Cherry's tactics also offended the sizable liberal contingent of Arkansas's Democratic Party. None was more influential than Harry Ashmore, the executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette. Ashmore was a McMath supporter with no particular love for Cherry. He deeply disapproved of Cherry's raising of the Commonwealth College issue, even though he knew the facts to be basically true. Anonymously Ashmore offered to help ghost-write a rebuttal. The resulting radio address would become one of the most legendary speeches in Arkansas's political history.
"When I went out from the green valley of my youth...," Faubus began before a crowd gathered at a Pine Bluff ballfield. He portrayed himself as a poor mountain boy desperately seeking to better himself through education, the victim of those who would seek to exploit the misery of poverty for their own ends. He tapped into the growing public distaste for McCarthyism, while turning it inside-out into a parable about the struggle of the common man against the brutality of power as represented by the aristocratic Cherry. So intent was Faubus at speaking into the radio microphone, that he did not regard his live audience until well into his speech. When he did, he was startled to discover that they had drawn in almost intimately close and that all the women on the first rows were crying.
Faubus won by only 6,585 votes, most of them probably the residents of cemeteries in the districts of the political chieftains Cherry had offended. The Madison County results put their favorite son over the top by the resounding margin of 2,994 to 50, a total representing 104% of the registered voters. This constituted, as Faubus biographer Roy Reed would phrase it, "a display of civic zeal that was never fully explained."
Faubus could also credit his extraordinary political abilities. Not since Jeff Davis had Arkansas witnessed a campaigner of his skill. He had a gift for gab and a flair for homespun homily. His enormously expressive eyes could latch onto a person like the barbs of a harpoon, but appeared as loyal, earnest, and affectionate as those of the family dog. Faubus was also an inordinately gifted listener, capable of making everyone who spoke to him believe that, at least for that moment, he regarded them as the most important person on the planet. As McMath's aide he honed that skill as the governor's go-between with countless important local politicos from around the state. Faubus knew who all the players were and what issues motivated them, and in matters of politics he possessed a near photographic memory.
Next: The Issue of Race
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