Governor of Arkansas
After success as a prosecutor, McMath was elected governor in 1948 in a close Democratic runoff election against conservative Jack Holt, a former state attorney general. Holt accused McMath of "selling out to the Negro vote." McMath then defeated the Republican Charles R. Black of Corning, Arkansas.
McMath entered office January 11, 1949 as the nation's youngest governor. He was easily reelected in 1950 over his immediate predecessor, Benjamin Travis Laney of Camden, who attacked McMath for having supported 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.
Read more about this topic: Sid McMath
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