Martha Smith Dixon
Martha Dixon’s mementos of her achievements — the plaques, certificates, photos and awards for outfitting Arkansas’ prestigious women — burned in a fire.Today, she is determined to preserve her memories through a personal memoir.
Martha Dixon has been known for years as the woman who rose to prominence by creating gowns for Hillary Rodham Clinton, first when Clinton was Arkansas’ first lady, then when she became first lady of the United States.
Dixon is known as the humble seamstress who got to stay at the White House and who became noted, as well, for her political activism, becoming a Democratic National Committee member and a Democratic National Convention superdelegate.
But many don’t know about the struggles Dixon had to overcome on the road to fame.
Beyond the glittering blue “cracked ice” on the gubernatorial inaugural gown now hanging in the Old State House Museum in Little Rock and the equally stunning red gown Clinton wore to the 1993 Presidential Inaugural Gala is the story of a woman who, no matter what, was determined to get what she wanted out of life.
It’s a story of growing up in a large family of migrant field workers, of an education yearned for but gotten piecemeal, of a homemade pattern for a childhood dress design, of the rejection that often comes when dreams are first acted upon and of a devastating fire that destroyed all mementos of hard-won success.
Indeed, Martha Dixon has taken many a hit. But those hits, as she’ll attest, have only made her stronger. And now, her memoir under her belt, the 66-year-old retiree is seeking a film deal and is determined to live life on her terms.
Dixon’s book, Triumph Beyond Measure (Authorhouse, $24.99), was released in July 2011. The self-published book is available through Dixon’s website, triumphbeyondmeasure.com.
“My history’s gone, so I knew that if I didn’t write it down it was going to be lost,” Dixon says. “I didn’t write that book to make money ... but after I wrote it, I decided to sell it.”
Rodney Slater, former U.S. secretary of transportation and a Marianna native, did the foreword of the book, which also features a blurb by former President Bill Clinton on the back. In between can be found the many landmarks of Dixon’s life, including myriad honors such as her 2005 induction into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.
All hallmarks of a tenacity that Dixon’s son credits his mother for teaching him.
“She basically instilled in me, ‘Don’t ever let a person drive you down,’” says Christopher Dixon, 37, of Little Rock. “You fight for what you want. And if that person doesn’t give you [what you want], go around that person ... and eventually you will get what you want.
“If you do not get it, at least you put up one heck of a fight, and they will recognize and know your name.’”
PICKING COTTON For Dixon, the fight began early. She was born in Arkadelphia, one of 20 children of James G. Smith and his wife, Beatrice. She was the 17th child, one of four sets of twins. (Dixon’s twin sister died at the age of 2.)
Each September, the large family would leave to pick cotton in nearby states, returning in January. “So we had one semester of school,” Dixon says. “And I attended one semester of school for 11 years, from January to May [each year].
“Being denied an education, that hurts [worse] than anything. ... I’ve done OK. But still, it was tough to do OK.
“My siblings ... would drop out [of school]. One would drop out this year; one would drop out next year; next year there’d be two.” Worse, when
she was in school Dixon had to endure the taunts of her classmates because she was so dark from working in the sun and her hands so ravaged from handling cotton bolls. The other children called her “Tar Baby” and “Reptile Hands.”
“Now you call it bullying,” she says. “I was shy. I would kind of cry.”
Dixon learned how to sew out of need. She made her first dress at age 8. Her pattern was made from brown paper bags taped together.
“I knew then that I had a talent, and I had something that I could pursue,” Dixon says. “I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But I knew that I enjoyed it.” What she hated was picking cotton; she vowed to never even make anything from cotton fabric. (That vow she’d break years later.)
When Dixon was 14, her father died. “My mother couldn’t read and write, so there were a lot of things I had to take over and do,” she recalls. “I was driving to Little Rock without a driver’s license at that age,” taking relatives to doctors and hospitals. She even had to do some legal maneuvering to retain the family’s 40 acres of land — “it was all tied up and some of it had gone back to the state and it was up to me to get it all back and get it all into one piece, and I did that.
“I went through a lot as a kid growing up. But it made me stronger.”
Luckily, like her father, Dixon harbored an entrepreneurial spirit. James Smith had been a jack of all trades, selling the vegetables he grew, serving as a minister, and making and selling herbal medicines “until the state stopped him from doing that,” Dixon says. About threefourths of her siblings went on to start their own businesses, she adds.
Relative and longtime Little Rock activist Annie Abrams, who refers to Dixon’s father as “Cud’n James,” also gives him credit for Dixon’s business acumen.
“She never wanted to work for [anybody]. She wanted to be an employer. She never wanted to beg folks for [anything]. She just kept her eyes on the prize,” Abrams says.
HIGH FASHION Despite her spotty education, Dixon was the first in her family to attend college. After graduating from Peake High School in Arkadelphia, she attended Henderson State University for a couple of years. But “I wanted to be a fashion designer, and Henderson didn’t have a fashion degree.” So, via correspondence, she earned a degree in fashion and design from Commercial Technical Institute in Little Falls, N.J.
‘I’ve had so many obstacles put in my way — I mean a bunch of them. But somehow it doesn’t knock me down; somehow it just motivates me. ... I don’t give up.’
uniforms for Tyson Foods and other meat-processing companies.
And Dixon went on to begin Martha’s Kids, a subsidiary of Dixon Manufacturing that provided public and private school uniforms throughout the United States, thanks to the burgeoning Internet. “And that was a really, really, really good business,” she says.
Dixon opened her dress business, Martha’s Designs, in Arkadelphia “with faith,” renting the building for $50 a month, creating an inventory of mostly silk dresses made to fit her and hanging them in the window. She and her sole employee also did alterations to make ends meet. “We were the best in town,” she says. “Everybody was coming to us.”
Then, Dixon decided she wanted to branch out. She made a bold move: Armed with a collection of dresses, she took them to Little Rock’s Heights neighborhood to see if a boutique owner would want to sell them.
“I went [from] boutique to boutique,” she says. “A lot of times, I got doors closed in my face.”
Her husband, Huie, tried to persuade her to go to J.C. Penney or Sears instead, telling her, “You got to crawl before you can walk.” Her answer: “No, I don’t want to crawl, don’t want to walk. I want to fly. And I kept going.”
INAUGURAL GOWN Finally the owner of one boutique, Casey’s Cachet, agreed to feature some of Dixon’s dresses. It was into that boutique that Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton came, saw the dresses, and bought one.
“She loved it so much,” Dixon remembers. “She didn’t know it was [by] an Arkansas designer. So Casey told her it was an Arkansas designer.”
Clinton made Dixon a promise: If her husband won the 1986 Arkansas gubernatorial election, she’d have Dixon design her inaugural gown. “That introduced me to politics, because I was going to make sure ... they won,” says Dixon, who campaigned for the victorious Bill Clinton.
In 1993, Dixon was back in the limelight as the designer of Hillary Clinton’s dress for the presidential inauguration gala.
“The people that closed the doors in my face when I was trying to get my dresses in their shop? Well, those people ... called wanting me, too,” Dixon says. “But I had a choice. I could pick and choose. And that was a good feeling.”
But Dixon saw that being a dress designer in Arkansas wouldn’t pay all the bills, so she decided she wanted to own a uniform factory. She kept the dress shop for a while, then opened Dixon Manufacturing, a 5,500-square-foot facility in Arkadelphia. Financing was initially hard to find, but thanks to Bill Clinton’s guidance, she was able to borrow $50,000. Soon, she gained contracts to provide uniforms for all the nursing schools in Arkansas. With the help of 20 employees, she also created gowns for some of the hospitals as well as the Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute and made
POLITICKING
Meanwhile, Dixon began to build a life for herself in politics. She became the first black secretary for the Democratic Party of Clark County and the first black member of the Rotary Club in the area. She went on to serve on the state executive committee of the Democratic Party as well as the Democratic National Committee. Lifting as she climbed, Dixon was instrumental in prompting other blacks to run, successfully, for the Quorum Court in predominantly black districts in Clark County.
Ron Maxwell, Arkansas Governor’s Mansion administrator and former state Democratic Party staff member, admires his friend Dixon as someone who has “pulled herself up by the bootstraps and made her mark in this world.”
“I have just admired her from the first day I met her because of her ... creative ability, and her ability, as a people person, to get along with everybody,” he says. “No matter what, she’ll be there for you if you ever need her help. She’s smart, she’s articulate, she’s a doer. If she seizes on a project, she’ll do it to the best of her ability.”
Maxwell credits Dixon as being the driving force behind the Democratic Party’s annual Clark County Clinton Day Dinner in Arkadelphia. He also has fond memories of her being one of the leaders of the macarena dance at the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“They played that number over and over and over at the convention to get the people revved up and excited, [and] she could do it better than anybody,” he says.
Finally, life was good for Martha Dixon. But then, on Feb. 5, 2006, the unthinkable happened. Dixon Manufacturing was destroyed in an electrical fire. Along with her business went the plaques, certificates, photos and other memorabilia Dixon had saved through the years.
“It was just like my child died,” she says. “I felt so awful. ... I hurt and cried inside, kind of got a little depressed for a little while. And depression is not for me — I don’t do that. I snapped out of it and decided, ‘Hey, life’s got to go on.’ So I wrote my book.”
Not only is Dixon tenacious, she’s also fiercely loyal to those who have shown her kindness. When Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama were vying for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Dixon remained loyal to Clinton when other black superdelegates were switching to Obama.
“That wasn’t easy for me to do, but that shows commitment, and how a friend should be — no matter what color you are.”
Nowadays Dixon, whose many honors include being named Little Rock Fashion Week’s 2011 Fashion Icon, enjoys the life of an active retiree. She volunteers on a few boards and travels in and out of the state and country, speaking and pitching a movie based on her book. “It’s my will, and I believe it’s God’s will, that it’s going to be a movie,” she says. “I believe [it] with all my heart.” She’s also got a literary agent for the rerelease of the book.
Indeed, hers would be a story worth viewing: a story woven from the fabric of trial but lovingly stitched together by the indomitable spirit of its protagonist.
“I’ve had so many obstacles put in my way — I mean a bunch of them,” Dixon says. “But somehow it doesn’t knock me down; somehow it just motivates me. ... I don’t give up.
“I know how to roll with the punches. I pick up and” — she claps her hand loudly — “thank God and keep going.”