Fixing the Pronunciation of Arkansas--Senator Johnson's Great Speech

[Gerald Cohen]

>At 1:53 PM -0500 2/11/03, Bethany K. Dumas wrote:
>Apparently the pronunciation of Arkansas was fixed by legislative
>fiat. See Proceedings of the Legislature and of the Historical Society of
>the State of Arkansas, and the Eclectic Society, of Little Rock, Ark.,
>Fixing the Pronunciation of the Name Arkansas; Little Rock, 1881.
>
>Bethany


     There's a hilarious ribald speech, never actually given, by a
supposed Arkansas senator Cassius F. Johnson denouncing the attempt
to change the pronunciation of Arkansas to make it sound like Kansas.
According to my notes it's in Vance Randolph's classic _Pissing In
The Snow and Other Ozark Folktales_, 1976, pp. 171-173, followed by
comments from the annotator of that edition of that book.

     The speech was later cleaned up and appeared in James R. Aswell's
_Native American Humor_, 1947 (pp.359-360), but Aswell seems
completely unaware that the version he presents is not the original
one.  I'm indebted to _Maledicta_ editor Reinhold Aman for drawing
the original to my attention some years ago.  He may have reprinted
the speech in his _Maledicta_; I'm not sure.

      Only a sudden rush of modesty prevents me from presenting the
original, ribald version here.  Here, though, is the beginning as it
appears in Vance Randolph's book:

"SENATOR JOHNSON'S GREAT SPEECH
(Told by H.A. Converse, Little Rock, Ark., December, 1949; He had a
manuscript copy of the speech, but recited the whole thing from
memory);

"One time there was a goddam Yankee moved to Arkansas, and got
elected to the Legislature.  The first thing he done was put in a
bill to make Arkansas rhyme with Kansas, just because it is spelled
that way.  The Arkansawyers got pretty mad, of course, so they begun
to stomp and holler.  There was one old man that hollered louder than
anybody else, and finally the rest of 'em quieted down to hear what
he had to say.

   'Mr. Speaker, God damn your soul,' says he, 'I've been trying to
get the floor for thirty minutes, but all you do is squirm around
like a dog with a flea in...'"

[snip].

Gerald Cohen