Sid McMath
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Sid McMath | |
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Benjamin Travis Laney | |
Succeeded by | Francis Cherry |
Personal details | |
Born | Sidney Sanders McMath June 14, 1912 Magnolia, Arkansas, U.S. |
Died | October 4, 2003 Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S. | (aged 91)
Resting place | Pinecrest Memorial Cemetery, Saline County, Arkansas, U.S. |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouses |
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Profession | Attorney |
Awards | Silver Star Legion of Merit See more |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch/service | Marine Corps |
Years of service |
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Rank | Major General |
Commands |
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Battles/wars | World War II
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Sidney Sanders McMath (June 14, 1912 – October 4, 2003) was a
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. At the time of his death, he was the earliest-serving former governor.[1]
Early life
Sidney Sanders McMath was born in a
McMath received a reserve
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,
In 1967, he helped found the Marine Corps
Early political career
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
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 many 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).
Governor of Arkansas
After success as a prosecutor, McMath in
McMath entered office January 11, 1949, as the nation's youngest governor. He was easily reelected in
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 sought to improve pricing structures and broaden federal support for fossil fuel 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.
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
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 attorneys 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 plaintiff—rulings which often occurred, necessitating lengthy appeals before some cases could be fully tried. Many did not survive this gauntlet.[citation needed]
McMath wrote a memoir, Promises Kept (University of Arkansas Press, 2003,
Members of McMath's firm founded in 1983 the Nursing Home Malpractice Litigation Group of the American Trial Lawyers Association. The group provides logistical and research support for local attorneys in custodial abuse cases.
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.
Later life
Sid McMath remained active into his 90s, 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
Death
McMath died at his home in Little Rock 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. Following the death of Strom Thurmond, he became the earliest-serving former governor. After his death, the title was passed on to Delaware governor Elbert N. Carvel, who was inaugurated one week after McMath.
McMath was given a full military funeral by a U.S. Marine Corps Honor Guard. He lay in state for a day in the state 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 the 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. Representative
Legacy
Historical reputation
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
During the
"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
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 Democrat even 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
(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
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
Political legacy
Sid McMath served barely 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
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 significant cases are referred by competitors, many of whom appear amongst the swarms of television, internet, billboard and yellow page 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."
Political image
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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 training director for the Atomic Energy Commission, and a native Arkansan whom McMath persuaded to return to the state as director of the Department of Education.
Most important was McMath's politically fatal but ultimately successful war against Middle South Utilities (now
Middle South led the combination that defeated McMath in his 1952 re-election bid and in his 1954 effort to unseat then-Senator
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
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
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
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.
Military awards
McMath was the recipient of the following awards:[4]
Silver Star | valor device
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Navy Unit Commendation |
American Defense Service Medal | American Campaign Medal | Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal w/ 3 service stars
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World War II Victory Medal
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Marine Corps Reserve Ribbon | Armed Forces Reserve Medal |
See also
Notes
- ^ "Former Gov. McMath Fo Arkansas Dies at 91". AP News. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
- ^ [1][permanent dead link]
- ^ Osro Cobb, Osro Cobb of Arkansas: Memoirs of Historical Significance, Carol Griffee, ed. (Little Rock, Arkansas: Rose Publishing Company, 1989), p. 183
- ^ "Major General Sidney S. McMath – Deceased". General Officer & Senior Executive Biographes. United States Marine Corps. Archived from the original on August 20, 2007. Retrieved February 6, 2009.
References
- McCaffree, Mary Jane; Innis, Pauline (1997). Protocol: The Complete Handbook of Diplomatic, Official and Social Usage (4th ed.). Washington: Devon. ISBN 0-941402-04-5.
- McMath, Sidney S. (2003). Promises Kept: A Memoir. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 1-55728-754-6.
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 and an expanded review in the August 13, 2012 issue of the same publication, with numerous additional photographs; Professor Jim Lester's biography, A Man for Arkansas: Sid McMath and the Southern Reform Tradition,
McMath's successful opposition to the Dixiecrats and his key regional role in President Truman's 1948 upset re-election victory is recounted by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Brown in Defining Moments: Historic Decisions by Arkansas Governors (University of Arkansas Press, 2011).
McMath's own account, Promises Kept,
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,
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,
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,
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-Dispatch. 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.
External links
- Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture entry: Sid McMath
- Oral History Interview with Sidney S. McMath at Oral Histories of the American South