Hattie Caraway

Hattie Caraway (born February 1, 1878, near Bakerville, Tennessee, U.S.—died December 21, 1950, Falls Church, Virginia) was an American Democratic politician who became the first woman elected (1932) to the U.S. Senate.

Hattie Wyatt grew up in her native Bakerville, Tennessee, and in nearby Hustburg. She graduated (1896) from Dickson Normal School and for a time thereafter taught school. In 1902 she married Thaddeus H. Caraway, who subsequently became a congressman and then a U.S. senator for Arkansas.

When Thaddeus Caraway died in November 1931, Hattie Caraway was appointed by the governor to fill her husband’s seat until a special election could be held; she thereby became the second woman (after Rebecca Felton, 1922) to be seated in the U.S. Senate. She won a special election (January 1932) to fill the few remaining months of her late husband’s term. She won reelection in her own right to the seat later in 1932 with the help of Louisiana Gov. Huey Long, who campaigned for her. Caraway was reelected again in 1938 but failed in her bid for a third term in 1944. In her 13 years in the Senate, she was the first woman to preside over a session of that body and the first to serve as a committee chairman.

In her voting Caraway generally supported the New Deal and other legislation of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration; she opposed isolationism and supported veterans and organized labor. On civil rights, she was the first woman in Congress to back (1943) the Equal Rights Amendment. However, Caraway also voted with her party to uphold segregation and to block antilynching laws. Her reelection in 1938 after a primary victory over Rep. John L. McClellan firmly established her as a senator in her own right, and her dry humor and homely sayings made her a favorite national figure. In the 1944 Democratic primary in Arkansas, she was defeated by Rep. J. William Fulbright, and she left the Senate in 1945.