Youth and Early Political Life
Mills was born in Kensett in White County to Abbie Lois Daigh Mills and Ardra Pickens Mills. Kensett was the first public school in Arkansas to integrate, under Mills' father, who was first superintendent and then chairman of the school board and the banker for the school district. Mills attended public schools in Kensett but graduated as valedictorian from Searcy High School in the county seat of White County. He thereafter graduated from Hendrix College in Conway as salutatorian, having resided in Martin Hall. He studied constitutional law at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts under Felix Frankfurter, who was subsequently nominated and confirmed (1939) as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Mills received his law degree and was admitted to the bar in 1933.
Mills served as the 29th County Judge of White County, between 1935 and 1938, and began a county-funded program to pay medical bills, prescription drugs, and hospital treatment for the indigent.
Read more about this topic: Wilbur Mills
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