The grandson of Arkansas governor Thomas Chipman McRae III, Thomas Chipman McRae IV was born in El Dorado on June 11, 1938. The son of Carleton and Mary Jo Rogers McRae, he graduated from El Dorado High School in 1956, and then attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. A history major, he completed his B.A. in 1960, and later enrolled in the University of Arkansas School of Law. Receiving his LLB in 1963, he returned to El Dorado and joined the law firm of Brown, Compton and Prewitt. In 1964-1966 he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, after which he traveled in Asia and north Africa. In Cairo he met Christine Gilchrist of Burton-upon-Trent in England. They were married in 1966 and had two children, Catherine and Thomas Chipman V.

In 1966-1968 he served as a program investigator and evaluator with the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he returned to Arkansas, serving as the director of the Model Cities Program in Texarkana until 1971. During 1971-1975 he was the staff coordinator for Governor Dale Bumpers. Then in 1975-1989 he served as president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. As the foundation’s president he promoted environmentally-sound economic growth. He also played a key role in the establishment of the Southern Development Bancorporation in Arkadelphia. An avid environmentalist, McRae was a member of the Ozark Society and helped organize treks to Scotland, Nepal, and Mt. Everest.

In 1978 McRae entered politics, successfully seeking election as a delegate to Arkansas’s 1979-1980 constitutional convention. He returned to politics in 1989-1990 when he unsuccessfully challenged Arkansas governor Bill Clinton in the Democratic primary. He came in second in a field of six, garnering 190,887 votes to Clinton’s 269,329. Then following the elevation of Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker to the position of governor, McRae was a candidate in the Democratic special primary election in 1993 to fill the vacated position. Surviving the first election in a field of six, McRae finished second to Nate Coulter in a run-off election. Following his unsuccessful bid for in the lieutenant governor’s race, McRae served as vice president of the Southern Development Bancorporation in Arkadelphia and also as CEO of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Berea, Kentucky. Contracting ALS, he died on January 29, 2004.