Politicians with physical afflictions
One of the amazing aspects of the human psyche is the ability of many people to overcome the most challenging physical handicaps. I thought of this recently when I saw a picture of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois—standing tall and proud on two artificial legs resulting from military service in Iraq.
Since I am prone to connecting almost every phenomenon with Arkansas, I began searching for local political leaders who suffered from physical handicaps. Some very interesting cases have come to my attention, though I know many more exist.
Just as the war in Iraq left its share of maimed people, the American Civil War resulted in a generation of Arkansans who had to deal with lost arms and legs. This essay does not consider the psychological wounds of war, a worthy subject but beyond my research scope.
Perhaps the most successful Arkansas political amputee was Gov. James H. Berry, who served only one term, 1883-1885, because he could not afford the financial costs of serving. Berry, who was only 20 when he joined the Confederate army in September 1861, suffered a severe injury at the Battle of Corinth in Mississippi in October 1862. His right leg was amputated above the knee.
Perhaps a more interesting Arkansas political leader who lost a limb in the Civil War was Charles M. Norwood, a Confederate army private who was injured in the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia in September 1863. Norwood became a medical doctor after the war, establishing a practice in Lafayette County. In 1888, Norwood was nominated for governor by the Union Labor Party, an amalgam of labor, poor farmers, and—remarkably— the state Republican Party. In recent years historians have concluded that Norwood probably would have won the election had the votes been counted properly. But the 1888 election was anything but fair, with armed mobs keeping black voters away from the polls, and when necessary, stuffing the ballot boxes, or throwing voting boxes into the Arkansas River, as was done in Pulaski County.
Many people assume Reconstruction Republican Gov. Powell Clayton lost his left hand during his daring tenure as a Union cavalry officer during the Civil War. However, his hand was amputated due to a hunting accident. He sometimes wore an artificial hand made of metal, adding some credibility to charges made by opponents that he ruled with an iron fist.
Arkansas’ penchant for electing handicapped politicians came to the forefront in 1936 when three handicapped men were elected to statewide political posts, C.H. Hall, Oscar Humphrey, and Earl Page. Perhaps the most famous of these three officials was C.H. Hall, whose childhood polio left him with a withered leg. He proudly bore the nickname Crip, though he asked voters not to vote for him due to his handicap. He served 24 years as secretary of state until his death in 1961.
J. Oscar Humphrey served as state auditor from 1929 to 1956, excepting one two-year term. He was a child when he lost both arms above the elbows in a cotton gin accident. He overcame the injury and the death of his father when Oscar was only 15 to become a teacher and later win election as Sevier County assessor.
When Humphrey announced his run for state auditor in 1928, newspapers in southwest Arkansas reported his past achievements, the Washington Telegraph in Hempstead County noting that “Mr. Humphrey can do almost anything that any other man can do except roll a wheelbarrow—and who wants to roll a wheelbarrow.”
This sort of jocularity might seem inappropriate today, but handicapped candidates did not hesitate to poke fun at their afflictions. For example, Humphrey was reported to promise during his first campaign that “if elected state auditor, he will keep his hands off the state’s money.” The Associated Press continued the humorous references, even mentioning in Humphrey’s obituary in 1956 that Humphrey “had been elected state auditor 13 times without shaking the hand of a single voter.”
Earl Page, who is not so well documented as Humphrey, served in many political offices despite his legs being deformed from birth. A native of Yell County, Page began his political career in 1912 with election as Yell County assessor. He served from 1929 to 1934 as commissioner of mines, manufactures, and agriculture, and in 1935 moved up to the office of state treasurer, which he held for 10 years.
Both Humphrey and Page used their physical afflictions as campaign props, illustrating political advertisements with pictures clearly portraying their limitations. The advertisements played on the candidates’ ability to overcome adversity and thrive.
In more recent times, Conway County Sheriff Marlin Hawkins was known on occasion to use his glass eye as a campaign prop. Political scientist Kay Goss recently reminded me in an email that Hawkins claimed he “took out his glass eye every night and put it on the window sill to watch [for] Republicans.”
Hawkins, who died in 1995 after 38 years in office, did not live to see the election in 2013 of Republican state representative Josh Miller of Heber Springs, one of the most handicapped public officials in Arkansas history. In early adulthood Miller suffered a spinal cord injury in an alcohol-fueled wreck, and today he is wheelchair-bound.
Rep. Miller is famous today for having voted against the expansion of Medicaid in Arkansas despite the fact that Medicaid paid most of his $1 million hospital bill.