Betty Bumpers: Champion of Childhood Immunization and Peace Anna L.Eblen and MarthaJane Eblen, Editors. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.

Abstract

Bumpers: Champion of Childhood Immunization and Peace Anna L. Eblen and Martha Jane Eblen, Editors. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.For people outside of Arkansas, Bumpers may not be a familiar figure. She should be. In the spirit of her hero and role model, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bumpers used her position as First Lady of and US Senate wife to bring about social change. An advocate for children's health, justice, women's leadership, and world peace, she represents an often neglected type of woman: the political wife of a bygone era who worked as an activist without holding office herself. In Bumpers: Champion of Childhood Immunization and Peace, editors Anna L. Eblen and Martha Jane Eblen bring together Bumpers's own words, transcribed from speeches, writings, and interviews, and reminiscences of Bumper by those who worked with her. What emerges is the portrait of a remarkable woman whose story, the editors note in their preface, has spanned almost a century-from a childhood in the rural Dust Bowl to adulthood in the DC Beltway's halls of power to elder years back in Little Rock, Arkansas (xi). editors' purpose is to bring an account of Bumpers's activist work to a larger audience, while preserving her informal and likable manner of speaking (xi). Several sections titled simply Conversations with Betty speak to this end, showcasing her engaging, no-nonsense voice, and tales of perseverance.The first three chapters of the book, collected in a section titled Advocacy, outline Bumpers's major accomplishments. Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in October 2005, Bumpers distinguished herself through her efforts to save children's lives through early immunizations and to bring about world peace. A chapter titled Networking for Children's Health includes Bumpers's discussion of her work in the 1970s when her husband Dale was elected governor of and she learned from the Center for Disease Control that Arkansas's immunization levels were woefully low and was asked if she would take on the task of trying to raise them (13). She led the Every Child by '74 campaign, attempting to have every child in the state immunized, and met with great success. After Dale Bumpers was elected to the US Senate in 1974, she took her crusade to a national level, later working with the Carter Administration. As Rosalynn Carter tells it, The first person to knock on the front door of the White House after we got there was Bumpers. She wanted me to help her with the immunization (17). Carter Administration set a goal of having seventy-eight percent of children in every state immunized. Although that program was successful, a measles epidemic that killed nearly 120 infants between 1989 and 1990 made it apparent that many children were not being immunized early enough. …