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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Orval Faubus, June 14, 1974. Interview A-0031. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

A hostile press assails Faubus

Young liberals took charge of Arkansas newspapers in the 1960s, Faubus claims, and started a crusade against his leadership. Faubus accuses the paper of essentially fabricating scandals without substantiating their accusations with research, and of misrepresenting some of Faubus's efforts to help Arkansans.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Orval Faubus, June 14, 1974. Interview A-0031. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

WALTER DE VRIES:
But this widespread opposition, when did that develop? All these papers. You say all the papers in central Arkansas won't give you a break. When did that develop?
ORVAL FAUBUS:
Following '57. Not for sometime afterward. As these young, liberal people got positions as editors or owners. It was a gradual process. And see, they were raised on the Gazette. Many of them worked there. Then they went out and got papers of their own. And they were all thoroughly indoctrinated to begin with. And they never have checked the record to see if I did any good. They've never checked the record like they have charged me with a scandal of midnight pay raises, but they've never checked the record to see what it was. Not a dime of money was misused or lost. The pay raises were made by the highway director at the time under the wrong authority. Had to be rescinded. And then created great controversy. The controversy was created in the press. And then within two or three months the same raises had been granted because they were deserved by the highway workers. Nothing's ever said about that. And then they say pensions for pals. But they don't name anyone who's getting a pension, as they call it, or retirement benefit that shouldn't have it. And Rockefeller used that widely, you know, in his race against me. Which he lost. And then they used it in '66 when he defeated Jim Johnson. The Gazette used it, you know. But the law wasn't repealed. They examined it and found out it was all right, just and fair. unknown originally got it, it was for the quasi judicial bodies. Workmen's compensation commission, commerce commission and public service commission. They all sit as judges but they don't have to be lawyers. Most of them are. Well, their retirement benefit was modeled after the retirement system for the judiciary. Chancellry and circuit judges. Members of the supreme court. Prosecuting attorneys. Except it's not nearly as lavish. Not nearly as good a retirement system. Not a thing in the world wrong with it. But see, they don't explain that. And when the burden's left on me without any newspaper or without state wide press, why then you just continue to suffer for it. And they keep on drilling this. . . . It goes back to the old theory that Hitler had: if you'll tell a lie long enough, people will accept it.