Tag Archives: United Press

Little Rock Look Back: LR Likes Ike in 1952

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Detail from UPI photo of General Eisenhower following his address.

If Ike, Little Rock and September are considered, it is usually in reference to his role in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High in September 1957.  But five years earlier, he appeared in Little Rock on September 3, 1952.

General Eisenhower’s speech to 14,000 in MacArthur Park was the final leg in his swing through the South on his campaign for the White House.  He became the third presidential candidate to visit MacArthur Park in 1952 following General MacArthur (in his ill-fated attempt to gain traction as a GOP candidate during the delegate selection process) and Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson.

He visited every southern state except Mississippi on this campaign jaunt.  In comments that neither he nor his audience could have foreseen as prescient, Eisenhower declared that he deplored the government meddling in areas in which it did not belong.  This remark was made in reference to race relations.  His stance was that some rights of minorities should be protected, but it was not necessarily the role of the federal government.

Ike proffered that if white southerners did not protect the rights of African Americans they were in danger of losing their own rights, too.  In the era of the Cold War when people were worried about the imminent loss of rights, this message seems to have crafted to appeal to those concerns.  While Eisenhower did not shy away from addressing civil rights, his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was silent on the issue.  But with Alabama segregationist Senator John Sparkman as his running mate, it put Stevenson in a difficult position to try to bring it up.

In the end, Ike lost most of the South.  He did carry Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee and Florida. The only states Stevenson won were in the South.  Eisenhower’s 43.74% of the Arkansas popular vote was the highest any Republican had garnered since General Grant carried the state in 1868 and 1872.

100 Years of the Pulitzer celebrated tonight by Arkansas Humanities Council lecture with Ray Moseley

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Tonight, ahc-pulitzer-100-moseleyTuesday, October 4 at 7PM, at Ron Robinson Theater,  the Arkansas Humanities Council will present the 3rd in a series of lectures honoring the Pulitzer Prize in Arkansas. This lecture will honor the Arkansas Gazette which won two Pulitzer Prizes in 1958 for Meritorious Service and Editorial Writing.

Ray Mosely, who was the lead reporter for the Gazette’s coverage of the Central High integration crisis in 1957, will give the lecture.  This event is free and open to the public.

Moseley was  later was a United Press International foreign correspondent, bureau chief and then editor for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. For many years after that he was chief European correspondent of the Chicago Tribune based in London. In a 59-year career, he covered such stories as the 1967 Six-Day War, the first Indo-Pakistan war, the Greek-Turkish war in Cyprus, the Rhodesian civil war, the Iranian revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Princess Diana.

He was a Pulitzer finalist in 1981 for a series of articles about Africa and in 2003 was awarded an honorary MBE (Member of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to journalism, the first American correspondent in two decades to receive that honor. He is also the author of three books including a journalistic memoir, In Foreign Fields, and of two forthcoming books, one on the war correspondents of World War II and the other on the black American soldiers of that war. Moseley will share reminiscences about coverage of the 57 crisis, his personal experiences afterward, the end of the Gazette and the future of newspapers.

Following Moseley’s remarks Ernie Dumas will moderate a panel discussion featuring former Gazette reporters.

Little Rock Look Back: Ike in Little Rock

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Detail from UPI photo of General Eisenhower following his address.

Detail from UPI photo of General Eisenhower following his address.

If Ike, Little Rock and September are considered, it is usually in reference to his role in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High in September 1957.  But five years earlier, he appeared in Little Rock on September 3, 1952.

General Eisenhower’s speech to 14,000 in MacArthur Park was the final leg in his swing through the South on his campaign for the White House.  He became the third presidential candidate to visit MacArthur Park in 1952 following General MacArthur (in his ill-fated attempt to gain traction as a GOP candidate during the delegate selection process) and Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson.

He visited every southern state except Mississippi on this campaign jaunt.  In comments that neither he nor his audience could have foreseen as prescient, Eisenhower declared that he deplored the government meddling in areas in which it did not belong.  This remark was made in reference to race relations.  His stance was that some rights of minorities should be protected, but it was not necessarily the role of the federal government.

Ike proffered that if white southerners did not protect the rights of African Americans they were in danger of losing their own rights, too.  In the era of the Cold War when people were worried about the imminent loss of rights, this message seems to have crafted to appeal to those concerns.  While Eisenhower did not shy away from addressing civil rights, his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was silent on the issue.  But with Alabama segregationist Senator John Sparkman as his running mate, it put Stevenson in a difficult position to try to bring it up.

In the end, Ike lost most of the South.  He did carry Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee and Florida. The only states Stevenson won were in the South.  Eisenhower’s 43.74% of the Arkansas popular vote was the highest any Republican had garnered since General Grant carried the state in 1868 and 1872.