George Washington Donaghey
Shortly afterward, he detoured into the mercantile business—for his contracting business was not profitable in its early years—and suffered significant losses after building the second Faulkner County courthouse.The project was not complete until a dozen years later; during much of that time Jefferson "Jeff" Davis was state governor and firmly opposed all the new plans.He then attained an easy victory in the gubernatorial general election with 106,512 votes, over Republican John I. Worthington (42,979) and Socialist J. Sam Jones (6,537).In the meantime he traveled the country, and as professor Calvin Ledbetter, Jr. of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock points out in his book The Carpenter from Conway, Donaghey educated himself for the political office which awaited him.His actions in 1910 also included helping to create the Booneville Tuberculosis Sanatorium, thus improving public health; he later also negotiated with the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission to eradicate hookworm.During his term, Arkansas was the first state in the country to require smallpox vaccinations for all schoolchildren and school personnel, and the Crossett malaria control experiment campaigned against the mosquitos.Donaghey's achievements included establishment of a new state board of education, support for high schools, and the passage of a law making consolidation easier.[6] In autumn 1911, he appeared with Booker T. Washington at the National Negro Business League and said to an audience of one thousand black men to "not waste their time running around begging for social equality".[7] Donaghey's progressive stance procured passage of the Initiative and Referendum Act by which Arkansans can take governmental matters into their own hands and bypass the state legislature.Unable to get the legislature to abolish the practice, he prior to leaving office pardoned 360 prisoners, 44 in country farms and 316 out of 850 in penitentiaries[5] and 37 percent of the incarcerated population.The Art Deco-style monument contains intricate carvings; it includes references to transportation in 1831 and 1931, and mentions Governor Huey P. Long, Jr., whose educational program Donaghey admired.