W. Arthur Winstead

William Arthur Winstead (January 6, 1904 – March 14, 1995) was a farmer and politician, elected as U.S. Representative from Mississippi's 5th and 4th congressional districts, serving from 1943 to 1965. He surprisingly lost the 1964 election by a substantial margin, when his Republican opponent, Prentiss Walker, benefited from voters supporting Barry Goldwater in his presidential campaign in the state.

Early life and education

Born near Philadelphia, Mississippi, Winstead attended the public schools, Clarke Memorial College in Newton, Mississippi; and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He graduated in 1931 from the University of Southern Mississippi, then known as Mississippi Southern College, at Hattiesburg.

Winstead was a farmer. In his first elected office, he became the superintendent of education in his native Neshoba County, serving from 1935 to 1942.

Political career

Winstead was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-eighth and to the ten succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1943 – January 3, 1965). Like nearly all other Mississippi Democrats, he was an ardent segregationist and signed the Southern Manifesto after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

Having won the Democratic Party primary in what was essentially a one-party state since the state constitution's effective disfranchisement of blacks in 1890, Winstead was unopposed in his first bid for Congress.