Martha Beall Mitchell Birthplace – Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Do you remember Watergate and the following events that took the country by storm? If you don’t then you really should go study the history of the Nixon Administration and see what occurred that make Martha Beal Mitchell a household name. Martha Mitchell was one that chose to speak her mind and to not allow the political spin masters to get away with not telling the American people the truth about what was really going on in Washington D.C.
She was born in the house that was built by her maternal grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. C. M. Fergusson. Mr. Fergusson established one of the first wholesale grocery firms in the area and was very successful. Martha was born in 1918 in this very house.
She grew up and graduated from Pine Bluff High School in 1936. She kept the house full of friends and noise while growing up. They played in the playhouse that was out back of the house. This playhouse had hardwood floors and was a great place for the girls to play. Following her graduation from Pine Bluff High School she attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. When she returned home from college WWII was about to begin and she went to work at the Pine Bluff Arsenal to help with the war effort.
She later moved to Washington, D.C. where she met and married John Mitchell who was to become the Attorney General for President Richard W. Nixon. This put Martha into the spotlight during the Watergate Affair. Because of her willingness to keep the American people informed as to what the President and his staffers were doing she talked to the media regularly. When they didn’t call her she called them. The Nixon administration 
didn’t want what they were doing to make the national press, but Martha persisted and headlines were made.
The Watergate scandal was an American political scandal during the presidency of Richard Nixon that resulted in the indictment and conviction of several of Nixon’s closest advisors, and ultimately in the resignation of the President himself, on August 9, 1974. The whole affair had begun with the break in at the Watergate Office complex in Washington, DC on June 17, 1972. It was proven that this was one of many illegal activities authorized and carried out by Nixon’s staff. Nixon resigned from the office of President of the United States, becoming the only U.S. president to have resigned from office.
Martha Beall Mitchell was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1970 and later on the cover of New York magazine. She was dubbed "the Mouth of the South" when she began contacting reporters when the roll her husband, John Mitchell, became known to her. Richard Nixon claimed, during an interview with David Frost in September 1977, that "if it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate." In that regard, we owe Martha Beall Mitchell a great deal of thanks for having the courage to stand up for what she believed was right and just for the American people.
The Mitchell’s divorced in 1973 and in 1976 Martha died from advanced myeloma. She is buried in the Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff.
The home Martha grew up in has been restored and entered into the National Register of Historic Places.