Effiegene Locke Wingo

Who was Effiegene Locke Wingo?

Effiegene Locke Wingo was a U.S. Representative from Arkansas, wife of Otis Theodore Wingo and great-great-great-granddaughter of Matthew Locke.

Born in Lockesburg in Sevier County in southwestern Arkansas, Wingo attended public and private schools and Union Female College in Oxford, Mississippi. She graduated in 1901 from Maddox Seminary in Little Rock. She lived in Little Rock and Texarkana, Arkansas, before establishing her permanent residence in De Queen in Sevier County.

Wingo was elected as a Democrat on November 4, 1930, to the Seventy-first Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, Otis Theodore Wingo, and on the same day was elected to the Seventy-second Congress and served from November 4, 1930, to March 3, 1933. She was not a candidate for renomination in 1932. Osro Cobb, then a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives and later the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, was urged by his party to challenge Mrs. Wingo for the congressional vacancy, but he instead endorsed the Democrat. In a statement, Cobb said that Mrs. Wingo "is eminently qualified to fill the position left by her late husband, and I would not under any circumstances oppose her in the general election."