Jim Caldwell (Arkansas politician)
James Ray Caldwell, known as Jim R. Caldwell (born 1936), is a retired Church of Christ minister in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who was a Republican member of the Arkansas State Senate from 1969 to 1978, the first member of his party to sit in the legislative upper chamber in the 20th century. His first two years as a senator corresponded with the second two-year term of Winthrop Rockefeller, the first Republican governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction. Caldwell was closely allied with Rockefeller during the 1969-1970 legislative sessions. Background A native of Dardanelle in Yell County in west central Arkansas, Caldwell was a son of Reece E. Caldwell (1912-1971) and the former Oval Ermice Greene (1914-2000). He attended the first eleven years of school in Dardanelle but completed his senior year at Central High School in Tulsa. In 1958, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in general studies from the Church of Christ-affiliated Harding College in Searcy in White County, Arkansas. He received a Master of Science from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and pursued but did not complete doctoral studies at the private University of Tulsa. He became a minister in 1956, and while a state senator, he was the minister at the Southside Church of Christ in Rogers in Benton County in northwestern Arkansas. He began after-dinner speaking before church and civic groups. For eight years before his return to Arkansas from Oklahoma, Caldwell served on stand-by in the Oklahoma Air National Guard. Arkansas legislative politics A Democrat-turned-Republican, Caldwell first won the general election for state senator for Benton and Carroll counties in 1968, when he unseated the veteran Democratic incumbent, Russell Elrod (1904-1985) of Siloam Springs, who in the 1953-1954 session had been the Senate President Pro Tempore. Although he was considered a "progressive" or a Moderate Republican within the legislature, Caldwell recalled years later that he really had "no ideology, no issue when I first ran. I just thought a two-party system was a good idea. I don't recall any of us [Republican legislators] having an agenda. ... Usually when the candidates get to town, they see the big picture, and they understand they have to deal with issues that don't just apply to their home district." In 1969, Caldwell joined two other senators who defended the right of Muhammad Ali, the African American boxer who converted to Islam and avoided military service in the Vietnam War, to speak at the student forum at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. "I don't agree with him, but he should be heard," explained Caldwell. Democratic Senator Milt Earnhart of Fort Smith introduced a resolution to condemn Ali's appearance, and Republican Lieutenant Governor Maurice Britt declared that the resolution had passed by a voice vote. In his speech Ali stunned many when he spoke highly of former Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, who the year before had won forty-six electoral votes, including the six from Arkansas, as the nominee of the American Independent Party, only to lose the