McMillan, Clara Gooding, 1894-1976

<p>Clara Gooding McMillan (August 17, 1894 – November 8, 1976) was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, and wife of Thomas S. McMillan.</p>

<p>Born in Brunson, South Carolina, Mcmillan attended the public schools, Confederate Home College, Charleston, South Carolina, and Flora MacDonald College, Red Springs, North Carolina.</p>

<p>Mcmillan was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-sixth Congress by special election, on November 7, 1939, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, Thomas S. McMillan, and served from November 7, 1939, to January 3, 1941. She was not a candidate for reelection in 1940 to the Seventy-seventh Congress. She served in National Youth Administration, then the Office of Government Reports, Office of War Information, 1941. She was appointed information liaison officer for the Department of State, Washington, D.C., on January 1, 1946, and served until July 31, 1957.</p>

<p>McMillan resided in Barnwell, South Carolina, until her death on November 8, 1976. She was interred in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina.</p>

<p>A one-term Representative from South Carolina, Clara G. McMillan faced the growing menace of war in Europe from the perspective of being a recent widow and a mother of five young sons.</p>

<p>Clara E. Gooding was the second daughter born to William and Mary Gooding in Brunson, South Carolina, on August 17, 1894. She graduated from the public schools in her hometown and later attended the Confederate Home College in Charleston and the Flora McDonald College in Red Springs, North Carolina. She married Thomas Sanders McMillan, a lawyer who served in the South Carolina house of representatives from 1917 to 1924. During his last two years, he served as speaker of the South Carolina house. In 1924 he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served eight terms and eventually became a high-ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. Throughout her husband’s congressional service, Clara McMillan remained in Charleston, South Carolina, raising their five sons: Thomas Jr., James, William, Edward, and Robert. From a distance, she nevertheless kept in “close contact and cooperation” with Thomas’s legislative policies.</p>

<p>When Thomas McMillan died on September 29, 1939, South Carolina Democratic Party leaders chose Clara McMillan to run in the special election to fill her husband’s coastal Carolina seat. Like most southern states, South Carolina operated under a one-party system in the early twentieth century, wherein winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to winning the general election. Less from a sense of chivalry toward a widow than the need to head off an intraparty fight among aspirants for the seat, local political leaders chose McMillan to fill out the remaining year of her husband’s term. Against two weak opponents, Shep Hutto of Dorchester and James De Fieville of Walterboro, she won election to the House with 79 percent of the vote on November 7, 1939, to represent a sprawling district that covered Charleston and nine adjacent low-country counties. Afterward, McMillan, who had campaigned on her familiarity with her husband’s work, said she “felt it would come out as it did” because “I told the voters I would carry on his work.” A group of Berkeley County voters filed a protest to invalidate the special election because, they argued, the secrecy of the ballot was not maintained. The South Carolina supreme court overruled the protest in late December, and McMillan took her seat in Congress at the opening of the third session of the 76th Congress (1939–1941) on January 3, 1940.</p>