10th Grade Winners for the 1999-2000 School Year
Martha Mitchell
Creative Writing Contest
10th Grade Winners for the 1999-2000 School Year
$50.00 Second Place Winner:
Jana Magness from Pine Bluff High School
Martha Mitchell's Place in History-
The Nature and Significance of Her Impact on Washington Politics.
Martha Mitchell
Martha was born on September 2, 1918. She grew up and graduated from Pine Bluff High School in 1936. She then attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. When she returned home on the eve of World War II, Martha went to work at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, then under construction.
Later, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she met and married, John Mitchell. After John became the Attorney General during the Nixon Administration, Martha was thrust by fate into the spotlight of the Watergate Affair. Martha became a catalyst for national news during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. She did so by phoning reporters in the news media about matters which the Nixon Administration preferred to be kept out of the national press. At the time, Martha insisted she was held against her will in a California hotel room and sedated to keep her from making her controversial phone calls to the news media.
But being prone to speak her mind did not originate on the Washington political scene. When she graduated from high school, these words appeared alongside her picture:
"I love its gentle warble,
I love its gentle flow,
I love to wind my tongue up
And I love to let it go."
Her husband labeled her his "misguided missile", creating the impression that he was an unfortunate but compassionate man saddled with a slightly flaky wife whom he adored too much to suppress. But here Martha reveals that John, with White House backing, put her up to almost all her early outbursts. And a former Nixon aide confirms that Martha was deliberately used by the White House to represent an outspoken view from the right, but one for which the Attorney General and the White House would not be held accountable.
Martha died in Washington in 1976 at the age of 57. She is buried in Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.