Beware of Limbo Dancers: A Correspondent’s Adventures with the New York Times

4. History Lesson

CHAPTER 4 History Lesson There’s a long tradition in American life of politicians using newspapers as whipping boys—and vice versa. That was especially true in the South when race was the big issue during the middle years of the twentieth century. In Georgia, for example, segregationist governors campaigned against the Atlanta Constitution and its publisher/ columnist Ralph McGill when he crusaded for equal rights for African Americans. Hodding Carter Jr. and his Greenville Democrat DeltaTimes engaged in a running battle for years with the men who ran Mississippi, and they fought back. The legislature once passed a solemn resolution declaring him a liar. The Arkansas Gazette had its enemies among the state’s politicians going back to territorial days.Duels were fought between politicians and editors over personal slights when they weren’t busy dueling with each other.But the most consequential confrontation between any Arkansas public figure and the press was in  and the years afterward.Governor Faubus declared war on the Arkansas Gazette. That came about because the paper, which until then had been friendly to the governor, immediately and sternly condemned him for using the National Guard to stop the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. The Supreme Court had ordered an end to state-sponsored school segregation. The governor flouted the decision and threw in with the white supremacists whom he previously had shown no affection for.Those people had made up their minds,against all evidence,that the Court’s decision was illegal and unconstitutional,and they vowed to defy it to the end.The Gazette’s editorial page had done nothing more than point out the absurdity of that. That the page had done so with an eloquence that few of the  opposing camp were capable of probably contributed to their fear and hatred of the newspaper, which had presumed to inform and instruct the citizens of Arkansas since . Faubus understood that it would be difficult to incite animosity against a faceless institution, especially one as old and respected as the Gazette. He quickly moved to personify his enemy. Harry Ashmore, the witty, sophisticated, and erudite executive editor of the paper, was ideal for the role. It did not matter that the two men had had a cordial relationship until then. From the onset of hostilities, Faubus held Ashmore up to public scorn. The editor was everything that Faubus’s followers feared and despised. He was well educated and did not mind demonstrating it. He had made a serious study of the race issue, and the Supreme Court had in fact received copies of his scholarly book, The Negro and the Schools, in time to peruse it as it considered the ruling in  that would put an end to legal segregation of public schools. He had spent a year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a perfect symbol of Eastern elitism. He had a magical way with words. He was a decorated World War II combat officer.As it happened, the governor was also a decorated combat officer. Major Faubus had been an intelligence officer in Europe. He somehow managed to leave the impression that he had spent the war in the mud and foxholes with the dogfaces. The fight got ugly. Both sides profited from it. The paper won two Pulitzer Prizes, and the governor won six terms in office. Nevertheless, there were hard feelings between the combatants for many years afterward. I watched all this from the vantage point of my beat across the Arkansas River in North Little Rock until , when I was finally sprung from that job and put on general assignment and a little later on the capitol beat with Ernest Valachovic, the chief reporter there. I had most of five years to watch Faubus from a little distance; Val kept an eye on the governor’s office every day while I roamed the outer offices of the state government—almost all of which Faubus controlled . I helped cover the gubernatorial elections every two years. The downside of my assignment was not seeing Faubus every day. The advantage of it was an easy detachment from the old rascal’s personal charm, which could catch reporters unawares and draw them into his  HISTORY LESSON orbit.That served me well years later when I began working on a biography of him.He knew me,but during the scores of interviews we held, he did...