Faubus: Well, I was postmaster at Huntsville and also owner and editor of the Madison County Record. So many people who had become acquainted with me when they passed through Huntsville, they'd stop in to visit. Naturally, the subject of politics came up.
This is Ozarks at Large. You may recognize the voice we just heard. Let me introduce you to a familiar voice.
Kellams: I bet you do recognize Randy Dixon with the Pryor Center.
Dixon: Hello, Kyle. It's great to be here.
Kellams: Who'd we just hear?
Dixon: Well, that was Orval Faubus, former governor. And I gotta tell you, I geeked out a little bit last week because of what I found in the archives. I mean, I've been dealing with these archives for a while, well, since they started 40-some-odd years ago. I thought I knew everything that was in there. And every once in a while I come across something, and it was this interview, and I'll explain how I found it in a minute. But not to get in your business, but this could be a suggestion for your crack promotion team, that this could be billed as "Faubus: The Lost Interview."
Kellams: I will pass this along to the crack promotion team.
Dixon: That would be Rachel, right?
Kellams: Yeah. That's right.
Dixon: Okay. So anyway, you know, Orval Faubus, 36th governor, was in office for an unprecedented six terms, 1955 to 1967. He's known for many things, but especially Central High crisis, gambling in Hot Springs. But improvements of roads, right? Structure of state government, that sort of thing.
But he was a very complicated man. I sometimes, when I'm looking for an idea for a story for the week, I just flip through — we have a list, believe it or not, of every single tape and what's on it, whether it's just a news master or if something completely fills the tape. It'll be listed, but we have a document that has almost 25,000 individual tapes listed. And I just flip through page by page sometimes to see if it'll give me some ideas. Well, I came across this page that just had Faubus, Faubus, Faubus follows everywhere. I see that it has Faubus in DeWitt, Faubus in Stuttgart, and then it has Faubus interview. But they're all kind of labeled the Faubus tapes, and I don't know what they are. So I start to watch them, and I see that the reporter doing this — it's a two-hour interview with Faubus. And it was my old friend and colleague, Frank Thomas, who lives up here in Northwest Arkansas. So I get on the phone with him, and I said, do you remember what happened? And he said, yeah, in 1982 I did all this stuff on Faubus. So he started to tell me, and I said, wait, let me record this and explain to me how this happened. So here's my conversation, or a part of it, with Frank Thomas last week.
Thomas: Jim Pitcock, a longtime news director at KATV, kind of started thinking about archives really before he started, you know, looking back at all the film, video, and assigned me to go follow former Governor Orval Faubus around the state as he was selling his book, and get a lot of good video and just talk to him, and then eventually set up a long interview back in the conference room at KATV about his career. So we spent several days following Governor Faubus to the courthouse in Conway. I think we also made a trip down to Stuttgart and DeWitt. And he would set up a table and set up his books. He actually gave me one. And we just talked about his career and his politics, and it was really getting B-roll and background for the interview that we did in the conference room there at KATV. And to my recollection, the audio, or the interview, was never broadcast. We may have used some of the B-roll, and all of us passed away. But what he said in the interview was, I don't recall it being anything new. Jim was just thinking about history at the time, really, before he knew what he wanted. And I think later he thought about all that video that Channel 7 had on film. Anyway, it was really fascinating for me, for someone who always likes politics.
Dixon: But three months after Frank did all this — I mean, he even interviewed two of Faubus' chiefs of staff, so those were an hour each — so he has all of this. We call it raw footage. It's just the field tapes of him selling his book in 1982. It's called "Down From the Hills." He would travel around the state and just set up this card table and sell books. But, like I said, he did all this material, but then he left the station. He got a job in Detroit as a reporter before he went and later worked for David Pryor and then Stephens Inc., and then, I don't know, maybe Jim Pitcock forgot about it.
Kellams: Yeah. Because he's got a daily news operation going on.
Dixon: Exactly. And I don't think any of it was even used when Faubus died, because it had been 12 years. Faubus outlasted, I guess, the memory of the newsroom — because Frank left, Jim had other things to do. Let's hear a little of this interview. Here he talks about his very first run for major office. As we heard in the beginning, he was the postmaster of Huntsville, and his next big taste of politics and government was a job on the Highway Commission with Sid McMath when he was governor. But then he was defeated by Francis Cherry. So Francis Cherry was up for a second term in 1954. And Faubus was always told, you don't run against a man for a second term because he'll usually win his second term, he'll get another chance. But this is what Faubus did in 1954.
Faubus: Then, when no one else looked like no one else was going to file and run in the primary, I slipped down to Little Rock the day before the deadline and took a hotel room and remained hidden, and went down and twenty minutes before the deadline came in and filed. To the surprise of a lot of people, both friend and foe — some of them felt sorry for me, as they've told me since then, who became good friends of mine. But I had some enthusiastic support. There was some genuine discontent with the administration in being at the time, and so from that I got my start in the campaign.
Thomas: Did you honestly — I mean, did you even feel deep down, on your side yourself, you seem to be a man of strong convictions — that in 1954 you knew it was going to be a horse race, and you felt like you were going to take Mr. Cherry to the mat?
Faubus: Well, I felt it could be done, but that it was an uphill battle. It would be difficult. And we stood, of course, a good chance to lose. In fact, we were more apt to lose than to win. But I also had this in the back of my mind that if I made a real good showing against a man seeking a second term, when almost everyone said, you know, you can't beat a man for a second term, that if I came close, I would establish myself as a campaigner of sufficient ability and capability that I would have support later on.
Dixon: Let's listen to some more of the interview. Keep in mind this is 1982. Faubus has run again unsuccessfully a couple of times, and Frank Thomas is sitting down with him in the conference room at Channel 7. You heard Frank say, well, he didn't really get anything new out of the interview. I mean, I think it's just historic that he got it, found it at this time. Of course, he asked him about Central High. And I think here what Faubus says is really nothing new, so we really don't have a headline here. But here's what Faubus had to say about Central High.
Faubus: So I think that succeeding events and history itself has recorded that I was successful in preventing the violence. Yes, we had a lot of controversy, we had a lot of publicity, it took a long time to wear out and settle down. But where else have they integrated a school with less cost in injury or death and property damage than Little Rock, Arkansas? And when you balance that against the rest of the nation, I think the conclusion is rather inescapable that I was successful in that. So that was the situation. Yes, I've said many times I regretted that it ever occurred. We wish that it had never happened. But when you're in that office, there are times when you have to make decisions.
Kellams: This is where I would let listeners know, if you read Roy Reed's book "Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal" — Roy Reed kind of offers, post-Central High, post-gubernatorial career, Faubus' reasons — he would kind of give, depending on who he was talking to, these sort of rationalizations of his actions during this.
Dixon: Yeah. And he did it until the day he died. And there was always — he always justified his actions.
Kellams: And he would say, well, it was dangerous, or it was economic.
Dixon: And you heard in this interview that, yeah, he still considered himself successfully handling the situation.
Kellams: I think what historians will say is that, politically, it was successful for him. He got elected more times. I think he established himself.
Dixon: And he points out in this interview that for his third term, which was right after Central High, he got 70% of the vote in the primary. There wasn't even a runoff. Yes, but he contends that he already had that third term in the bag, and that he would have won anyway.
Kellams: And which would beg the question, why not try to do the right thing?
Dixon: Exactly.
Kellams: Very complicated. And, you know, somewhat disingenuous, depending on what excuse he would use later. But read Roy Reed's book if you're at all interested in this, because it's a fascinating profile.
Dixon: Yeah. Here's another interesting clip out of the interview where they talk about the illegal gambling in Hot Springs. I had not heard this before, but he does admit the existence of the illegal gambling.
Faubus: During most of my time in office, gambling went on at Hot Springs for most of my administration, until finally, in my fifth term I believe — or perhaps it was the beginning of the sixth term — when they finally put the onus on the local officials to either enforce the law or face impeachment. Then they enforced the law, and gambling ceased. Otherwise, when the state goes in to enforce laws in an area where the people are more or less inclined otherwise, you have conflict between local and state authorities, just as you have between state and federal authorities, very, very often. It's kind of like when I was in the Army, you know — company complained about battalion, battalion complained about regiment, regiment complained about division, division complained about corps, and corps complained about Army, and so on. That's a part of the scene in public life, but that was the best way to do it. And the people who introduced that resolution in the legislature conferred with me beforehand. It had my approval. And it was the best way that if gambling was to cease at Hot Springs, this was the best way to do it. Otherwise, you'd have the old conflict continuing between state and local authorities, and sometimes it would be going and sometimes it wouldn't be.
Kellams: Here's a guy, Faubus, like so many Arkansas politicians in the 20th century, fed off of in-person contacts.
Kellams: That was the way he politicked. That's what he was used to. And Frank — well, I talked to Frank about that, and here's what he has to say, because he followed him for a week while he was doing this.
Thomas: My best recollection, we followed him two times, because he was kind of sad — he'd set up that table, nobody would come by. The book — his style of politics was, you know, courthouse politics and retail and handshaking and all that. So we'd set up in the courthouse, and somebody would come by that he knew, who knew he was coming, and would sit down and talk with him, and they'd spend fifteen or twenty minutes. But it was just fascinating to see this political king in Arkansas setting up a card table and putting books on it in the courthouse, hoping to sell a few.
Dixon: You know, the Woody Allen expression, 80% of success is showing up. Well, you know, Faubus, I think along the same lines, called it "keeping the store." But I think it was more, in his case, about consistency and being there when you were needed.
Faubus: I can't emphasize too strongly, you've got to keep the store. I mean, you have to be there. There are decisions — it's a decision place, there are decisions every day. Now, as a member of the legislature, as a member of the Congress, issues come up, you can consider it maybe for days, maybe for weeks, explore all the avenues of sentiment and finally decide how you'll cast your vote on the matter. There are some things of that nature in state government that fall within the province of a chief executive's responsibility, but most of those are far more decisions that have to be made day by day as they arise.
Dixon: There's a lot of material in there. And what I've basically done here is just a couple of the highlights, or lowlights, of his career that he talked about. But he talks a lot about the philosophy of politics and what he considers loyalty. And it's very interesting to hear not only his mindset from the '50s, but when he was saying it in the '80s, and what you see today. But I didn't even get to the interviews of his chiefs of staff. I'll tell you the truth, I hadn't had time to watch them yet.
Kellams: Okay.
Dixon: So do we have enough here for another week?
Kellams: Sounds like it.
Dixon: All right, I have plenty of Faubus material, but why don't I get into these chiefs of staff, and we can hear from them? So Jim Pitcock had hours and hours of this material that was just sort of forgotten into the archives. So what I'm going to do is put all this together — you know, we do it now at the Pryor Center, we call it a project — like the Walton Arts Center has the exhibit on Levon Helm, which is amazing. There's a QR code, and if you use that QR code, it'll take you to the Pryor Center website, where we have collected not only a performance — a live performance that's never been seen before, of Levon Helm and his band — but interviews with people who were in his band. Even Anna Lee, that he wrote the song about, there's an interview with her. There was a real person.
Kellams: So she's still alive?
Dixon: Yeah. So we have the material here for — here it comes again — "Faubus: The Lost Interview."
Kellams: Yes.
Dixon: For a project. So I'll put all that together.
Kellams: Okay.
Dixon: And we'll have that available on the front page, hopefully in a week or so.
Kellams: Okay. But if we do this again next week, hopefully it'll be up by then.
Dixon: Okay. It's great having this — what we call raw footage — it's not been edited for television. It has the whole thing in there, it has outtakes and things. But I wanted to play this here at the end. Ed Eaves, who was shooting the interview, is kind of wrapping things up, but he's still recording. And this was something right at the end of the interview, while Faubus and Thomas were just kind of talking. I thought this was kind of cool.
Faubus: But I found in my experience in life that an honest person with good intentions who is badly mistaken and is so stubborn that he won't yield is an awfully hard person to deal with.
Thomas: Yeah, I've run across a few of those in the news business. I'm sure you have in politics.
Kellams: All right, so "Faubus: The Lost Interview" part two next week?
Dixon: Yeah. Why not?
Randy Dixon is with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. I'll see you next week.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
