Remembering Governor Junius Marion Futrell’s Mark on Arkansas

Luis A. Maya II, student guest contributor

Assigned to write on an Arkansas political topic, I actively recognized the necessity of creating a literary product meaningful not only for my academic satisfaction but also to contribute to the political science community. Therefore, searching for a topic that fit this criterion, I returned to my rural hometown of Nashville, Arkansas, where the foundations of my identity, political beliefs, and bond to our state were established. Here, lives a well-known and respected businessman, avid outdoorsman, and grandson of one of our state’s former governors, Woody Futrell, who revealed the inspiration for this first blog. Before sitting down with him for an interview—which I will include the findings of in this blog—it had been revealed to me that the academic work surrounding Governor Futrell’s political career is severely limited and redundant, and information about his personal life is virtually nonexistent. Regardless of source or year of publication, the coupled, ubiquitous descriptors of “fiscal conservative, “tax(es),” “strong measures,” and related terms have negligently confined his legacy. As a result, I sought to enrich, humanize, and offer a fresh perspective within the existing scholarship on the life and political career of Governor Junius Marion Futrell. This blog is intended to be the first of many that expand on the life and legacy of the former governor beyond the available, delving into the personal, political, and social spheres that shaped his service to our state and continue to influence our state’s political identity today.

A brief synopsis of how everyday Arkansans and practically every academic source remember the former governor can be summed up in the following way, paraphrased by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Junius Marion Futrell, Arkansas’s thirtieth governor (1933-1937)—and acting governor for five months in 1913 as a result of the landmark state supreme court case Futrell v. Oldham, which I will speak to in a future blog for this series on the former governor—was also a former judge and former state legislator who served as the chief executive during the Great Depression. These national economic conditions naturally constrained his options when responding to the situation, and it led to interesting contributions to our state, such as the “Futrell Amendments,” which I plan to also address in a future blog in this series on the former governor. For now, they can be described as the nineteenth and twentieth amendments to our state constitution relating to taxes and the issuance of bonds. 

Most memorably, the former governor is remembered for his steadfast commitment to utilizing fiscal conservatism in response to the national economic situation and in the pursuit of achieving a fiscally well state, as well as his embrace of a small government approach rather than allowing the growing national government headed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to take over state functions, processes, and mandating the steps towards recovery. As a result of these variables, the former governor enacted measures that, at the time, were unpopular with constituents, such as his decision to reduce state funding for public schools for cost-saving purposes, leading to the harsh contemporary evaluations ofhistorians.

The most recent comprehensive academic study ranking Arkansas governors is the 1983 “Arkansas Governors in the Twentieth Century: A Ranking and Analysis” by Cal Ledbetter Jr. And C. Fred Williams, both former political science professors from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. This study, high quality, in my opinion, established a model for understanding how to analyze and compare the intricate office of the governor across a great length of time and the events that took place between 1900 and 1970. The study ranked Governor Futrell 14th out of the 16 governors considered in this study. I encourage you to read this study and take note of the breadth of the description of the governors. While other governors received paragraphs or pages of background and analysis within the study, Futrell received three redundant short paragraphs, yet another supporting example of my previous claims about the lack of scholarship on the governor.

With this rudimentary understanding, Woody Futrell’s interview, personal family collections, and undigitized papers begin to elucidate Junius Marion Futrell. Therefore, for this first blog post, my contribution to Futrell’s scholarship will be to provide this paragraph for how I want history to remember the former governor, utilizing the words of Woody Futrell:

“He was a rural Arkansan who lived simply, led with principles and honesty, and served under an unfortunate time in the United States. Fishing, hunting, outings with family, and loving his grandchildren were among his favorite activities, yet he remained austere by disciplining past only one warning. With no personal political aspirations and even reluctance to enter Arkansas politics, he was forced and rose through the ranks with immense honesty, humility, and hard work.Rejecting personal gain many times, Futrell chose to serve the people of Arkansas by balancing budgets, creating surpluses, founding the state police, passing constitutional amendments to protect the financials of the state, legalizing horse and greyhound racing, maintaining lifelong friendships with other prominent figures like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sid McMath, Francis Cherry, and Orval Faubus, and many other achievements. Transcending beyond historical rankings and party labels, Futrell’s legacy was as clean as it came. He was a man who did not take more than he needed and left the state better than he found it.” 

Looking forward, I hope this blog series inspires the academic community and curious readers alike to renew interest in contributing to the overlooked and obscure scholarship surrounding Governor Junius Marion Futrell, as well as other former governors. To contribute to this campaign, I have decided to pursue formal research into everything Futrell, from his personal life and his political legacy, titled The Futrell Files.