Hattie Wyatt Caraway

Hattie Caraway was appointed to her late husband's Senate seat in December 1931, and many expected her to keep it only briefly. She won the January 1932 special election, then surprised Arkansas by announcing she would run for a full term, saying the time had passed when a woman was placed in a seat and kept there while someone else was groomed. Huey Long of Louisiana stumped the state with her for a week, and she won nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent. She was also the first woman to chair a Senate committee.

What the plaque says

Hattie Wyatt Caraway 1878-1950 Hattie W. Caraway was born February 1, 1878, one-half mile south of here. In 1902, she married Thaddeus H. Caraway and moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas. Following the death of her husband, a United States Senator, in 1931 she entered the Senate from Arkansas by gubernatorial appointment. A year later, Caraway became the first woman elected to the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress. During her 13-year tenure, she became the first woman to preside over the Senate and to chair a Senate committee. A Democrat, she was a champion of Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs. Senator Caraway's term of office in the U.S. Senate ended in 1944. Hattie W. Caraway died in December 1950.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 9.1 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.
• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 18 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Mousetail Landing State Park — 21 mi
  A Perry County state park on the Tennessee River where a leather-shipping landing once stood, with ruins of its pier and blacksmith shop, a historic landing trail and quiet water trails.
• Natchez Trace State Park — 29 mi
  A New Deal state park built on worn-out West Tennessee farmland, where the Fairfield Gullies show what erosion did and kudzu was planted to stop it.

More markers nearby

• Captain William Robert Anderson — steps away
• Loretta Webb Lynn — 5.6 mi
• Waverly Disaster — 11 mi
• Gunboats & Cavalry November 4, 1864 — 15 mi