Effiegene Locke Wingo

U.S. Congresswoman. She served as a Democrat to the U.S. Congress from Arkansas. Born in Lockesburg, Sevier County, Arkansas, she attended Union Female College in Oxford, Mississippi, and in 1902 graduated from Maddox Seminary in Little Rock with a bachelor's degree in music. In October, 1902, she married Otis Theodore Wingo, a lawyer and banker. The couple had a daughter, Janie Blanche Wingo, and a son, Otis Wingo, Jr. They made their home in DeQueen until her husband was elected to U.S. Congress in 1913 as a Democrat to represent Arkansas's Fourth District, and at that point, the family relocated to Washington, D.C. In 1926 she became very active with her husband's political affairs after he was seriously injured in an auto accident and was unable to return to his office. Her husband died while in office from the post-operative complications of an emergency cholecystectomy on October 21, 1930. After her husband's death, she was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-first Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband. She served from November 4, 1930, to March 3, 1933. She was the second woman from Arkansas to be elected to the United States Congress. She introduced eighteen bills and served on three House committees during her congressional service. She served as a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. When Federal Relief Funds and Red Cross monies were unavailable for the people of Arkansas, she collected food, donations, and medicine from the wealthy in order to give to those affected by the Great Depression. She helped establish a Veterans Hospital and Federal Building in Texarkana, as well as numerous railroad bridges, highways and levees. She also acquired welfare grants and loans for home and school construction for those in the Fourth Congressional District. She was the co-founder of the National Institute of Public Affairs in Washington, DC. Through the remainder of her life, she engaged in educational and research projects. While on a Canadian vacation, she died in Burlington, Ontario at the age of 79.