Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Shot in the dark blots out Little family’s rising star
Today, we pick up a loose end, dip it into Arkansas’ deep well of sorrows and paint with it a story of public service and private anguish.
On March 4, Old News mentioned a circuit judge in Fort Smith named Paul Little. At the time, all Old News knew about him was an Arkansas Gazette report about his instructions to a grand jury. First, he disparaged the state’s latest “bone-dry” law, which had taken effect Feb. 17 with the intent of plugging leaks in earlier anti-liquor laws.
“Any school boy in five lines could have written a clearer law, one that was not possible of being misinterpreted,” he said.
He also urged jurors to investigate the minimum wage law, to ensure that every manufacturing industry protected women and child wage earners. And then:
He also urged the investigation of the seats provided for women in stores and a strict enforcement of compulsory education laws.
Women were sitting? In stores? Ye gods. Old News implied or possibly stated (one forgets) that this was an odd concern — unless he had been troubled to notice a trend in which retail stores were allowing women to sit in public spaces other than a church: tea rooms. But maybe there really was something nefarious afoot, given Fort Smith’s old history with vice.
That summer, the grand jury investigated police involvement in vice at Fort Smith and widespread fraud in property assessments.
I cryptically mentioned that an “awful fate” awaited the judge in fall 1919.
That fate befell him Oct. 25. About 10 p.m., the 42-yearold jurist was shot in the jaw by his court stenographer, Guy Williams. Williams was his brother-in-law.
According to reports in the Gazette and Arkansas Democrat, a bit after 10 p.m., Williams fired his shotgun through the window of his bedroom at a prowler lurking outside. Neighbors said Williams then stood on his porch, said calmly that he’d shot a burglar and asked them to call the police and an ambulance. Then they found the judge with his lower jaw blown away.
Little regained consciousness, and before he submitted to medical care, he wrote a will and a statement. He explained that he had gone to Williams’ home on court business, found the lights off and so went around to the bedroom to rap on the window screen.
The sheriff charged Williams with assault with attempt to kill and released him on $500 bond. He reported to the court for duty as usual Oct. 27, but all jury cases were postponed for a week. Thanks to the judge’s written testimony, Prosecutor Earl Hardin dismissed the charge.
Little’s wife, Ada Lou, and Catherine, their 10-year-old daughter, rushed home from Little Rock, where they were visiting. On Oct. 27, Little was given 50-50 chances. Doctors recommended specialists in St. Louis, and so Ada had him bundled onto a train. He died on the train Oct. 29.
Paul Little came from a family with a big sense of public duty, including an uncle who served in the statehouse and another who was state treasurer. His father was a congressman and governor. According to the September 1997 issue of The Journal of the Fort Smith Historical Society, Paul grew up in a house on Division Street (renamed Bass Street) in Greenwood with two sisters, Mrs. Matthew Wallace of Van Buren and Mrs. George Patterson of Fort Smith; and two brothers, Thomas and Jesse Little. Jesse became a doctor and Tom became Sebastian County tax assessor in the 1930s and ’40s.
Paul attended the University of Arkansas and Georgetown University School of Law. He became a prosecuting attorney. He was his father’s aide when he served in public office. Paul was in his second term as 12th Judicial District circuit judge when he died.
The week before he died, he impanelled another Grand Jury and in another widely reported speech, urged the businessmen called to serve to put aside their private business concerns to see that all laws were enforced fairly — or they would not long have a private business. Half the people in Greenwood, he said, were so opposed to dipping their cattle in the anti-tick treatments mandated by law that they openly scorned the law. An editorial in the Oct. 10 Gazette:
Circuit Judge Paul Little, in charging the Grand Jury at Fort Smith last Monday, told the jurors that the American public’s attitude today with reference to the law and the courts is “to hell with the law — to hell with the courts.” He warned that this state of mind threatens great trouble.
Judge Little has not overstated the case. The great war has bred a spirit of turbulence. … There will be lynchings and riots and murders and robberies so long as this mental attitude persists.
DEPRESSION
Paul was buried in Greenwood
Cemetery beside his father, former Gov. John Sebastian Little.
John S. was the state’s shortest-serving elected chief executive. Elected with a huge margin at the time, 60,000 votes, he supposedly had the support of outgoing Gov. Jeff Davis. During the campaign, Little heard rumors that operatives were amassing support for him by making deals for patronage jobs. He spoke out, disavowing any and all such deals. But then he named one of Davis’ cronies, John H. Page, as his private secretary. The rumor mill decided Davis was still in charge and would-be state employees began presenting themselves for their rewards. The Journal suggests Little was unaware that Page was loyal to Davis and busily sending these patronage-seekers his way. When he figured it out, Little replaced Page with son Paul.
In his inaugural address Jan. 18, 1907, the new governor proposed free textbooks, raising taxes to improve rural schools and UA and to establish a school for the textile trade, abolition of the inhumane convict-lease system, better drainage, better roads and completion of the new state Capitol building … crazy, out-there, more-taxes stuff, right? Unheard-of.
But he had been exhausted by the campaign.
The Journal notes, “He was highly principled, known for his sense of fair play and was a deeply religious man. It is believed that his fragile physical condition at the time and his severe concern over a possibly partially ‘famished’ election because of the irregularities noted above, caused him to go into a very deep, severe depression.”
When he realized that he wasn’t getting better, he resigned on Feb. 11, 1907. The headline in the next day’s Gazette:
Governor Little Has Gone to
Texas
The Journal says, “Although in and out of clinics and sanitariums, he never fully recovered and died peacefully of pneumonia on September 8, 1916 in Little Rock.”
I’m indebted to The Journal for another tidbit: Many Arkansans named their children after him.
In 1896, while U.S. Rep. John S. Little was serving in Washington, a couple in Sheridan, Isaac and Belle McClellan, wrote to tell him they intended to name their son after him. Little promptly sent a baby gift of $5. Belle McClellan died three weeks after the birth of John Sebastian Little McClellan. On her deathbed, she asked that the $5 be used to buy her baby a Bible.
When he was 8 years old, that boy — who today is remembered as John L. McClellan — wrote the congressman a letter and received a reply. He posted the reply on the wall of his office throughout his career in the U.S. Senate. Here’s a link to The Journal in which you can read that letter: arkansasonline.com/128Little.