Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was born on February 1, 1878 on a farm near Bakerville (Humphreys County), Tennessee, United States; one of four children of William Carroll Wyatt and Lucy Mildred (Burch) Wyatt. Her father's family (of English origin) came from Virginia and North Carolina; her mother's were natives of North Carolina and Tennessee. When Hattie was four, the Wyatts moved to Hustburg, Tennessee, where her father farmed and ran a general store.
At the age of fourteen Hattie entered Dickson (Tennessee) Normal College, where she earned a B. A. in 1896.
After teaching briefly in local schools, she married a classmate, Thaddeus Horatius Caraway. While Thaddeus practiced law in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and embarked on a political career, Hattie devoted herself to domestic duties, tending a kitchen garden, helping to manage the family cotton plantation, and raising three sons.
The Caraways moved to Washington following Thaddeus' election to the House of Representatives in 1912. Hattie (who described herself as a "homebody") remained in the background, caring for her family and their home, the historic Calvert mansion in Riverdale, Maryland. When Thaddeus Caraway died in November 1931, in the fifth year of his second term as U. S. senator from Arkansas, Governor Harvey Parnell appointed Hattie Caraway to the seat.
On January 12, 1932, she won a special election for the remainder of the term, thus becoming the first woman ever elected to the Senate (Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia had served a "courtesy" appointment for two days in 1922). Everyone expected her to bow gracefully out of politics when her term expired, but she confounded the politicians by standing for election to a regular term.
She was given little chance of winning, for her six opponents in the August Democratic primary included a former governor, a former senator, and the Democratic national committeeman. But, in July, Sen. Huey P. Long of Louisiana announced that he would come to Arkansas and conduct a whirlwind campaign in her behalf. She had supported Long's proposals for wealth redistribution, and the foray gave him an opportunity to embarrass his political foe, Arkansas's senior senator Joseph Robinson. Long barnstormed Arkansas on August 1, launching what the Arkansas Democrat later called "perhaps the most spectacular political tour the state ever witnessed" (Aug. 10, 1932). Leading a caravan of sound trucks and literature vans, he crisscrossed the state for nine days in behalf of "the little widow woman. " His theme was the struggle between "the money power" and "the people"; Caraway, he claimed, was an "unbossed" candidate who had repeatedly defied Wall Street to vote the interests of the common man. Warming to the campaign, the candidate herself made some speeches defending her record and attacking the Hoover administration. She won a decisive primary victory and in November was elected to a full term in the Senate. In her thirteen years in that body, she compiled a series of other firsts for women: first to preside over the Senate, first to conduct a Senate committee hearing, first committee chairman (Enrolled Bills), first senior senator.
Despite her pioneering role, Senator Caraway consistently shunned the limelight. Senator Caraway's performance won her the backing of most federal employees, unions, and women's groups when she embarked upon "her first unchaperoned campaign for reelection" in 1938. After narrowly defeating Rep. John L. McClellan in a bitter primary contest, she easily won the general election. With the outbreak of war in Europe she spoke out against isolationism and voted for Administration policies, including lend-lease.
Her election to the Senate occasioned widespread comment about the ability of a woman to do the job; the New York Times said at the time of her death that she had "proved that a woman could easily carry out the work that her male colleagues were called upon to do. " Caraway was no doubt influenced by her success in politics; by 1936 she was saying that the time was past for treating women "as set apart by sex from any serious legislative qualifications". In 1943 she cosponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, the first woman in Congress to do so. Standing for reelection in 1944, Caraway was defeated in the Democratic primary by Rep. J. William Fulbright, who subsequently won her seat. In 1945 President Roosevelt nominated her to the Federal Employees' Compensation Commission; in July 1946 she became a member of the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board. She suffered a stroke in January 1950 and died eleven months later in a sanitorium in Falls Church, Va. She was buried in West Lawn Cemetery, Jonesboro, Ark.
Caraway was a lifelong Methodist.
Never a feminist, Caraway at first displayed little interest in women's concerns. When the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, she later told George Creel, "I just added voting to cooking and sewing and other household duties. Of course living in Arkansas helped a lot, for down there we don't have to bother about making a choice between two parties. "
Quotations:
"I am going to fight for my place in the sun. The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job".
"I haven't the heart to take a minute away from the men, " she told George Creel. "The poor dears love it so. "
She attended faithfully to her duties as a member of the Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, Enrolled Bills, and Library committees, and she compiled a progressive voting record consistently supporting the New Deal.
A short, plump woman, invariably dressed in black, she sat quietly at her desk, sometimes working crossword puzzles during Senate debates. Typically described as "diminutive, " "quiet, " and "demure, " she rarely spoke on the floor.
Caraway married Thaddeus Horatius Caraway on February 5, 1902. They had three sons Paul Wyatt, Forrest, and Robert Easley. Thaddeus Caraway died in November 1931.
