Promises Kept

Winner of the 2006 Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the 2004 Ragsdale Award

A dominating spirit of public service animated the life of Sidney Sanders McMath (1912–2003), the thirty-fourth governor of Arkansas. Promises Kept, completed and published when McMath was in his nineties, tells his story in his own words—from the piney hills of South Arkansas to the battlefields of World War II; through the human dramas of the courtroom to the marbled corridors of the State Capitol.

In Promises Kept, McMath recounts a rural upbringing that grounded him in the concerns of everyday Arkansans. He tells his life story through key milestones, including distinguished military service and a dramatic political rise to governor of Arkansas. During his four years in office, he pursued reform and modernization by expanding roads and electricity to rural areas, fighting the poll tax, building the state's first medical center, opening Democratic primaries to Black voters, and standing with President Harry Truman in resisting the segregationist Dixiecrats. McMath's political career ended amid unproven allegations tied to the highway program—charges he addresses directly here—and concludes with his return to the law, where landmark cases earned him honors.

Throughout, McMath reveals the excitement and the hard choices of real democracy, offering compelling human stories and a crucial perspective of a pivotal time in Arkansas history.