Barbara Arthur was born in communist Cuba. Her father chose to flee Fidel Castro’s totalitarian regime in August of 1969. He was able to bring Barbara and two of her young siblings to the United States aboard one of President Lyndon Johnson’s Freedom Flights. Unfortunately, Castro’s tyrannical government withheld her mother’s U.S. Visa and forced her to remain in Cuba with three of Barbara’s brothers and sister for another 23 long and difficult years – unable to join Barbara and the rest of the family until 1992!
That experience, however, did not stop Barbara from making the most of her new-found freedom in the United States. She worked from the age of 13; bought her own car; paid for her own insurance, gas and clothing, and even helped her father pay the rent.
In 1981, Barbara received her high school diploma from Florida’s Hialeah High School and went on to earn a vocational certificate in Legal Secretarial Studies from Garces Commercial College, also in Hialeah. For the next ten years she worked as a legal assistant in South Florida.
Just a year after her mother and siblings finally arrived from their imprisonment in Cuba, Barbara’s focus changed forever. “That’s when I asked the King of Kings to take His rightful place in my heart and life.” Since then, she has served as a Christian women’s speaker, speaking in churches from Montana to Miami.
In 1997, Barbara married former South Carolina State Representative, Warren Arthur, of Hartsville, SC. Together; they have a blended family of eight children and seven grandchildren. Over the last 15 years, she has become an accomplished homeschool teacher … graduating her youngest child in May of 2021.
Professionally, Barbara Arthur is a licensed insurance agent and, with her husband, own WD Arthur Insurance … a small business they have operated together for more than two decades.
Having expressed no previous political ambitions, Arthur explains what motivated her to run for the US House of Representatives from South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District