery legislation. Caraway's defiance of the Arkansas establishment in insisting that she was more than a temporary stand-in for her husband enabled her to set a valuable precedent for women in politics. Although she remained at the margins of power, Caraway's diligent and capable attention to Senate responsibilities won the respect of her colleagues, encouraged advocates of wider public roles for women, and demonstrated that political skills were not the exclusive property of men.
She loved her family and paid her debts; in the 1930s, one of her sons was visiting a relative in West Tennessee, in the little town of Newbern. The child was thrown from a horse, mortally wounded, in front of the house of local banker Bush Crenshaw. Crenshaw had tried to save the farmers from foreclosure during the Great Depression but his monkeying with papers to do so had incurred a sentence to the federal penitentiary. In gratitude for Mr. Bush's kindness to her son, Senator Caraway intervened with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to get a presidential pardon for Bush Crenshaw. On February 21, 2001, the United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a 76¢ Distinguished Americans series
Distinguished Americans series
The Distinguished Americans series is a set of definitive stamps issued by the United States Postal Service which was started in 2000 with a 10¢ stamp depicting Joseph Stilwell...
postage stamp in her honor. Her gravesite was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
on September 20, 2007.