Sid McMath
Encyclopedia
Sidney Sanders McMath was a decorated U.S. Marine
, attorney and the 34th Governor of Arkansas (1949–1953) who, in defiance of his state's political establishment, championed rapid rural electrification
, massive highway and school construction, the building of the University of Arkansas
for Medical Sciences
, strict bank and utility regulation, repeal of the poll tax
, open and honest elections and broad expansion of opportunity for black citizens
in the decade following World War II.
McMath remained loyal to President
Harry S. Truman
during the "Dixiecrat
" rebellion of 1948, campaigning throughout the South
for Truman's re-election. As a former governor, McMath led the opposition to segregationist
Governor Orval Faubus
following the 1957 Little Rock school crisis
. He later became one of the nation's foremost trial lawyers
, representing thousands of injured persons in precedent-setting cases and mentoring several generations of young attorneys
.
log cabin
on the old McMath home place near Magnolia
, Columbia County, Arkansas
, the son of Hal Pierce and Nettie Belle Sanders McMath. His paternal grandfather, Columbia County Sheriff Sidney Smith McMath, grand nephew of his Goliad
namesake, had himself been killed in the line of duty the previous year, leaving a pensionless widow and eight children, Hal being the eldest. After years of wrangling horses and bad-luck wildcatting in the Southwest Arkansas oil fields, Hal McMath moved his family by wagon to Hot Springs
in June 1922. There, he sold the last of his horses and took a job as a barber
. Nettie went to work as a manicurist
and for the Malco theatre
as a ticket vendor. Sid and his sister, Edyth, attended Hot Springs public schools, where the boy excelled in boxing
and drama and became an Eagle Scout
, while shining shoes and hawking newspapers to supplement the family's meagre income. He was elected president of his class each of his high school years, the last of which he won the state Golden Gloves
welterweight boxing title. He attended Henderson State College
and the University of Arkansas
, where he was elected president of the student body. He was also a member of the Arkansas Pershing Rifles Military Fraternity, Blue Key, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He graduated from the University's School of Law in 1936.
upon graduation from college. During World War II he served with the Marines after voluntarily returning to active duty in 1940. Assigned to train officer candidates at Quantico, Virginia
, he was promoted to captain, then to major, and in 1942 he was ordered to American Samoa
in command of the combined forces jungle warfare
school. From late 1942 to early 1944, he led the 3rd Marine Regiment in battle as operations officer and acting CO in the Pacific Theatre
, including New Georgia
, Vella Lavella
, Guadalcanal
and Bougainville
, during which he directed the Battle of Piva Forks
, the pivotal action, single handedly rallying troops pinned down by enemy mortar and machine gun fire. He received a battlefield promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and was awarded the Silver Star
and Legion of Merit
. The citation for the former, personally signed by Admiral W.F. "Bull" Halsey
, lauded McMath's "extraordinary heroism ... and disregard for his own safety above and beyond the call of duty [which] was an inspiration to the officers and men who observed him." Shortly afterward, McMath was stricken with malaria
and filariasis and hospitalized for several months in New Zealand and in San Diego. He then served in the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. planning an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands. Lt. Col. McMath was discharged from active duty in December 1945.
He resumed his activity with the Marine Corps Reserve following his tenure as governor and commanded VTU 8–14 in Little Rock until 1964. He held the office of National President of the 3d Marine Division Association 1960–61.
Following his promotion to brigadier general in June 1963, with date of rank from July 1962, he performed active service as Assistant Commanding General, Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California, in the summer of 1963; Assistant Commanding General, Landing Force Training Unit, Pacific, at Coronado, California, in the summer of 1964; Assistant Division Commander, 2nd Marine Division, FMF, at Camp Lejeune
, North Carolina
, in the summer of 1965; President, Marine Corps Reserve Policy Board, USMC, in the summer of 1966, and in addition served at Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, including the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force in Vietnam. He was promoted to Major General on November 7, 1966. In 1967, the general served as Assistant Deputy Commander, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, during the summer training period. He served a second brief Reserve tour in Vietnam
, with the 3rd Marine Division, in 1969.
In 1967, he helped found the Marine Corps JROTC
at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas, which became one of the top JROTC units in the country. Ever since, cadets there have been known as "Sid's Kids."
figures from Chicago, New York City, and other metropolitan areas. Casinos flourished and hotels advertised the availability of prostitutes. Mobsters maintained political control by purchasing and holding hundreds of poll tax receipts, often in the names of deceased or fictitious persons, which would be used to cast multiple votes
in different precincts. Law enforcement officers were on the payroll of the local "organization" headed by long-serving Mayor Leo McLaughlin. A former sheriff who attempted to have the state's anti-gambling laws enforced was murdered in 1937; no one was ever charged with the killing. McMath headed a "GI Ticket", which, except for McMath himself, was defeated in the Democratic primary election
. However, the others resigned from the party and ran again as independents in the 1946 general election after McMath persuaded a federal judge to toss out the fraudulent poll tax receipts. Most won their offices. Among them were noted combat aviators Earl Ricks and I.G. Brown who were elected mayor and sheriff, respectively.
McMath served as prosecuting attorney for the 18th Judicial District (Garland and Montgomery Counties) starting in 1947. The newly installed GI officials, led by McMath, shut down the casinos and other rackets and a grand jury indicted a number of owners, pitchmen and politicians, including the former mayor. With the development of Las Vegas
in the years afterward, Hot Springs lost its premier gaming status. A casino revival during the administration of Governor Orval Faubus
(1955–1967) was ended in 1967 by Republican
Governor Winthrop Rockefeller
(1967–1971).
After success as a prosecutor, McMath was elected Governor in 1948 in a close election. His Democratic run-off opponent, a former attorney general, accused him of "selling out to the Negro vote." He entered office January 11, 1949 as the nation's youngest governor. He was easily reelected in 1950 over his immediate predecessor, Ben Laney
of Camden
, who attacked McMath for supporting Truman in 1948, when Laney and a number of other southern Democrats bolted the Democratic party over its civil rights
plank. The walk-outs switched their allegiance to Governor Strom Thurmond
of South Carolina
, who ran as a "Dixiecrat". McMath wrested control of the Arkansas party from Laney. He campaigned vigorously across the region and was credited by Truman with helping to save most of the South for the Democratic column, providing the electoral margin for a stunning upset
victory. The two developed a lifelong friendship; McMath was mentioned early as a possible vice-presidential choice in 1952
.
In the 1950 general election, McMath faced a Republican
candidate, Jefferson W. Speck
, a young planter and businessman from Frenchmans Bayou in Mississippi County in eastern Arkansas, who also had a notable war record. Speck later became the unofficial head of the Dwight D. Eisenhower
partisans within the Arkansas GOP
. He challenged McMath to a debate and accused the Democrat of advocating "Truman socialism". McMath not only ignored Speck's challenge but went into Oklahoma
to campaign for the successful reelection bid of Democratic U.S. Senator A.S. "Mike" Monroney. McMath hailed his fellow Democrats as representatives of "liberty and hope for all mankind," whereas the GOP, he claimed, was "isolationist" and had kept the United States from joining the League of Nations
and the International Court of Arbitration
during the 1920s.
McMath's administration focused on infrastructure improvements, including the extensive paving of farm-to-market and primary roads "to get Arkansas out of the mud and the dust", rural electrification, and the construction of a medical center in the capital city. McMath supported anti-lynching
statutes and appointed African Americans to state boards for the first time. His administration consolidated hundreds of small school districts and built the University of Arkansas
for Medical Sciences (financed with a two-cent tax on cigarettes a significant innovation). McMath worked tirelessly, often clandestinely, with Dr. Lawrence Davis, Sr. to save the state's all-black college, Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, & Normal, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff
. McMath also reformed the state's mental health system and increased the minimum wage
.
McMath was elected by the governors of other petroleum producing states to chair the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, which improved pricing structures and broadened federal support for exploration. He was elected chairman of the Southern Governor's Conference. McMath invited muckraking Arkansas Gazette
editor Harry Ashmore
to speak to the governors. His topic was the waste of scarce public funds in maintaining separate school systems for white and black pupils.
conglomerate and its retainers; and old-family planters in the Mississippi Delta
. All feared that McMath's progressive
politics would increase labor costs and break up the sharecropping
farm economy. The utility feared loss of territory to rural electric cooperatives. These interests put aside their differences to work in concert to defeat McMath's bid for a third term in the 1952 election. McMath ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate
in 1954 and again for Governor in 1962, with largely the same opposition united against him—although, by 1962, Moses had been displaced by bond and gas tycoon W.R. "Witt" Stephens as principal kingmaker. In 1962, McMath came within 500 votes of forcing Governor Orval Faubus, who had once been his Executive Secretary and Highway Director, into a runoff. McMath's voting base among the working class was neutralized by the $2 poll tax
(roughly $40 in 2004 dollars) which had to be paid a year prior to an election, effectively disenfranchising thousands of those voters. McMath strove in vain to repeal the tax, which remained a relic of Jim Crow
until the 24th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution in 1964.
in the United States. His cases set a broad range of legal precedents, including the first million-dollar personal injury verdict in a U.S. District Court
(for an injured Arkansas River barge crewman, in 1968), a woman's right to recover for the loss of her husband's consortium (an element of damage previously limited to men), manufacturers' responsibility for harm caused by defective products and negligent advertising encouraging their misuse, the chemical industry's liability for crop and environmental damage, drug companies' responsibility for fatal vaccine
reactions in children, gun dealers' fault for the negligent sale of firearms, and the right of workers to sue third-party suppliers for job injuries. He and his partner Henry Woods, who had served as his gubernatorial chief of staff and later was appointed U.S. District Judge, became nationally known for their effective use of powerful demonstrative evidence, such as detailed models of accident scenes and the human anatomy. In 1976, he was elected president of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, a select group of 500 of the world's most distinguished barristers, taking office February 22, 1977 at the group's annual convention in Nairobi
, Kenya.
McMath's courtroom victories were all the more remarkable for being won in an era of "blue ribbon" juries handpicked by commissioners, themselves selected by state court judges beholden to insurance defense law firms from whom they received thousands of dollars in non-reportable (and non-refundable) campaign contributions for re-election races in which few were ever opposed. Factory workers, blacks, union members, ordinary laborers and other wage earners were often excluded from panels which were heavily weighted with bank and insurance company employees, mid-level managers, realtors, small business owners, salaried professionals, country club members and others hostile to claimants. Federal court juries were somewhat more diverse, but U.S. district judges, invariably former corporate counsel, had broader powers to dismiss cases summarily, overturn verdicts, and to withhold evidence favorable to the plainitff—rulings which often occurred, necessitating lengthy appeals before some cases could be fully tried. Many did not survive this gauntlet.
McMath wrote a memoir, Promises Kept (University of Arkansas Press, 2003, ISBN 1-55728-754-6) detailing his rural upbringing, public schooling, family tragedies including the untimely death of his first wife, Elaine, during the war and the shooting to death of his father, who had become an enraged alcoholic, by his second wife, Anne, in 1947 as well as his years of military service and as governor. The Arkansas Historical Association awarded the autobiography its 2003 John G. Ragsdale Prize as the year's most outstanding historical work. In April 2006 the book was awarded the Booker T. Worthen Medal for literary excellence by the Arkansas Library System. An appendix discusses McMath's more significant cases from the citizen's point of view. These include Franco v. Bunyard, which held gun merchants liable for negligently selling a pistol to escaped convicts who kidnapped and murdered store clerks; Fitzsimmons v. General Motors, which pioneered the rule of consumer induced misuse through seductive advertising (the first of three "Smokey and the Bandit" Trans Am cases handled by the firm in which it was shown that clips and outtakes from scofflaw motion pictures were spliced by GM into TV commercials aimed at adolescent males); Miller v. Missouri Pacific Ry. Co., which established a woman's right to sue for the loss of her husband's society, companionship and sexual relations; Brinnegar v. San Ore Construction Co., a landmark admiralty case; Harrod v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., and Work v. Tyson Foods, Inc. and a number of other actions resulting in multi-million dollar recoveries for farmers and homeowners whose crops and ground water were poisoned by defective pesticides and poultry effluent. The Harrod case involved the issue of whether tomato crops had been damaged by cold weather or by du Pont's fungicide, Benlate, which plaintiffs contended was contaminated with the weed killer, Atrazine. Bruce McMath, lead counsel at trial, successfully confronted rumors that his clients' claims were dishonest by openly asking jurors on voir dire, "How many of you have ever cheated on your taxes?" The synopsis of the case in "Promises Kept" is written from the perspective of plaintiffs' attorneys and stresses their contention that du Pont had intentionally contaminated their product, a claim vehemently denied by the defense.
In 1991, McMath and his firm proposed suit against tobacco companies to recover Medicaid
funds spent caring for smokers. Rejected by Arkansas authorities, who had close ties to tobacco lobbyists and law firms, the idea was used by Florida, Mississippi
and Minnesota
, which won billion dollar settlements. Forty-six other states soon brought their own claims. Texas recovered $18 billion in a Texarkana federal court claim which Arkansas officials refused to join. Arkansas finally concluded a $60 million per year tag-along settlement in 1999. These, and the federal government's own recoveries which followed in their wake, will eventually exceed $1 trillion, representing the largest public interest litigation result in American legal history.
Masons (who awarded him its highest honor of the Grand Cross), and the Lions World Services for the Blind, whose training school in Little Rock he completed in 1999 following the loss of his vision due to macular degeneration. A video commercial featuring McMath has been aired nationally by the school in recent years. McMath was elected president of the Third Marine Division Association and in 1994 he narrated The Battle of Bauxite, a television documentary recounting the story of the miners who excavated thousands of tons of aluminum ore from pits near Bauxite, Arkansas
which was used for military aircraft production during World War II. Aluminum workers and their families were among his most ardent supporters during his many campaigns. McMath taught a senior Bible study class for 26 years at Little Rock's Pulaski Heights
United Methodist Church
, with emphasis on the Old Testament prophets.
In a 1999 opinion poll of political science professors, McMath placed fourth on a list of top Arkansas governors of the 20th century. However, in a December 2003 forum of historians and journalists sponsored by the Old State House Museum in Little Rock, there was a consensus that McMath's historic highway and school building programs, his early commitment to civil rights, particularly his support of President Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential election against Dixiecrat
Strom Thurmond
, the abolition of the so called "white primary" in Arkansas (1949), the opening of the state's medical and law schools to African-Americans (Fall 1948, but only after Governor-elect McMath's express approval), his championship of rural electrification and his relentless opposition to segregationist governor Orval Faubus
, a former McMath ally (Faubus had served as McMath's Director of Highways), during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation turmoil and throughout Faubus' subsequent nine years in office, could well result in his elevation by future historians to first place not only among Arkansas governors, but among all Southern governors of the time.
"Sid McMath might have laid legitimate claim to have been the most courageous and far-sighted Southern leader of the 20th century", wrote Arkansas Times columnist Ernest Dumas on October 10, 2003. "What separated McMath from every other leader of that grim time in the South was courage, the moral as well as physical variety."
Concluded Dumas: "[T]he real test of courage was how he handled the defining issue of the century for every Southern political leader. [I]n a field crowded by frenzied men trying to outdo each other in their zeal to keep the Negro in his place, McMath deplored race-baiting. … Had one just one! major elected Southern official broken ranks on civil rights, early on, before the racist opposition began to metastasize, history might have been so different. The tragedy of Faubus and Fulbright was that they lacked the courage to do so. The tragedy of Sid McMath was that corporate vengeance denied him the opportunity to do what they would not."
George Arnold, Northwest Arkansas opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, observed in a March 2004 column that, "If [McMath] had been able to take Arkansas further down the path to modernization and racial harmony, Arkansas history would have been quite different. Arkansas paid a big price when the public utilities muscled him out of office. [It is] still paying." See Further Reading, below, for continued utility pricing disparity in Arkansas compared to neighboring states.
Harry Ashmore, whose Arkansas Gazette editorials during the Little Rock school crisis won dual Pulitzer Prizes for him and the paper, wrote in an April 1977 book review that, "McMath's … return to active politics in the Faubus era was pro bono, an act of integrity undertaken when he knew the chances of winning were slight and the personal cost would be high. [O]ne who did not always see eye to eye with him could say of Sid McMath: 'He was there when the people needed him and didn't know it. He is a far better man than any of those who came out ahead of him at the polls.'"
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in an October 7, 2003 editorial ("Greatness Passed This Way") written by editorial page editor Paul Greenberg, himself a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, lauded McMath as, "[T]he greatest [man] of his era and of a few others."
"Sid McMath", the newspaper said, "never believed in testing the political winds before speak[ing] out for principle. He remained a true, old-fashioned Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson Democrat as that breed gradually disappeared. When others in the party argued that America could safely co-exist with evil, Sid McMath knew better and said so. He also knew there are far worse things than losing elections like winning them for the wrong reasons… He would not accept the expansion of evil in the world, no matter how inevitable that was said to be by distinguished statesmen at the time. Instead he would defy it and urge others to join him."
The belatedness of McMath's recognition as one of the South's great political leaders has undoubtedly been due to lingering detraction from an ersatz "highway scandal" (see below) contrived by opponents to defeat his 1952 re-election bid as well as his steadfast support of a tough anti-communist foreign policy
throughout the Cold War
, including the Vietnam War
(in which he served two short reserve tours), which McMath, while condemning its micromanagement by the Johnson and Nixon administrations, saw as a critical holding action necessary to give the emerging nations of the Asian rim, most of whom were fending off their own communist insurgencies, time to build market economies and some form of democracy. In Promises Kept he suggests that this goal was in fact achieved, in spite of the 1975 North Vietnamese victory over the south, which McMath saw as pyrrhic in light of the subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire and the emergence of the rest of Southeast Asia as a free-trading powerhouse.
Nevertheless, these views, presented in scores of speeches to school, civic and veterans' groups, were bitterly resented by many of McMath's erstwhile supporters, particularly academics, editorial writers and liberal activists (including some members of his own law firm, who left on this account), for whom an aggressive Cold War stance became heresy during the late 1960s onward indeed, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In spite of his towering credentials as a social and economic progressive, many of these persons never forgave McMath for his anti-communist, national defense positions, mentioning him, if at all, in detraction or with condescension and omitting him altogether from lists of historical notables. The former governor's stances on these questions (and the anathema with which he came to be held by liberal elites) contrasted sharply with those of popular Arkansas Senator William Fulbright, who, as chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, vigorously opposed a hardline policy toward the Soviet Union generally and the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam in particular.
McMath's grit (some would say stubbornness) in the face of sustained unpopularity and virtually certain defeat at the polls, when compromise with his opponents might have assured his survival "to fight another day", has caused some commentators to question his commitment to a political career rather than to a valiant but naive Arthurian chivalry or perhaps a fatalistic resignation. However, one participant at a Southern Arkansas University forum on McMath held November 3, 2003 in Magnolia, Arkansas put it another way: "When Sid McMath stood for civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s he stood virtually alone among the South's political leaders, most of whom were waving the bloody shirt. By the 1970s every Southern pol was supporting full citizenship for African-Americans. It was by then politically correct. But for McMath, it took unprecedented courage. And in fact it later cost him whatever chance he had to salvage his political career. He certainly deserves a chapter in the next Profiles in Courage. He was a true hero, not only to the South, but also to the Nation. He ranks with John Peter Altgeld
[of Illinois], James Stephen Hogg [of Texas] and Robert M. La Follette
[of Wisconsin] as the greatest of the American state governors. His stands on principle undoubtedly denied him a genuine chance to contend for the presidency. His life can be summed up in one word: Valor."
McMath's standing has been enhanced by contemporary re-examinations of his administration's extraordinary accomplishments, given the poverty and parsimony of the era. These included the use of an unprecedented bond issue to secure the paving of more hard surface roads than all previous administrations combined (and more than those paved by any other Southern state during the period), taxing cigarettes to build the state's medical college, a policy of openness and inclusion toward African-Americans generally and a concerted public school improvement program, including a reduction of the number of school districts from 1,753 to 425 a measure begun by others but heartily endorsed by McMath in the 1948 general election and rigorously enforced by his administration after passage under the leadership of Dr. A.B. Bonds, Jr., one of the country's top young educators, a former member of the Atomic Energy Commission, and a native Arkansan whom McMath persuaded to return to the state as director of the Department of Education.
Most significant was McMath's politically fatal but ultimately successful war against Middle South Utilities (now Entergy Corporation), the then-dominant political force in state politics, which operated locally as Arkansas Power & Light (a subsidiary of Entergy
) Co. (AP&L). The corporation and its affiliates opposed extension of Rural Electrification Administration (REA)-generated electrical power to rural areas, which its directors and chief shareholders saw as a captive territory for AP&L's own eventual expansion. Fewer than half of Arkansas farm homes had electricity in 1948. REA-affiliated cooperatives, however, guided by Harry L. Oswald, for 25 years their Arkansas general manager and a fervent McMath loyalist, were able to open service to those areas by 1956 as the result of Co-op-enabling legislation, including authorization for the building of steam generating plants, which was enacted by Congress in large part at McMath's behest.
Middle South led the combination that defeated McMath in his 1952 re-election bid and in his 1954 effort to unseat then-Senator John L. McClellan. McClellan, who maintained a lucrative law practice with Middle South's chairman C. Hamilton Moses, referred to the REA co-ops as "communistic" during the campaign, which was conducted at the height of the "red scare" heightened by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy
's claims of communist influence in the Truman administration. McClellan was the ranking member of the Army-McCarthy subcommittee, whose hearings were televised live during the lead-up to the election. Liberal senators Hubert Humphrey
, Stuart Symington
and others, as well as Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, signed newspaper ads supporting McClellan. Moses had similarly partnered with McClellan's predecessor, Joe T. Robinson
, who prior to his death in 1937 had used his considerable power as Senate majority leader to divert the New Deal's showcase Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) public electricity generating project away from the Arkansas River, the basin for which it was originally proposed. Moses, who had supported McMath in 1948 but had since cooled toward him, brought AP&L's entire board of directors to the governor's office just prior to the 1952 candidate filing deadline to lobby McMath against the building of the initial steam generating plant, at Ozark, Arkansas. They promised to aid McMath's third-term re-election bid, in spite of past differences, if he would withdraw his support for the plant. The governor heard the businessmen out, but reaffirmed his commitment to Co-op power. Shortly afterward, four heavily AP&L-funded gubernatorial candates filed against McMath, one of whom, Chancery Judge Francis Cherry of Jonesboro, defeated him in the August primary run-off during which Cherry hosted a round-the-clock radio "talkathon" lambasting "the McMath Highway Scandal." (See below.) Cherry was elected in November but served only one term, being defeated by Faubus in the 1954 run-off.
McClellan narrowly defeated McMath in the 1954 senatorial race, an election now generally recognized to have been marked by widespread fraud. For example, record numbers of black voters, for whom McMath had only five years before secured the right to vote in Democratic primaries, were trucked to the polls (usually plantation stores or gin offices) in Eastern Arkansas by McClellan supporters among the planters of that region who held their workers' poll tax receipts and recorded how they voted. McMath lost some of those precincts by better than 9 to 1 margins as election officials in Lee, Crittenden, Phillips, Mississippi, Desha and Chicot counties delayed completion of vote counts for a full day after the election—allegedly to see how many more fraudulent votes McClellan needed to win without a run-off.
AP&L's (and McClellan's) enmity toward McMath did not end with his defeat in the senatorial election. Nine years later, when President John F. Kennedy
suggested McMath's possible appointment as a replacement Secretary of the Interior
, McClellan quickly used his special relationship with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, a former counsel to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations
, of which McClellan had become chairman in 1955, to nip the idea in the bud. A similar suggestion in 1964 by then-President Lyndon Johnson met the same fate. Some of McMath's most stalwart support was from organized labor, whose abuses, particularly by national leaders of the Teamsters
, were a focus of the committee's investigations in the late 1950s. No Arkansas union members or officials, however, figured prominently in these probes.
Allegations of corruption in McMath's highway department, brought by a grand jury dominated by utility minions, were eventually proven unfounded in three separate proceedings. Two grand juries returned no indictments, but a third on which several Middle South managers served returned three, each alleging shakedowns of highway contractors for campaign contributions. All of the accused were acquitted. There was no allegation of personal wrongdoing by McMath. However, the assertions against his administration dogged him for the rest of his life and Promises Kept includes a chapter in which McMath refutes the charges and chastises his opponents for abusing the judicial system to fabricate them. The former governor's October 22, 1954 sworn statement before the U.S. Senate committee investigating monopoly influence over the distribution of the nation's electrical power, in which he recounts Middle South-AP&L's manipulation of the Arkansas "Highway Audit Commission" and the grand jury process, warrants inclusion in any anthology of significant state papers of the 20th century. The truthfulness of McMath's testimony describing in detail this use of raw corporate power to defeat reform and destroy the reformer was never disputed and no rebuttal was offered. See Further Reading, below.
McMath opposed the "Southern Manifesto
", a March 1956 pronouncement of 19 U.S. Senators, including Fulbright and McClellan, and 81 Congressmen from former Confederate states decrying the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education
as: "[C]ontrary to the Constitution … creating chaos and confusion … destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races … plant[ing] hatred and suspicion [and an] explosive and dangerous condition [which is being] inflamed by outside meddlers …" The document encouraged public officials to use "all lawful means" to thwart the enforcement of the ruling. According to McMath at the time, "This [manifesto] only serves to encourage demagogues to set fires of racial hatred that could consume our people."
It was this Congressional manifesto, McMath laments in Promises Kept, that gave Faubus the impetus and political cover to call out the National Guard in September 1957 to bar the entry of nine black students to Little Rock Central High School. "Emboldened by this support", McMath wrote, "Faubus played his racial card." McMath strenuously opposed this action as well as Faubus' closure of the public schools the following year rather than obey federal court desegregation orders.
McMath counseled President Dwight D. Eisenhower
against the use of regular U.S. Army troops, suggesting instead that the U.S. Marshals Service
be used to enforce the court's orders. However, this advice was not accepted and paratroopers from the elite 101st Airborne Division
were sent to Little Rock after Eisenhower nationalized the Guard and disbanded it. The soldiers forced the admission of "The Little Rock Nine
", as the black students became known, but the troops' presence, as McMath foretold, stirred states-rights sentiment to a frenzy, made Faubus a hero to a majority of Arkansas voters, and ensured his re-election to a record six terms in office each time, ironically, with an increasing percentage of the African-American vote, of which he garnered more than 80% in the 1964 Democratic primary.
McMath became the acknowledged leader of the Faubus opposition and supported insurgent gubernatorial candidates in the 1958 and 1960 Democratic primaries. His law firm was often referred to as resembling "a South American government in exile." McMath, himself, finally ran against Faubus in 1962 under the slogan, "Let's get Arkansas Moving Again." He placed second in a field of five, splitting the black vote with Faubus, while running on a platform of fresh business investment (many firms had fled the state during the years of racial strife or avoided it altogether), stricter regulation of gas and electric utility pricing, and the charging of interest on state revenues, which were held in private banks interest free but which the banks then loaned out at standard commercial rates a windfall bankers justified as a "fee" for keeping the state's funds. Faubus narrowly avoided a runoff when Marvin Melton, a Jonesboro banker widely seen as the second strongest challenger after McMath, was persuaded by Faubus operatives (who suggested that state funds could be withdrawn from his bank and questions raised about his selling of allegedly inflated insurance company stock) to quit the race.
The 1962 election cemented the ascendancy of "Witt" Stephens, Faubus' primary financial backer, as the state's undisputed kingmaker. Stephens' banks held the lion's share of state funds. His Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company charged Arkansas homeowners (whom Stephens contemptuously referred to as "the biscuit cookers") the highest residential rates by volume in the Southwest, thanks to Faubus' complaisant Public Service Commission—an advantage that continues today. (See Further Reading, below.) Additionally, Stephens' brokerage firm handled most state bond issues during the 12-year Faubus reign. The Stephens empire today controls more than one hundred billion dollars in investments. "Stephens, Inc", its brokerage arm, was until recently the largest off-Wall Street securities trading firm in the United States. A sign of its political clout and wariness is the firm's portfolio of newspaper and other communication holdings, the second largest in Arkansas after the Palmer-Hussman chain, which operates the only statewide newspaper and a spawn of local dailies. Between them, the two interests control, directly or through subsidiaries or associates, more than two-thirds of the state's famously quiescent print and broadcast media.
Many of McMath's staunchest supporters turned out in 1966 for Winthrop Rockefeller in his successful bid to become the state's first GOP governor since Reconstruction. Rockefeller soundly defeated the Democratic nominee, an avowed segregationist supreme court justice, Jim Johnson.
The 1966 election was the first full general election cycle since the repeal of the poll tax and passage of the Voting Rights Act
. These developments accelerated an already growing shift in influence over black voters from white bosses toward African-American clergy, due in part to the gradual displacement of plantation labor by mechanized agriculture, swelling the unemployment and welfare rolls. Rockefeller's campaign took full advantage of this dynamic by wooing hundreds of black ministers with church improvement contributions and cash get-out-the-vote payments, setting a precedent for future candidates of both parties and considerably raising the cost of electioneering. Some ministers, themselves locally elected officials, hire out as "consultants" to congressional and gubernatorial candidates, often renting their church buildings and vehicles to a campaign and hiring congregants as canvassers and drivers. Early-voting laws now permit even Sunday balloting, facilitating the busing of entire congregations to polling places after services. In some instances, the churches themselves are designated as early voting precincts. Funding this cornucopia of "walking around money", which can exceed $1 million per election cycle for each major statewide candidate, has substantially increased the power of the state's corporate vested interests, whose large bundled and PAC
contributions, many from lawyers, managers and agents of out-of-state parents and affiliates, as well as from international labor union political action funds, are critical in meeting such demanding overhead. Bundling has become even more important in view of individual donation limits imposed following Watergate
and subsequent scandals. When rising front-end charges for television advertising (essential for reaching white voters but to which African-American voters are largely unresponsive) are added, Arkansas campaign expenditures, per voter, are among the nation's highest.
The Rockefeller administration resumed and expanded the post-war reforms begun by McMath, particularly with regard to civil rights, which, borne on a national tide of rejection of bigotry as public policy, resulted not merely in blacks ceasing to be excluded from public services but able, in significant part, to control their allocation through the franchise usually by bloc voting for Democratic candidates, but always as a credible threat against any racist isolate. Rather than altering the status quo with some 18% to 22% of the vote statewide (40% to 60% in some counties), blacks have been absorbed into it through disproportionate hiring as lower level public employees and as low wage "associates" of mega-retailing enterprises, poultry processing emporia, tertiary health and casualty insurers, the utility monopolies and other concerns buoyed by the state's parochial, right-to-work economy.
Bereft of Rockefeller's eleemosynary capacity or McMath's disdain for barony, later administrations have comfortably reconciled themselves to the exigencies of this quaint realpolitik. Although Faubus died a pariah in 1994, the example of his agility in placating a credulous electorate, now multiracial, with a veneer of populism and dashes of largesse, while simultaneously accommodating the forces of extraction whom Sid McMath illustriously, if momentarily, challenged half-a-century ago remains the guidepost for political survival in 21st century Arkansas.
Whatever fame McMath once had fled well before his death. In recent years he sometimes had to spell his name for bank tellers, reservations clerks, state employees once even for a newspaper reporter. He accumulated no great wealth, owning at the end a modestly upscale condominium and a small residual interest in his law firm. The latter, though no longer occupying the field alone, remains the state's premier personal injury practice. Ironically, some of its major cases are referred by competitors, many of whom appear amongst the swarms of television, billboard and yellowpage advertisements directed at "victims" and the "hurt" now common throughout America.
A key to McMath's ultimate legacy may be found in the memory of those who knew him, if only for a time. "You always left Sid McMath with the feeling, not that you had been with someone important, but that you were important, that your life had been uplifted", Arkansas Circuit Judge John Norman Harkey has said of McMath. "Sid took your cares away. He refreshed your spirit. No matter how down you were before, he made you want to charge back into the battle, but with a smile, knowing, by gosh, we can really win this thing. And we did win." But, of course, McMath did not always win. A stock remark he would offer following a loss was, "The bastards know they've been in a fight. You have to let them know you're not afraid to leave your blood on the courtroom floor. I've left a lot of blood on the courtroom floor."
There was also the matter of honor, the upholding of which by a public officer amidst great tumult and peril (and against the most persuasive and enticing machiavellian temptation to do otherwise), and at the risk not only of one's career and personal fortune but, in the darkest days, of one's life and those of his loved ones—may prove to be McMath's singular legacy. Once a noted collegiate thespian, McMath on occasion would recite lines dealing with honor from roles in which he had acted (or aspired to act) in his youth. He was high-school cast in The Valiant and as Hamlet, Romeo and Henry V at university. But among his favorites, which he had not played but often wished he had done, was the lead in Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, a work he knew practically by heart, particularly the closing scene, in which the grenadier is dying alone except for his beloved Roxanne, to whom he confides that his paucity of means and acclaim, and his unconsummated love all are nothing beside his intact honor, "and that is … my white ... plume."
on Saturday, October 4, 2003. He had been released from a hospital stay on the previous Wednesday after being treated for severe dehydration, malnourishment and an irregular heartbeat. He is survived by his third wife, Betty Dorch Russell McMath, three sons: Sandy, Phillip and Bruce McMath; two daughters, Melissa Hatfield and Patricia Bueter; ten grandchildren and one great grandchild. His first wife and childhood sweetheart, Elaine Braughton McMath, died at Quantico, Virginia in 1942. His second wife, of 49 years, Anne Phillips McMath, died at Little Rock in 1994.
McMath was given a full military funeral by a U.S. Marine Corps Honor Guard. He lay in state for a day in the Capitol rotunda, following which his closed, flag-draped coffin was transported by motorcade to Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock for services attended by more than 2,000 persons. He was eulogized by Former Governor David Pryor as, "the best friend Arkansas ever had." The ceremony included hymns by the combined Methodist and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Vespers choirs, concluding with "Onward, Christian Soldiers
." Following the firing of a salute by the Honor Guard, McMath was interred at Pinecrest Memorial Cemetery in Saline County, Arkansas, a few yards from a survey marker denoting the geographical center of the state.
Sid McMath Avenue in Little Rock is named for him and in December 2004 the Central Arkansas Library System dedicated a new branch in his honor. A statue of McMath, waving his trademark Panama campaign hat, was commissioned by the library from sculptor Bryan Massey. It was unveiled September 26, 2006 as the centerpiece of a sculpture plaza and nature trail. In December 2006, Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas announced the presentation of the first Sidney S. McMath Award for Outstanding Leadership and Courage by a Public Official to U.S. Representaive Marion Berry (D-Ark). Henderson State University has established the Sidney S. McMath Pre-Law Lecture Series Fellowship and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences recently received a $1 million private endowment for the Sidney S. McMath professorship in public health. The Governor Sidney Sanders McMath Memorial Scholarship for an Outstanding Pre-Law Junior was established at Southern Arkansas University by the Columbia County Democratic Central Committee on April 5, 2008. Lions World Services for the Blind presents an annual Sidney McMath Award for a Lifetime of Outstanding Public Service. The former governor's autobiography, Promises Kept, posthumously was awarded the Arkansas Historical Association's highest accolade, the John G. Ragsdale Prize. In April 2006 it received the Booker T. Worthen Medal for literary excellence from the Arkansas Library System. There is no plaque or other memorial in Hot Springs, Arkansas, mentioning McMath or the GI reform movement he led.
McMath's own account, Promises Kept, ISBN 1-55728-754-6 (University of Arkansas Press, 2003) contains a wealth of primary source material including, in addition to the author's personal recollections, photocopies of correspondence exchanged between him and President Truman and others. Citations in the Appendix refer readers interested in the details of some of McMath's more significant cases to state and federal appellate court reporters and to law review case notes and articles. However, due to their sheer number, many cases are not cited and some citations contain typographical errors. Online and back-issue index searches of Arkansas Reports, Southwestern Reporter, Federal Reports, Federal Supplement, the ATLA Law Reporter (formerly the NACCA Law Journal), TRIAL magazine, Matthew Bender's Art of Advocacy series (particularly Baldwin, "The Art of Direct Examination"), the Arkansas Law Review, UALR Law Review, Inside Litigation, Westlaw and Lexis would assist the reader in developing a more complete list of McMath's cases, their correct citations, and commentary. Indeed, one could trace the development of the American common law of torts over the second half of the 20th century with a chronological analysis of reported (or law-reviewed) cases in which the plaintiff was represented by McMath or a member of his firm. A rich source of historical and trial practice commentary would be the video archives of the School of Trial and Appellate Advocacy, Hastings College of the Law, University of California, San Francisco, the nation's earliest sustained CLE program and the model for many that followed, which McMath and Woods were instrumental in founding and on whose visiting faculty they or members of their firm served from its inception in 1971 unti its closure in 2001.
McMath's historical impact on the practice of law is surveyed by six authors, among them two federal judges, in "A Tribute to Governor Sidney S. McMath", UALR Law Review, Vol. 26, pp 515–542 (Spring 2004).
McMath's 3-year struggle to secure funding for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and his key role in opening the school to African American students is discussed at length by Dr. W. David Baird, Chair of the Department of History, Oklahoma State University, in his extensive Medical Education in Arkansas, 1879–1978, ISBN 0-87870-052-8 (Memphis State University Press, 1979).
U.S. District Judge Henry Woods, McMath's partner of 27 years, was a prolific legal writer and his articles on their cases occasionally appeared in the Arkansas Law Review. Woods' treatise, Comparative Fault (Lawyers Publishing Co., 3d Ed. 1996) is the hornbook authority on that area of injury law. His papers, including personal letters and memoranda on a variety of matters dating from McMath's governorship through their years of practice together, were donated in 1998 to the special collections section of the University of Arkansas library in Fayetteville.
For an intimate family portrait and a behind-the-scenes narrative, see First Ladies of Arkansas: Women of Their Times, by Anne McMath, ISBN 0-87483-091-5 (August House, 1989). A Ribbon and a Star (Henry Holt, Inc., 1945) is an eye-witness memoir of the Bougainville campaign by one of McMath's staff officers, Capt. John Monks Jr., written immediately after the engagement. Monks later became a noted playwright and film producer. For a colorful local history of Hot Springs, Arkansas during the McLaughlin period, including the mayor's 1947 indictment and trial, see Leo & Verne: The Spa's Heyday, by Orval Allbritton, with a foreword by McMath, ISBN 0929604873 (Garland County Historical Society, 2003). For another perspective, see P.H. Ramsey, "A Place at the Table: Hot Springs and the GI Revolt", Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 2000).
McMath's testimony before the U.S. Senate Anti-Monopoly Subcommittee on October 22, 1954 dealing with the Highway Audit Commission and subsequent grand jury charges and trials may be found in the Congressional Record for that date. It is also replicated at the Sid McMath web site at www.mcmathlaw.com. The McMath-Faubus relationship is noted in Faubus: Life and Times of an American Prodigal, by Roy Reed, ISBN 1-55728-457-1 (University of Arkansas Press, 1997). The results of continuing utility influence over rate regulation in Arkansas may be seen by comparing regional pricing. For example, the Natural Gas Price Reports of the Energy Information Administration reveal that for the period ending July 1, 2005 Arkansans paid $19.23 per 1000 cubic feet (28.3 m³)--more than $3.00 greater than the average price charged residents of all six neighboring states. Mississippi residents paid $12.85, those in Louisiana, $15.79, and Texas homeowners, $15.97.
Articles and notes in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly dealing with McMath or his administration are found in Volumes 6, 9, 11, 12, 15, 21, 25, 26, 30, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 57, and 59 of that publication. Shortly after his first inauguration, McMath candidly discussed his political thinking and legislative goals in a widely syndicated interview with Joseph Driscoll, national correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Disptach. See "Sidney McMath, New Governor of Arkansas, Wants Civil Rights Protected by States", on page 1-B of that paper's Sunday, January 23, 1949 edition.
Certain of the former governor's personal and public papers, including Elaine Braughton McMath's 1940–1942 diary, numerous letters (including an immense volume of correspondence between McMath and his sons while they were serving in the Marines and traveling overseas), several oversized volumes of news cuttings, recordings of 1940s stump speeches and radio interviews, 1950s and later television footage, a 30-minute June 1962 campaign film, "A Man for Arkansas", shot by 4-time Academy Award winning documentary producer Charles Guggenheim
, the James Woods' monograph, and a 60-minute June 2000 AETN television interview with McMath by former governor David Pryor, as moderator, are held by the historical records section of the University of Arkansas Library in Fayetteville. The Henderson State University Library in Arkadelphia retains others. Photographs, films, flags, uniforms, campaign ribbons, medals and citations from McMath's Marine Corps service are kept at the Arkansas Military Museum, the Old State House Museum, and the Sidney S. McMath Memorial Public Library, all in Little Rock. Readers are also referred to the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri and the U.S. Marine Corps archives in Quantico, Virginia, St. Louis, Missouri and Washington, D.C.
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
, attorney and the 34th Governor of Arkansas (1949–1953) who, in defiance of his state's political establishment, championed rapid rural electrification
Rural electrification
Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage; in areas...
, massive highway and school construction, the building 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...
for Medical Sciences
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is part of the University of Arkansas System, a state-run university in the U.S. state of Arkansas...
, strict bank and utility regulation, repeal of the poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
, open and honest elections and broad expansion of opportunity for black citizens
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
in the decade following World War II.
McMath remained loyal to President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
during the "Dixiecrat
Dixiecrat
The States' Rights Democratic Party was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948...
" rebellion of 1948, campaigning throughout the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
for Truman's re-election. As a former governor, McMath led the opposition to segregationist
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
Governor Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus
Orval Eugene Faubus was the 36th Governor of Arkansas, serving from 1955 to 1967. He is best known for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of Little Rock public schools during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court by ordering the...
following the 1957 Little Rock school crisis
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then...
. He later became one of the nation's foremost trial lawyers
United States tort law
This article addresses torts in United States law. As such, it covers primarily common law. Moreover, it provides general rules, as individual states all have separate civil codes...
, representing thousands of injured persons in precedent-setting cases and mentoring several generations of young attorneys
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
.
Early life
McMath was born in a dog-trotDogtrot house
The dogtrot, also known as a breezeway house, dog-run, or possum-trot, is a style of house that was common throughout the Southeastern United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most theories place its origins in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Some scholars believe the style...
log cabin
Log cabin
A log cabin is a house built from logs. It is a fairly simple type of log house. A distinction should be drawn between the traditional meanings of "log cabin" and "log house." Historically most "Log cabins" were a simple one- or 1½-story structures, somewhat impermanent, and less finished or less...
on the old McMath home place near Magnolia
Magnolia, Arkansas
Magnolia is a city in Columbia County, Arkansas, United States, that was founded in 1853. At the time of its incorporation in 1858, the city had a population of about 1,950. The city grew slowly as an agricultural and regional cotton market until the discovery of oil just east of the city in March,...
, Columbia County, Arkansas
Columbia County, Arkansas
Columbia County is a county located in the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of 2010, the population was 24,552. The county seat is Magnolia. Columbia County was formed on December 17, 1852, and was named for Christopher Columbus...
, the son of Hal Pierce and Nettie Belle Sanders McMath. His paternal grandfather, Columbia County Sheriff Sidney Smith McMath, grand nephew of his Goliad
Battle of Goliad
The Battle of Goliad was the second skirmish of the Texas Revolution. In the early-morning hours of October 10, 1835, rebellious Texas settlers attacked the Mexican Army soldiers garrisoned at Presidio La Bahía, a fort near the Mexican Texas settlement of Goliad...
namesake, had himself been killed in the line of duty the previous year, leaving a pensionless widow and eight children, Hal being the eldest. After years of wrangling horses and bad-luck wildcatting in the Southwest Arkansas oil fields, Hal McMath moved his family by wagon to Hot Springs
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Hot Springs is the 10th most populous city in the U.S. state of Arkansas, the county seat of Garland County, and the principal city of the Hot Springs Metropolitan Statistical Area encompassing all of Garland County...
in June 1922. There, he sold the last of his horses and took a job as a barber
Barber
A barber is someone whose occupation is to cut any type of hair, and to shave or trim the beards of men. The place of work of a barber is generally called a barbershop....
. Nettie went to work as a manicurist
Manicure
A manicure is a cosmetic beauty treatment for the fingernails and hands performed at home or in a nail salon. A manicure treatment is not only a treatment for the natural nails but also for the hands. A manicure consists of filing, shaping of the free edge, treatments, massage of the hand and the...
and for the Malco theatre
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
as a ticket vendor. Sid and his sister, Edyth, attended Hot Springs public schools, where the boy excelled in boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
and drama and became an Eagle Scout
Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America)
Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America . A Scout who attains this rank is called an Eagle Scout or Eagle. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been earned by more than 2 million young men...
, while shining shoes and hawking newspapers to supplement the family's meagre income. He was elected president of his class each of his high school years, the last of which he won the state Golden Gloves
Golden Gloves
The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the United States. The Golden Gloves is often the term used to refer to the National Golden Gloves competition, but it also can represent several other amateur tournaments, including regional golden gloves...
welterweight boxing title. He attended Henderson State College
Henderson State University
Henderson State University, founded in 1890 as Arkadelphia Methodist College, is a four-year public liberal arts university located in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, United States. It is Arkansas's only member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges...
and 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...
, where he was elected president of the student body. He was also a member of the Arkansas Pershing Rifles Military Fraternity, Blue Key, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He graduated from the University's School of Law in 1936.
Military service
McMath received a reserve ROTC commission as a second lieutenant in the MarinesUnited States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
upon graduation from college. During World War II he served with the Marines after voluntarily returning to active duty in 1940. Assigned to train officer candidates at Quantico, Virginia
Quantico, Virginia
- Demographics :As of the census of 2000, there are 561 people, 295 households, and 107 families living in the town. The population density is . There are 359 housing units at an average density of .-Racial composition:...
, he was promoted to captain, then to major, and in 1942 he was ordered to American Samoa
American Samoa
American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of the sovereign state of Samoa...
in command of the combined forces jungle warfare
Jungle warfare
Jungle warfare is a term used to cover the special techniques needed for military units to survive and fight in jungle terrain.It has been the topic of extensive study by military strategists, and was an important part of the planning for both sides in many conflicts, including World War II and the...
school. From late 1942 to early 1944, he led the 3rd Marine Regiment in battle as operations officer and acting CO in the Pacific Theatre
Pacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
, including New Georgia
New Georgia
New Georgia is the largest island of the Western Province of the Solomon Islands.-Geography:This island is located in the New Georgia Group, an archipelago including most of the other larger islands in the province...
, Vella Lavella
Vella Lavella
Vella Lavella is an island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. It lies to the west of New Georgia, but is considered one of the New Georgia Group...
, Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal is a tropical island in the South-Western Pacific. The largest island in the Solomons, it was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568...
and Bougainville
Bougainville campaign (1944-45)
The Bougainville campaign was fought by the Allies in the South Pacific during World War II to regain control of the island of Bougainville from the Japanese forces who had occupied it in 1942. During their occupation the Japanese constructed naval aircraft bases in the north, east, and south of...
, during which he directed the Battle of Piva Forks
Battle of Piva Forks
The Battle of Piva Forks, also known as the Battle of Numa Numa Trail, was an engagement during the Bougainville campaign in World War II, and occurred from 18-25 November 1943 on Bougainville Island in the South Pacific between the United States Marine Corps, United States Army and Imperial...
, the pivotal action, single handedly rallying troops pinned down by enemy mortar and machine gun fire. He received a battlefield promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and was awarded the Silver Star
Silver Star
The Silver Star is the third-highest combat military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States armed forces for valor in the face of the enemy....
and Legion of Merit
Legion of Merit
The Legion of Merit is a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements...
. The citation for the former, personally signed by Admiral W.F. "Bull" Halsey
William Halsey, Jr.
Fleet Admiral William Frederick Halsey, Jr., United States Navy, , was a U.S. Naval officer. He commanded the South Pacific Area during the early stages of the Pacific War against Japan...
, lauded McMath's "extraordinary heroism ... and disregard for his own safety above and beyond the call of duty [which] was an inspiration to the officers and men who observed him." Shortly afterward, McMath was stricken with malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
and filariasis and hospitalized for several months in New Zealand and in San Diego. He then served in the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. planning an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands. Lt. Col. McMath was discharged from active duty in December 1945.
He resumed his activity with the Marine Corps Reserve following his tenure as governor and commanded VTU 8–14 in Little Rock until 1964. He held the office of National President of the 3d Marine Division Association 1960–61.
Following his promotion to brigadier general in June 1963, with date of rank from July 1962, he performed active service as Assistant Commanding General, Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California, in the summer of 1963; Assistant Commanding General, Landing Force Training Unit, Pacific, at Coronado, California, in the summer of 1964; Assistant Division Commander, 2nd Marine Division, FMF, at Camp Lejeune
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune is a United States military training facility in North Carolina. The base's of beaches make it a major area for amphibious assault training, and its location between two deep-water ports allows for fast deployments.The main base is supplemented by five satellite...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, in the summer of 1965; President, Marine Corps Reserve Policy Board, USMC, in the summer of 1966, and in addition served at Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, including the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force in Vietnam. He was promoted to Major General on November 7, 1966. In 1967, the general served as Assistant Deputy Commander, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, during the summer training period. He served a second brief Reserve tour in Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, with the 3rd Marine Division, in 1969.
In 1967, he helped found the Marine Corps JROTC
Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps
The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps is a Federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces in high schools across the United States...
at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas, which became one of the top JROTC units in the country. Ever since, cadets there have been known as "Sid's Kids."
Awards
McMath was the recipient of the following awards:| Silver Star Silver Star The Silver Star is the third-highest combat military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States armed forces for valor in the face of the enemy.... |
Legion of Merit Legion of Merit The Legion of Merit is a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements... w/ valor device Valor device The Valor device is an award of the United States military which is a bronze attachment to certain medals to indicate that it was received for valor... |
Navy Unit Commendation Navy Unit Commendation The Navy Unit Commendation of the United States Navy is an award that was established by order of the Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal on 18 December 1944... |
| American Defense Service Medal American Defense Service Medal The American Defense Service Medal is a decoration of the United States military, recognizing service before America’s entry into the Second World War but during the initial years of the European conflict.-Criteria:... |
American Campaign Medal American Campaign Medal The American Campaign Medal was a military decoration of the United States armed forces which was first created on November 6, 1942 by issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt... |
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal The Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal is a service decoration of the Second World War which was awarded to any member of the United States military who served in the Pacific Theater from 1941 to 1945 and was created on November 6, 1942 by issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The medal was... w/ 3 service star Service star A service star, also referred to as a battle star, campaign star, or engagement star, is an attachment to a United States military decoration which denotes participation in military campaigns or multiple bestowals of the same award. Service stars are typically issued for campaign medals, service... s |
| World War II Victory Medal | Marine Corps Reserve Ribbon Marine Corps Reserve Ribbon The Marine Corps Reserve Ribbon is a decoration of the United States Marine Corps which was issued between the dates of the December 17, 1945 and December 17, 1965... |
Armed Forces Reserve Medal Armed Forces Reserve Medal The Armed Forces Reserve Medal is a military award of the United States Armed Forces that has existed since 1950. The medal recognizes service performed by the Reserve and National Guard forces of the United States of America.... |
Early career in politics
In early 1946, McMath and other veterans returning from World War II banded together to fight corruption in the Hot Springs city government, which was dominated by illegal gambling interests. Hot Springs at the time was a national gambling mecca frequented by organized crimeOrganized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
figures from Chicago, New York City, and other metropolitan areas. Casinos flourished and hotels advertised the availability of prostitutes. Mobsters maintained political control by purchasing and holding hundreds of poll tax receipts, often in the names of deceased or fictitious persons, which would be used to cast multiple votes
Electoral fraud
Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates or both...
in different precincts. Law enforcement officers were on the payroll of the local "organization" headed by long-serving Mayor Leo McLaughlin. A former sheriff who attempted to have the state's anti-gambling laws enforced was murdered in 1937; no one was ever charged with the killing. McMath headed a "GI Ticket", which, except for McMath himself, was defeated in the Democratic primary election
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
. However, the others resigned from the party and ran again as independents in the 1946 general election after McMath persuaded a federal judge to toss out the fraudulent poll tax receipts. Most won their offices. Among them were noted combat aviators Earl Ricks and I.G. Brown who were elected mayor and sheriff, respectively.
McMath served as prosecuting attorney for the 18th Judicial District (Garland and Montgomery Counties) starting in 1947. The newly installed GI officials, led by McMath, shut down the casinos and other rackets and a grand jury indicted a number of owners, pitchmen and politicians, including the former mayor. With the development of Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
in the years afterward, Hot Springs lost its premier gaming status. A casino revival during the administration of Governor Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus
Orval Eugene Faubus was the 36th Governor of Arkansas, serving from 1955 to 1967. He is best known for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of Little Rock public schools during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court by ordering the...
(1955–1967) was ended in 1967 by Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Governor Winthrop Rockefeller
Winthrop Rockefeller
Winthrop Rockefeller was a politician and philanthropist who served as the first Republican Governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction. He was a third-generation member of the Rockefeller family.-Early life:...
(1967–1971).
Governor of Arkansas
Benjamin Travis Laney
Benjamin Travis Laney, Jr. , was the 33rd Governor of Arkansas, having served from 1945-1949.Laney was born in Camden, where he attended Ouachita County public schools but never graduated from high school. He was, however, admitted in 1915 to Hendrix College, a liberal arts institution in...
of Camden
Camden, Arkansas
Camden is a city in and the county seat of Ouachita County in the southern part of the U.S. state of Arkansas. Long an area of American Indians villages, the French also made a permanent settlement here because of its advantageous location above the Ouachita River. According to 2007 Census...
, who attacked McMath for supporting Truman in 1948, when Laney and a number of other southern Democrats bolted the Democratic party over its civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
plank. The walk-outs switched their allegiance to Governor Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, who ran as a "Dixiecrat". McMath wrested control of the Arkansas party from Laney. He campaigned vigorously across the region and was credited by Truman with helping to save most of the South for the Democratic column, providing the electoral margin for a stunning upset
Upset
An upset occurs in a competition, frequently in electoral politics or sports, when the party popularly expected to win , is defeated by an underdog whom the majority expects to lose, defying the conventional wisdom...
victory. The two developed a lifelong friendship; McMath was mentioned early as a possible vice-presidential choice in 1952
United States presidential election, 1952
The United States presidential election of 1952 took place in an era when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating rapidly. In the United States Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional...
.
In the 1950 general election, McMath faced a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
candidate, Jefferson W. Speck
Jefferson W. Speck
Jefferson W. Speck was a planter and businessman from Mississippi County, Arkansas, who was the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1950 and again in 1952. He was a leader in the Dwight D...
, a young planter and businessman from Frenchmans Bayou in Mississippi County in eastern Arkansas, who also had a notable war record. Speck later became the unofficial head of the Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
partisans within the Arkansas GOP
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
. He challenged McMath to a debate and accused the Democrat of advocating "Truman socialism". McMath not only ignored Speck's challenge but went into Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
to campaign for the successful reelection bid of Democratic U.S. Senator A.S. "Mike" Monroney. McMath hailed his fellow Democrats as representatives of "liberty and hope for all mankind," whereas the GOP, he claimed, was "isolationist" and had kept the United States from joining the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
and the International Court of Arbitration
International Court of Arbitration
The International Court of Arbitration is an institution for the resolution of international commercial disputes. The International Court of Arbitration is part of the International Chamber of Commerce....
during the 1920s.
McMath's administration focused on infrastructure improvements, including the extensive paving of farm-to-market and primary roads "to get Arkansas out of the mud and the dust", rural electrification, and the construction of a medical center in the capital city. McMath supported 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...
statutes and appointed African Americans to state boards for the first time. His administration consolidated hundreds of small school districts and built 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...
for Medical Sciences (financed with a two-cent tax on cigarettes a significant innovation). McMath worked tirelessly, often clandestinely, with Dr. Lawrence Davis, Sr. to save the state's all-black college, Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, & Normal, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff
The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff is a historically black university located in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States. Founded in 1873, it is the oldest HBCU and the second oldest public institution in the state of Arkansas . UAPB is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund...
. McMath also reformed the state's mental health system and increased the minimum wage
Minimum wage
A minimum wage is the lowest hourly, daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. Equivalently, it is the lowest wage at which workers may sell their labour. Although minimum wage laws are in effect in a great many jurisdictions, there are differences of opinion about...
.
McMath was elected by the governors of other petroleum producing states to chair the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, which improved pricing structures and broadened federal support for exploration. He was elected chairman of the Southern Governor's Conference. McMath invited muckraking Arkansas Gazette
Arkansas Gazette
The Arkansas Gazette, known as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, and located from 1908 until its October 18, 1991 closing at the now historic Gazette Building, was for many years the newspaper of record for Little Rock and the State of Arkansas...
editor Harry Ashmore
Harry Ashmore
Harry Scott Ashmore was an American journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials in 1957 on the school integration conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas....
to speak to the governors. His topic was the waste of scarce public funds in maintaining separate school systems for white and black pupils.
Defeat for third term and U.S. Senate
McMath ran afoul of the energy and other extractionist sectors who had long dominated Arkansas politics but for whom McMath was not a compliant agent. These included Arkansas Power & Light, headed by utility magnate C. Hamilton Moses; wealthy bankers and bond dealers; piney woods timber companies; the Murphy OilMurphy Oil
Murphy Oil Corporation is an international oil and gas company, founded in 1944 as C.H. Murphy & Co by Charle H Murphy Sr., that conducts business through various operating subsidiaries. Murphy produces oil and/or natural gas in the United States, Canada, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Republic...
conglomerate and its retainers; and old-family planters in the Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Delta
The Mississippi Delta is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. The region has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth" because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history...
. All feared that McMath's progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
politics would increase labor costs and break up the sharecropping
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land . This should not be confused with a crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a fixed amount of...
farm economy. The utility feared loss of territory to rural electric cooperatives. These interests put aside their differences to work in concert to defeat McMath's bid for a third term in the 1952 election. McMath ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. 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...
in 1954 and again for Governor in 1962, with largely the same opposition united against him—although, by 1962, Moses had been displaced by bond and gas tycoon W.R. "Witt" Stephens as principal kingmaker. In 1962, McMath came within 500 votes of forcing Governor Orval Faubus, who had once been his Executive Secretary and Highway Director, into a runoff. McMath's voting base among the working class was neutralized by the $2 poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
(roughly $40 in 2004 dollars) which had to be paid a year prior to an election, effectively disenfranchising thousands of those voters. McMath strove in vain to repeal the tax, which remained a relic of Jim Crow
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
until the 24th Amendment
Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax...
to the U.S. Constitution in 1964.
Trial law practice
Following his 1952 defeat, McMath returned to the practice of law and over the next half-century became one of the leading consumer trial attorneysUnited States tort law
This article addresses torts in United States law. As such, it covers primarily common law. Moreover, it provides general rules, as individual states all have separate civil codes...
in the United States. His cases set a broad range of legal precedents, including the first million-dollar personal injury verdict in a U.S. District Court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
(for an injured Arkansas River barge crewman, in 1968), a woman's right to recover for the loss of her husband's consortium (an element of damage previously limited to men), manufacturers' responsibility for harm caused by defective products and negligent advertising encouraging their misuse, the chemical industry's liability for crop and environmental damage, drug companies' responsibility for fatal vaccine
Vaccine
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins...
reactions in children, gun dealers' fault for the negligent sale of firearms, and the right of workers to sue third-party suppliers for job injuries. He and his partner Henry Woods, who had served as his gubernatorial chief of staff and later was appointed U.S. District Judge, became nationally known for their effective use of powerful demonstrative evidence, such as detailed models of accident scenes and the human anatomy. In 1976, he was elected president of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, a select group of 500 of the world's most distinguished barristers, taking office February 22, 1977 at the group's annual convention in Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
, Kenya.
McMath's courtroom victories were all the more remarkable for being won in an era of "blue ribbon" juries handpicked by commissioners, themselves selected by state court judges beholden to insurance defense law firms from whom they received thousands of dollars in non-reportable (and non-refundable) campaign contributions for re-election races in which few were ever opposed. Factory workers, blacks, union members, ordinary laborers and other wage earners were often excluded from panels which were heavily weighted with bank and insurance company employees, mid-level managers, realtors, small business owners, salaried professionals, country club members and others hostile to claimants. Federal court juries were somewhat more diverse, but U.S. district judges, invariably former corporate counsel, had broader powers to dismiss cases summarily, overturn verdicts, and to withhold evidence favorable to the plainitff—rulings which often occurred, necessitating lengthy appeals before some cases could be fully tried. Many did not survive this gauntlet.
McMath wrote a memoir, Promises Kept (University of Arkansas Press, 2003, ISBN 1-55728-754-6) detailing his rural upbringing, public schooling, family tragedies including the untimely death of his first wife, Elaine, during the war and the shooting to death of his father, who had become an enraged alcoholic, by his second wife, Anne, in 1947 as well as his years of military service and as governor. The Arkansas Historical Association awarded the autobiography its 2003 John G. Ragsdale Prize as the year's most outstanding historical work. In April 2006 the book was awarded the Booker T. Worthen Medal for literary excellence by the Arkansas Library System. An appendix discusses McMath's more significant cases from the citizen's point of view. These include Franco v. Bunyard, which held gun merchants liable for negligently selling a pistol to escaped convicts who kidnapped and murdered store clerks; Fitzsimmons v. General Motors, which pioneered the rule of consumer induced misuse through seductive advertising (the first of three "Smokey and the Bandit" Trans Am cases handled by the firm in which it was shown that clips and outtakes from scofflaw motion pictures were spliced by GM into TV commercials aimed at adolescent males); Miller v. Missouri Pacific Ry. Co., which established a woman's right to sue for the loss of her husband's society, companionship and sexual relations; Brinnegar v. San Ore Construction Co., a landmark admiralty case; Harrod v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., and Work v. Tyson Foods, Inc. and a number of other actions resulting in multi-million dollar recoveries for farmers and homeowners whose crops and ground water were poisoned by defective pesticides and poultry effluent. The Harrod case involved the issue of whether tomato crops had been damaged by cold weather or by du Pont's fungicide, Benlate, which plaintiffs contended was contaminated with the weed killer, Atrazine. Bruce McMath, lead counsel at trial, successfully confronted rumors that his clients' claims were dishonest by openly asking jurors on voir dire, "How many of you have ever cheated on your taxes?" The synopsis of the case in "Promises Kept" is written from the perspective of plaintiffs' attorneys and stresses their contention that du Pont had intentionally contaminated their product, a claim vehemently denied by the defense.
In 1991, McMath and his firm proposed suit against tobacco companies to recover Medicaid
Medicaid
Medicaid is the United States health program for certain people and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments, and is managed by the states. People served by Medicaid are U.S. citizens or legal permanent...
funds spent caring for smokers. Rejected by Arkansas authorities, who had close ties to tobacco lobbyists and law firms, the idea was used by Florida, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
and Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, which won billion dollar settlements. Forty-six other states soon brought their own claims. Texas recovered $18 billion in a Texarkana federal court claim which Arkansas officials refused to join. Arkansas finally concluded a $60 million per year tag-along settlement in 1999. These, and the federal government's own recoveries which followed in their wake, will eventually exceed $1 trillion, representing the largest public interest litigation result in American legal history.
Later life
Sid McMath remained active into his 90's, continuing to speak at Arkansas schools and events, particularly at his first alma mater, Henderson State University, whose faculty established a history and political science lecture series in his honor, and at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, to whose scholarship fund he was a substantial contributor. He also supported local civic organizations, including the Union Rescue Mission, the Scottish RiteScottish Rite
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry , commonly known as simply the Scottish Rite, is one of several Rites of the worldwide fraternity known as Freemasonry...
Masons (who awarded him its highest honor of the Grand Cross), and the Lions World Services for the Blind, whose training school in Little Rock he completed in 1999 following the loss of his vision due to macular degeneration. A video commercial featuring McMath has been aired nationally by the school in recent years. McMath was elected president of the Third Marine Division Association and in 1994 he narrated The Battle of Bauxite, a television documentary recounting the story of the miners who excavated thousands of tons of aluminum ore from pits near Bauxite, Arkansas
Bauxite, Arkansas
Bauxite is a town in Saline County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 432 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is named for the mineral bauxite, the source ore for aluminum, which was found in...
which was used for military aircraft production during World War II. Aluminum workers and their families were among his most ardent supporters during his many campaigns. McMath taught a senior Bible study class for 26 years at Little Rock's Pulaski Heights
Pulaski Heights, Little Rock, Arkansas
Pulaski Heights is a section of the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, located in the north-central portion of the city. The area comprises two distinct neighborhoods representing a historic suburb dating from the 1890s, and was among the first areas annexed into Little Rock.Incorporated in 1903 and...
United Methodist Church
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination which is both mainline Protestant and evangelical. Founded in 1968 by the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley...
, with emphasis on the Old Testament prophets.
Historical evaluation
Dixiecrat
The States' Rights Democratic Party was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948...
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
, the abolition of the so called "white primary" in Arkansas (1949), the opening of the state's medical and law schools to African-Americans (Fall 1948, but only after Governor-elect McMath's express approval), his championship of rural electrification and his relentless opposition to segregationist governor Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus
Orval Eugene Faubus was the 36th Governor of Arkansas, serving from 1955 to 1967. He is best known for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of Little Rock public schools during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court by ordering the...
, a former McMath ally (Faubus had served as McMath's Director of Highways), during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation turmoil and throughout Faubus' subsequent nine years in office, could well result in his elevation by future historians to first place not only among Arkansas governors, but among all Southern governors of the time.
"Sid McMath might have laid legitimate claim to have been the most courageous and far-sighted Southern leader of the 20th century", wrote Arkansas Times columnist Ernest Dumas on October 10, 2003. "What separated McMath from every other leader of that grim time in the South was courage, the moral as well as physical variety."
Concluded Dumas: "[T]he real test of courage was how he handled the defining issue of the century for every Southern political leader. [I]n a field crowded by frenzied men trying to outdo each other in their zeal to keep the Negro in his place, McMath deplored race-baiting. … Had one just one! major elected Southern official broken ranks on civil rights, early on, before the racist opposition began to metastasize, history might have been so different. The tragedy of Faubus and Fulbright was that they lacked the courage to do so. The tragedy of Sid McMath was that corporate vengeance denied him the opportunity to do what they would not."
George Arnold, Northwest Arkansas opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, observed in a March 2004 column that, "If [McMath] had been able to take Arkansas further down the path to modernization and racial harmony, Arkansas history would have been quite different. Arkansas paid a big price when the public utilities muscled him out of office. [It is] still paying." See Further Reading, below, for continued utility pricing disparity in Arkansas compared to neighboring states.
Harry Ashmore, whose Arkansas Gazette editorials during the Little Rock school crisis won dual Pulitzer Prizes for him and the paper, wrote in an April 1977 book review that, "McMath's … return to active politics in the Faubus era was pro bono, an act of integrity undertaken when he knew the chances of winning were slight and the personal cost would be high. [O]ne who did not always see eye to eye with him could say of Sid McMath: 'He was there when the people needed him and didn't know it. He is a far better man than any of those who came out ahead of him at the polls.'"
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in an October 7, 2003 editorial ("Greatness Passed This Way") written by editorial page editor Paul Greenberg, himself a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, lauded McMath as, "[T]he greatest [man] of his era and of a few others."
"Sid McMath", the newspaper said, "never believed in testing the political winds before speak[ing] out for principle. He remained a true, old-fashioned Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson Democrat as that breed gradually disappeared. When others in the party argued that America could safely co-exist with evil, Sid McMath knew better and said so. He also knew there are far worse things than losing elections like winning them for the wrong reasons… He would not accept the expansion of evil in the world, no matter how inevitable that was said to be by distinguished statesmen at the time. Instead he would defy it and urge others to join him."
The belatedness of McMath's recognition as one of the South's great political leaders has undoubtedly been due to lingering detraction from an ersatz "highway scandal" (see below) contrived by opponents to defeat his 1952 re-election bid as well as his steadfast support of a tough anti-communist foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
throughout the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, including the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
(in which he served two short reserve tours), which McMath, while condemning its micromanagement by the Johnson and Nixon administrations, saw as a critical holding action necessary to give the emerging nations of the Asian rim, most of whom were fending off their own communist insurgencies, time to build market economies and some form of democracy. In Promises Kept he suggests that this goal was in fact achieved, in spite of the 1975 North Vietnamese victory over the south, which McMath saw as pyrrhic in light of the subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire and the emergence of the rest of Southeast Asia as a free-trading powerhouse.
Nevertheless, these views, presented in scores of speeches to school, civic and veterans' groups, were bitterly resented by many of McMath's erstwhile supporters, particularly academics, editorial writers and liberal activists (including some members of his own law firm, who left on this account), for whom an aggressive Cold War stance became heresy during the late 1960s onward indeed, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In spite of his towering credentials as a social and economic progressive, many of these persons never forgave McMath for his anti-communist, national defense positions, mentioning him, if at all, in detraction or with condescension and omitting him altogether from lists of historical notables. The former governor's stances on these questions (and the anathema with which he came to be held by liberal elites) contrasted sharply with those of popular Arkansas Senator William Fulbright, who, as chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, vigorously opposed a hardline policy toward the Soviet Union generally and the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam in particular.
McMath's grit (some would say stubbornness) in the face of sustained unpopularity and virtually certain defeat at the polls, when compromise with his opponents might have assured his survival "to fight another day", has caused some commentators to question his commitment to a political career rather than to a valiant but naive Arthurian chivalry or perhaps a fatalistic resignation. However, one participant at a Southern Arkansas University forum on McMath held November 3, 2003 in Magnolia, Arkansas put it another way: "When Sid McMath stood for civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s he stood virtually alone among the South's political leaders, most of whom were waving the bloody shirt. By the 1970s every Southern pol was supporting full citizenship for African-Americans. It was by then politically correct. But for McMath, it took unprecedented courage. And in fact it later cost him whatever chance he had to salvage his political career. He certainly deserves a chapter in the next Profiles in Courage. He was a true hero, not only to the South, but also to the Nation. He ranks with John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld was the 20th Governor of the U.S. state of Illinois from 1893 until 1897. He was the first Democratic governor of that state since the 1850s...
[of Illinois], James Stephen Hogg [of Texas] and Robert M. La Follette
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr. , was an American Republican politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin...
[of Wisconsin] as the greatest of the American state governors. His stands on principle undoubtedly denied him a genuine chance to contend for the presidency. His life can be summed up in one word: Valor."
Bold positions & political consequences
Most significant was McMath's politically fatal but ultimately successful war against Middle South Utilities (now Entergy Corporation), the then-dominant political force in state politics, which operated locally as Arkansas Power & Light (a subsidiary of Entergy
Entergy
Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. It is headquartered in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana.-History:...
) Co. (AP&L). The corporation and its affiliates opposed extension of Rural Electrification Administration (REA)-generated electrical power to rural areas, which its directors and chief shareholders saw as a captive territory for AP&L's own eventual expansion. Fewer than half of Arkansas farm homes had electricity in 1948. REA-affiliated cooperatives, however, guided by Harry L. Oswald, for 25 years their Arkansas general manager and a fervent McMath loyalist, were able to open service to those areas by 1956 as the result of Co-op-enabling legislation, including authorization for the building of steam generating plants, which was enacted by Congress in large part at McMath's behest.
Middle South led the combination that defeated McMath in his 1952 re-election bid and in his 1954 effort to unseat then-Senator John L. McClellan. McClellan, who maintained a lucrative law practice with Middle South's chairman C. Hamilton Moses, referred to the REA co-ops as "communistic" during the campaign, which was conducted at the height of the "red scare" heightened by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
's claims of communist influence in the Truman administration. McClellan was the ranking member of the Army-McCarthy subcommittee, whose hearings were televised live during the lead-up to the election. Liberal senators Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
, Stuart Symington
Stuart Symington
William Stuart Symington was a businessman and political figure from Missouri. He served as the first Secretary of the Air Force from 1947 to 1950 and was a Democratic United States Senator from Missouri from 1953 to 1976.-Education and business career:...
and others, as well as Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, signed newspaper ads supporting McClellan. Moses had similarly partnered with McClellan's predecessor, Joe T. 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...
, who prior to his death in 1937 had used his considerable power as Senate majority leader to divert the New Deal's showcase Tennessee Valley Authority
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...
(TVA) public electricity generating project away from the Arkansas River, the basin for which it was originally proposed. Moses, who had supported McMath in 1948 but had since cooled toward him, brought AP&L's entire board of directors to the governor's office just prior to the 1952 candidate filing deadline to lobby McMath against the building of the initial steam generating plant, at Ozark, Arkansas. They promised to aid McMath's third-term re-election bid, in spite of past differences, if he would withdraw his support for the plant. The governor heard the businessmen out, but reaffirmed his commitment to Co-op power. Shortly afterward, four heavily AP&L-funded gubernatorial candates filed against McMath, one of whom, Chancery Judge Francis Cherry of Jonesboro, defeated him in the August primary run-off during which Cherry hosted a round-the-clock radio "talkathon" lambasting "the McMath Highway Scandal." (See below.) Cherry was elected in November but served only one term, being defeated by Faubus in the 1954 run-off.
McClellan narrowly defeated McMath in the 1954 senatorial race, an election now generally recognized to have been marked by widespread fraud. For example, record numbers of black voters, for whom McMath had only five years before secured the right to vote in Democratic primaries, were trucked to the polls (usually plantation stores or gin offices) in Eastern Arkansas by McClellan supporters among the planters of that region who held their workers' poll tax receipts and recorded how they voted. McMath lost some of those precincts by better than 9 to 1 margins as election officials in Lee, Crittenden, Phillips, Mississippi, Desha and Chicot counties delayed completion of vote counts for a full day after the election—allegedly to see how many more fraudulent votes McClellan needed to win without a run-off.
AP&L's (and McClellan's) enmity toward McMath did not end with his defeat in the senatorial election. Nine years later, when President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
suggested McMath's possible appointment as a replacement Secretary of the Interior
United States Secretary of the Interior
The United States Secretary of the Interior is the head of the United States Department of the Interior.The US Department of the Interior should not be confused with the concept of Ministries of the Interior as used in other countries...
, McClellan quickly used his special relationship with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, a former counsel to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations
United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has jurisdiction over matters related to the Department of Homeland Security and other homeland security concerns, as well as the functioning of the government itself, including the National Archives, budget and...
, of which McClellan had become chairman in 1955, to nip the idea in the bud. A similar suggestion in 1964 by then-President Lyndon Johnson met the same fate. Some of McMath's most stalwart support was from organized labor, whose abuses, particularly by national leaders of the Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
, were a focus of the committee's investigations in the late 1950s. No Arkansas union members or officials, however, figured prominently in these probes.
Allegations of corruption in McMath's highway department, brought by a grand jury dominated by utility minions, were eventually proven unfounded in three separate proceedings. Two grand juries returned no indictments, but a third on which several Middle South managers served returned three, each alleging shakedowns of highway contractors for campaign contributions. All of the accused were acquitted. There was no allegation of personal wrongdoing by McMath. However, the assertions against his administration dogged him for the rest of his life and Promises Kept includes a chapter in which McMath refutes the charges and chastises his opponents for abusing the judicial system to fabricate them. The former governor's October 22, 1954 sworn statement before the U.S. Senate committee investigating monopoly influence over the distribution of the nation's electrical power, in which he recounts Middle South-AP&L's manipulation of the Arkansas "Highway Audit Commission" and the grand jury process, warrants inclusion in any anthology of significant state papers of the 20th century. The truthfulness of McMath's testimony describing in detail this use of raw corporate power to defeat reform and destroy the reformer was never disputed and no rebuttal was offered. See Further Reading, below.
McMath opposed the "Southern Manifesto
Southern Manifesto
The Southern Manifesto was a document written February–March 1956 by Adisen and Charles in the United States Congress opposed to racial integration in public places. The manifesto was signed by 101 politicians from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South...
", a March 1956 pronouncement of 19 U.S. Senators, including Fulbright and McClellan, and 81 Congressmen from former Confederate states decrying the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
as: "[C]ontrary to the Constitution … creating chaos and confusion … destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races … plant[ing] hatred and suspicion [and an] explosive and dangerous condition [which is being] inflamed by outside meddlers …" The document encouraged public officials to use "all lawful means" to thwart the enforcement of the ruling. According to McMath at the time, "This [manifesto] only serves to encourage demagogues to set fires of racial hatred that could consume our people."
It was this Congressional manifesto, McMath laments in Promises Kept, that gave Faubus the impetus and political cover to call out the National Guard in September 1957 to bar the entry of nine black students to Little Rock Central High School. "Emboldened by this support", McMath wrote, "Faubus played his racial card." McMath strenuously opposed this action as well as Faubus' closure of the public schools the following year rather than obey federal court desegregation orders.
McMath counseled President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
against the use of regular U.S. Army troops, suggesting instead that the U.S. Marshals Service
United States Marshals Service
The United States Marshals Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice . The office of U.S. Marshal is the oldest federal law enforcement office in the United States; it was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789...
be used to enforce the court's orders. However, this advice was not accepted and paratroopers from the elite 101st Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division (United States)
The 101st Airborne Division—the "Screaming Eagles"—is a U.S. Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. During World War II, it was renowned for its role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, in Normandy, France, Operation Market Garden, the...
were sent to Little Rock after Eisenhower nationalized the Guard and disbanded it. The soldiers forced the admission of "The Little Rock Nine
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then...
", as the black students became known, but the troops' presence, as McMath foretold, stirred states-rights sentiment to a frenzy, made Faubus a hero to a majority of Arkansas voters, and ensured his re-election to a record six terms in office each time, ironically, with an increasing percentage of the African-American vote, of which he garnered more than 80% in the 1964 Democratic primary.
McMath became the acknowledged leader of the Faubus opposition and supported insurgent gubernatorial candidates in the 1958 and 1960 Democratic primaries. His law firm was often referred to as resembling "a South American government in exile." McMath, himself, finally ran against Faubus in 1962 under the slogan, "Let's get Arkansas Moving Again." He placed second in a field of five, splitting the black vote with Faubus, while running on a platform of fresh business investment (many firms had fled the state during the years of racial strife or avoided it altogether), stricter regulation of gas and electric utility pricing, and the charging of interest on state revenues, which were held in private banks interest free but which the banks then loaned out at standard commercial rates a windfall bankers justified as a "fee" for keeping the state's funds. Faubus narrowly avoided a runoff when Marvin Melton, a Jonesboro banker widely seen as the second strongest challenger after McMath, was persuaded by Faubus operatives (who suggested that state funds could be withdrawn from his bank and questions raised about his selling of allegedly inflated insurance company stock) to quit the race.
The 1962 election cemented the ascendancy of "Witt" Stephens, Faubus' primary financial backer, as the state's undisputed kingmaker. Stephens' banks held the lion's share of state funds. His Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company charged Arkansas homeowners (whom Stephens contemptuously referred to as "the biscuit cookers") the highest residential rates by volume in the Southwest, thanks to Faubus' complaisant Public Service Commission—an advantage that continues today. (See Further Reading, below.) Additionally, Stephens' brokerage firm handled most state bond issues during the 12-year Faubus reign. The Stephens empire today controls more than one hundred billion dollars in investments. "Stephens, Inc", its brokerage arm, was until recently the largest off-Wall Street securities trading firm in the United States. A sign of its political clout and wariness is the firm's portfolio of newspaper and other communication holdings, the second largest in Arkansas after the Palmer-Hussman chain, which operates the only statewide newspaper and a spawn of local dailies. Between them, the two interests control, directly or through subsidiaries or associates, more than two-thirds of the state's famously quiescent print and broadcast media.
Many of McMath's staunchest supporters turned out in 1966 for Winthrop Rockefeller in his successful bid to become the state's first GOP governor since Reconstruction. Rockefeller soundly defeated the Democratic nominee, an avowed segregationist supreme court justice, Jim Johnson.
The 1966 election was the first full general election cycle since the repeal of the poll tax and passage of the Voting Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
. These developments accelerated an already growing shift in influence over black voters from white bosses toward African-American clergy, due in part to the gradual displacement of plantation labor by mechanized agriculture, swelling the unemployment and welfare rolls. Rockefeller's campaign took full advantage of this dynamic by wooing hundreds of black ministers with church improvement contributions and cash get-out-the-vote payments, setting a precedent for future candidates of both parties and considerably raising the cost of electioneering. Some ministers, themselves locally elected officials, hire out as "consultants" to congressional and gubernatorial candidates, often renting their church buildings and vehicles to a campaign and hiring congregants as canvassers and drivers. Early-voting laws now permit even Sunday balloting, facilitating the busing of entire congregations to polling places after services. In some instances, the churches themselves are designated as early voting precincts. Funding this cornucopia of "walking around money", which can exceed $1 million per election cycle for each major statewide candidate, has substantially increased the power of the state's corporate vested interests, whose large bundled and PAC
Political action committee
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...
contributions, many from lawyers, managers and agents of out-of-state parents and affiliates, as well as from international labor union political action funds, are critical in meeting such demanding overhead. Bundling has become even more important in view of individual donation limits imposed following Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
and subsequent scandals. When rising front-end charges for television advertising (essential for reaching white voters but to which African-American voters are largely unresponsive) are added, Arkansas campaign expenditures, per voter, are among the nation's highest.
The Rockefeller administration resumed and expanded the post-war reforms begun by McMath, particularly with regard to civil rights, which, borne on a national tide of rejection of bigotry as public policy, resulted not merely in blacks ceasing to be excluded from public services but able, in significant part, to control their allocation through the franchise usually by bloc voting for Democratic candidates, but always as a credible threat against any racist isolate. Rather than altering the status quo with some 18% to 22% of the vote statewide (40% to 60% in some counties), blacks have been absorbed into it through disproportionate hiring as lower level public employees and as low wage "associates" of mega-retailing enterprises, poultry processing emporia, tertiary health and casualty insurers, the utility monopolies and other concerns buoyed by the state's parochial, right-to-work economy.
Bereft of Rockefeller's eleemosynary capacity or McMath's disdain for barony, later administrations have comfortably reconciled themselves to the exigencies of this quaint realpolitik. Although Faubus died a pariah in 1994, the example of his agility in placating a credulous electorate, now multiracial, with a veneer of populism and dashes of largesse, while simultaneously accommodating the forces of extraction whom Sid McMath illustriously, if momentarily, challenged half-a-century ago remains the guidepost for political survival in 21st century Arkansas.
Legacy
Sid McMath served a bare six years in public office, only four as governor. He left behind no powerful political organization or claque of partisans. Gambling in Hot Springs, though subdued from its brazen heyday, returned sporadically for another 20 years. Every Arkansas home eventually would have been wired for electricity although up to a decade later and under AP&L monopoly pricing rather than lower Co-op rates. The Interstate highway system was mostly completed through Arkansas by 1980 tying into the thousands of miles of farm-to-market roads built or begun by McMath. National repeal of the poll tax was achieved by Constitutional Amendment, the adoption of which was enhanced by the support of a few Southern moderates, including McMath. The Civil Rights acts of the 1960s and changing cultural attitudes ultimately ameliorated, but did not end, discrimination against African-Americans. More problematical is whether President Truman would have won re-election had the Laney forces prevailed and Arkansas and the majority of the remaining Southern and Border states gone for the Dixiecrat Thurmond, thus throwing the election to the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, or into the U.S. House of Representatives, where mischief deal making by vested interests, particularly the tidelands oil lobby who were among Thurmond's primary contributors, would have shadowed any result. The support of McMath and a handful of other stalwarts was almost certainly determinative. And although McMath was not successful in his decade-long contest with Faubus, his vigorous, reasoned opposition during those years of upheaval may well have foreclosed a more violent outcome. It can be said with near certainty that without McMath's foresight and perseverance, Arkansas AM&N would not have survived and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences would not have become the world-renowned institution that it is today.Whatever fame McMath once had fled well before his death. In recent years he sometimes had to spell his name for bank tellers, reservations clerks, state employees once even for a newspaper reporter. He accumulated no great wealth, owning at the end a modestly upscale condominium and a small residual interest in his law firm. The latter, though no longer occupying the field alone, remains the state's premier personal injury practice. Ironically, some of its major cases are referred by competitors, many of whom appear amongst the swarms of television, billboard and yellowpage advertisements directed at "victims" and the "hurt" now common throughout America.
A key to McMath's ultimate legacy may be found in the memory of those who knew him, if only for a time. "You always left Sid McMath with the feeling, not that you had been with someone important, but that you were important, that your life had been uplifted", Arkansas Circuit Judge John Norman Harkey has said of McMath. "Sid took your cares away. He refreshed your spirit. No matter how down you were before, he made you want to charge back into the battle, but with a smile, knowing, by gosh, we can really win this thing. And we did win." But, of course, McMath did not always win. A stock remark he would offer following a loss was, "The bastards know they've been in a fight. You have to let them know you're not afraid to leave your blood on the courtroom floor. I've left a lot of blood on the courtroom floor."
There was also the matter of honor, the upholding of which by a public officer amidst great tumult and peril (and against the most persuasive and enticing machiavellian temptation to do otherwise), and at the risk not only of one's career and personal fortune but, in the darkest days, of one's life and those of his loved ones—may prove to be McMath's singular legacy. Once a noted collegiate thespian, McMath on occasion would recite lines dealing with honor from roles in which he had acted (or aspired to act) in his youth. He was high-school cast in The Valiant and as Hamlet, Romeo and Henry V at university. But among his favorites, which he had not played but often wished he had done, was the lead in Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, a work he knew practically by heart, particularly the closing scene, in which the grenadier is dying alone except for his beloved Roxanne, to whom he confides that his paucity of means and acclaim, and his unconsummated love all are nothing beside his intact honor, "and that is … my white ... plume."
Death
McMath died at his home in Little RockLittle Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...
on Saturday, October 4, 2003. He had been released from a hospital stay on the previous Wednesday after being treated for severe dehydration, malnourishment and an irregular heartbeat. He is survived by his third wife, Betty Dorch Russell McMath, three sons: Sandy, Phillip and Bruce McMath; two daughters, Melissa Hatfield and Patricia Bueter; ten grandchildren and one great grandchild. His first wife and childhood sweetheart, Elaine Braughton McMath, died at Quantico, Virginia in 1942. His second wife, of 49 years, Anne Phillips McMath, died at Little Rock in 1994.
McMath was given a full military funeral by a U.S. Marine Corps Honor Guard. He lay in state for a day in the Capitol rotunda, following which his closed, flag-draped coffin was transported by motorcade to Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock for services attended by more than 2,000 persons. He was eulogized by Former Governor David Pryor as, "the best friend Arkansas ever had." The ceremony included hymns by the combined Methodist and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Vespers choirs, concluding with "Onward, Christian Soldiers
Onward, Christian Soldiers
"Onward, Christian Soldiers" is a 19th century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune "St. Gertrude," after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed...
." Following the firing of a salute by the Honor Guard, McMath was interred at Pinecrest Memorial Cemetery in Saline County, Arkansas, a few yards from a survey marker denoting the geographical center of the state.
Sid McMath Avenue in Little Rock is named for him and in December 2004 the Central Arkansas Library System dedicated a new branch in his honor. A statue of McMath, waving his trademark Panama campaign hat, was commissioned by the library from sculptor Bryan Massey. It was unveiled September 26, 2006 as the centerpiece of a sculpture plaza and nature trail. In December 2006, Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas announced the presentation of the first Sidney S. McMath Award for Outstanding Leadership and Courage by a Public Official to U.S. Representaive Marion Berry (D-Ark). Henderson State University has established the Sidney S. McMath Pre-Law Lecture Series Fellowship and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences recently received a $1 million private endowment for the Sidney S. McMath professorship in public health. The Governor Sidney Sanders McMath Memorial Scholarship for an Outstanding Pre-Law Junior was established at Southern Arkansas University by the Columbia County Democratic Central Committee on April 5, 2008. Lions World Services for the Blind presents an annual Sidney McMath Award for a Lifetime of Outstanding Public Service. The former governor's autobiography, Promises Kept, posthumously was awarded the Arkansas Historical Association's highest accolade, the John G. Ragsdale Prize. In April 2006 it received the Booker T. Worthen Medal for literary excellence from the Arkansas Library System. There is no plaque or other memorial in Hot Springs, Arkansas, mentioning McMath or the GI reform movement he led.
See also
Further reading
For detailed accounts of McMath's campaigns and administration, as well as historical perspectives of his impact on regional and national politics, see "Sid McMath Lives On Sixty years later, a governor who still defines the state," by John Brummett, Talk Business Quarterly (TBQ, Fall 2008); "A president from Arkansas", by Ernest Dumas in the November 14, 2003 edition of Arkansas Times magazine at arktimes.com; Professor Jim Lester's biography, A Man for Arkansas: Sid McMath and the Southern Reform Tradition, ISBN 0914546112 (Rose, 1976); Professor James Woods' monograph, The Era of Sid McMath, Arkansas Political Leader, 1946–1954 (privately published, 1975); Robert Sherrill, Gothic Politics of the Deep South: Stars of the New Confederacy (Grossman, 1968); and Professor V.O. Key's classic, Southern Politics in State and Nation (Alfred Knopf Co., 1949; University of Tennessee Press, 1984, ISBN 0-87049-435-X, and various subsequent editions), and sources and materials cited in those publications.McMath's own account, Promises Kept, ISBN 1-55728-754-6 (University of Arkansas Press, 2003) contains a wealth of primary source material including, in addition to the author's personal recollections, photocopies of correspondence exchanged between him and President Truman and others. Citations in the Appendix refer readers interested in the details of some of McMath's more significant cases to state and federal appellate court reporters and to law review case notes and articles. However, due to their sheer number, many cases are not cited and some citations contain typographical errors. Online and back-issue index searches of Arkansas Reports, Southwestern Reporter, Federal Reports, Federal Supplement, the ATLA Law Reporter (formerly the NACCA Law Journal), TRIAL magazine, Matthew Bender's Art of Advocacy series (particularly Baldwin, "The Art of Direct Examination"), the Arkansas Law Review, UALR Law Review, Inside Litigation, Westlaw and Lexis would assist the reader in developing a more complete list of McMath's cases, their correct citations, and commentary. Indeed, one could trace the development of the American common law of torts over the second half of the 20th century with a chronological analysis of reported (or law-reviewed) cases in which the plaintiff was represented by McMath or a member of his firm. A rich source of historical and trial practice commentary would be the video archives of the School of Trial and Appellate Advocacy, Hastings College of the Law, University of California, San Francisco, the nation's earliest sustained CLE program and the model for many that followed, which McMath and Woods were instrumental in founding and on whose visiting faculty they or members of their firm served from its inception in 1971 unti its closure in 2001.
McMath's historical impact on the practice of law is surveyed by six authors, among them two federal judges, in "A Tribute to Governor Sidney S. McMath", UALR Law Review, Vol. 26, pp 515–542 (Spring 2004).
McMath's 3-year struggle to secure funding for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and his key role in opening the school to African American students is discussed at length by Dr. W. David Baird, Chair of the Department of History, Oklahoma State University, in his extensive Medical Education in Arkansas, 1879–1978, ISBN 0-87870-052-8 (Memphis State University Press, 1979).
U.S. District Judge Henry Woods, McMath's partner of 27 years, was a prolific legal writer and his articles on their cases occasionally appeared in the Arkansas Law Review. Woods' treatise, Comparative Fault (Lawyers Publishing Co., 3d Ed. 1996) is the hornbook authority on that area of injury law. His papers, including personal letters and memoranda on a variety of matters dating from McMath's governorship through their years of practice together, were donated in 1998 to the special collections section of the University of Arkansas library in Fayetteville.
For an intimate family portrait and a behind-the-scenes narrative, see First Ladies of Arkansas: Women of Their Times, by Anne McMath, ISBN 0-87483-091-5 (August House, 1989). A Ribbon and a Star (Henry Holt, Inc., 1945) is an eye-witness memoir of the Bougainville campaign by one of McMath's staff officers, Capt. John Monks Jr., written immediately after the engagement. Monks later became a noted playwright and film producer. For a colorful local history of Hot Springs, Arkansas during the McLaughlin period, including the mayor's 1947 indictment and trial, see Leo & Verne: The Spa's Heyday, by Orval Allbritton, with a foreword by McMath, ISBN 0929604873 (Garland County Historical Society, 2003). For another perspective, see P.H. Ramsey, "A Place at the Table: Hot Springs and the GI Revolt", Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 2000).
McMath's testimony before the U.S. Senate Anti-Monopoly Subcommittee on October 22, 1954 dealing with the Highway Audit Commission and subsequent grand jury charges and trials may be found in the Congressional Record for that date. It is also replicated at the Sid McMath web site at www.mcmathlaw.com. The McMath-Faubus relationship is noted in Faubus: Life and Times of an American Prodigal, by Roy Reed, ISBN 1-55728-457-1 (University of Arkansas Press, 1997). The results of continuing utility influence over rate regulation in Arkansas may be seen by comparing regional pricing. For example, the Natural Gas Price Reports of the Energy Information Administration reveal that for the period ending July 1, 2005 Arkansans paid $19.23 per 1000 cubic feet (28.3 m³)--more than $3.00 greater than the average price charged residents of all six neighboring states. Mississippi residents paid $12.85, those in Louisiana, $15.79, and Texas homeowners, $15.97.
Articles and notes in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly dealing with McMath or his administration are found in Volumes 6, 9, 11, 12, 15, 21, 25, 26, 30, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 57, and 59 of that publication. Shortly after his first inauguration, McMath candidly discussed his political thinking and legislative goals in a widely syndicated interview with Joseph Driscoll, national correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Disptach. See "Sidney McMath, New Governor of Arkansas, Wants Civil Rights Protected by States", on page 1-B of that paper's Sunday, January 23, 1949 edition.
Certain of the former governor's personal and public papers, including Elaine Braughton McMath's 1940–1942 diary, numerous letters (including an immense volume of correspondence between McMath and his sons while they were serving in the Marines and traveling overseas), several oversized volumes of news cuttings, recordings of 1940s stump speeches and radio interviews, 1950s and later television footage, a 30-minute June 1962 campaign film, "A Man for Arkansas", shot by 4-time Academy Award winning documentary producer Charles Guggenheim
Charles Guggenheim
Charles Guggenheim was an American film director and producer.- Early life :Guggenheim was born into a prominent German Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was a furniture salesman. While studying farming at Colorado A&M in 1943, Guggenheim was drafted into the United States Army...
, the James Woods' monograph, and a 60-minute June 2000 AETN television interview with McMath by former governor David Pryor, as moderator, are held by the historical records section of the University of Arkansas Library in Fayetteville. The Henderson State University Library in Arkadelphia retains others. Photographs, films, flags, uniforms, campaign ribbons, medals and citations from McMath's Marine Corps service are kept at the Arkansas Military Museum, the Old State House Museum, and the Sidney S. McMath Memorial Public Library, all in Little Rock. Readers are also referred to the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri and the U.S. Marine Corps archives in Quantico, Virginia, St. Louis, Missouri and Washington, D.C.
External links
- Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture entry: Sid McMath
- Oral History Interview with Sidney S. McMath at Oral Histories of the American South