1 Gazette Project Interview with Ernest Dumas, Little Rock

Gazette Project Interview with Ernest Dumas, Little Rock, Arkansas October 24, 2000 Interviewer: Roy Reed Roy Reed: This is Ernie Dumas and Roy Reed, October 24th. And we were just talking about Bob Lancaster and the Gannett people. Start over, Ernie. Ernest Dumas: Well, this was the last leg of the Gannett regime, and there was an editor from Florida who came up, Keith Moyer, who had been, as I recall, the editor at Fort Myer, Florida, which was another Gannett paper. Generally, he kind of left the paper alone, but he had this idea, he wanted some features about people, profiles of ordinary people. And so he told Bob Lancaster, who was kind of a feature writer on the state desk, to pass the word along, go out and find just a down-to-earth, ordinary old guy, or people, to write about and write some features. So Bob struck out and went down to south Arkansas and he found this guy named Ora Golden. O-R-A, G-O-L-D-E-N. And Ora was living in his car, in a car, and I think the car was not running, but that was where he was living. So we interviewed this guy, and it was a long interview. And this guy tells all these tales. I mean, everything in the world has happened to this guy. He just had one stroke of bad luck after another, year 1 after year after year after year. Just incredible things happened to him. Now, sooner or later, you began to disbelieve most of this stuff. This guy’s just got such horror stories to tell about himself. I mean, he’s just been impaled on spikes and bitten by rattlesnakes and shot at and fallen off a bridge. Everything has happened to him. And he’s been through a couple of wives and all kinds of things. And then he’s obviously kind of crazy as well. Well, Bob relates all this stuff kind of matter-of-factly. It was a long, funny piece. It’s just hilarious. You find yourself laughing at all this guy’s hardships. So Bob wrote this thing, and it was a huge piece that ran in the Gazette. And a lot of people just thought, “What in the world is the Gazette doing running this huge piece about this no-account bum?” And then one day, Bob got this call. A couple of days later. And it was from the current husband of Ora Golden’s ex-wife. And he calls up — and this was a pretty rough character himself — and he’s going to “whip Bob Lancaster’s ass.” In fact, he just may “goddamn it kill him” because he’s written about all this stuff that this lying Ora Golden’s done. He’s just a terrible, good-for-nothing liar. And he’s going to come whip his ass. So Bob tries to diffuse it, and said, “Well, why don’t you get her to tell her side of the story?” And so they finally had some meeting, and Bob is kind of, he’s pretty scared that this guy’s 2 going to come shoot him or whip him or something. But he called me and said, “Look, if we get a letter to the editor from this person, will we run it?” And I was in charge of the letters, and I said, “Okay, if it’s going to save your life, we’ll run this letter. We don’t care about having you shot to death here.” So she wrote this letter, and the letter is as good as his stuff. I mean, she starts telling terrible things about Ora Golden and then the terrible things that had happened to her. And even worse things had happened to her. I mean, it’s a medical miracle either one of them was alive. [Laughter] And so it’s a bitter, nasty letter, but I kind of edited it up a little bit and pretty much ran it as is. Here it is. Here’s the letter to the editor from Pauline Davis from Kingsland and Bob’s original piece about Ora Golden. It’s a typical Bob Lancaster kind of piece, just kind of straight forward and wonderful reporting. RR: The kind of thing that would happen to Lancaster, as I remember. Didn’t he once take his golf clubs and lay them across the railroad track? He was so mad at his golf game. Did you ever hear that story? ED: Well, I’ve heard something about that, yes. I’m not sure just what happened. RR: He got so disgusted he took his clubs, left them on the track, so it was said. I don’t know if it really happened or not. ED: I don’t know whether I’ve ever related this story about Bob Lancaster. When I knew Bob first, — he grew up someplace in south Arkansas and, I think, maybe 3 he had worked at Crossett. I’m not certain. But he wound up at the Pine Bluff Commercial when he was, I don’t know, nineteen or twenty years old. And he’d married his high school sweetheart from Sheridan. He was from Sheridan, that’s right. Bob Lancaster was from Sheridan. And he had married his high school sweetheart, and they’d had one child. And Bob, I think, had gone down to Southern, at that time it was Southern State College and now Southern Arkansas University. And I think, he’d, maybe, been down there a year or two or something, and he had gotten a job. Anyway, he wound up at the Pine Bluff Commercial. And this would have been in 1965. The legislature was in session, and they sent Bob up to cover the legislature for the Pine Bluff Commercial. And this was Faubus’s last term, and it was the last day of the legislature. And, as you recall, Roy, on the last day, you have a lot of ceremony in the House and Senate, and the Governor comes over and makes a little speech to the House and goes over and makes a little speech to the Senate and tells them, “It’s been a historic session and you’ve done all these wonderful things for the people of Arkansas who owe you a great debt.” And sometimes they’ll have a little ceremony. Well, this day they had this thing, and they had the choir from Arkansas A&M College up. And I think they were singing in the rotunda of the Capitol — now I may have the facts on this a little bit off, but this is my memory of it — the choir was singing in the rotunda, and that day the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, this kind of Southern-based civil rights organization, kind of the radical wing of the civil rights movement, called “Snick,” S-N-C-C, commonly 4 known as “Snick.” And it was directed in Arkansas by a guy named Bill Hansen. H-A-N-S-E-N. And on that day they were coming up. They had already announced they were coming up to protest the conversion of the Capitol cafeteria into a private club. In order to prevent integration of the little cafeteria in the basement of the Capitol, Faubus and Kelly Bryant, or whoever the Secretary of State was, said to make it a private club. And the president of the private club was Clarence Thornbrough, T-H-O-R-N-B-R-O-U-G-H, who was executive secretary to Governor Faubus and he was president of this private club in the basement of the Capitol. So SNCC — and there were about ten or twelve of them coming up — and they were going to integrate the Capitol cafeteria, the private club. So all the ceremonies were going on upstairs. The choir was singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as I recall as we headed down to the elevator to get down to the basement because the word was the SNCC people were coming up 7th Street and they were crossing the Capitol grounds and coming up the steps. So we headed off down there. Of course, they had alerted the state police, and there were a whole bunch of burly state troopers coming down the hallways. They were filling up the basement of the Capitol. Remember the basement had these little tiny, narrow hallways, only about five feet wide, barely enough room for two or three people to pass. And the Capitol cafeteria was a terrible place. Rotten food. You remember. RR: [Laughs] Yes. ED: And it didn’t get any better when it became a private club. But we headed down 5 there, and so the SNCC people came in and got to the door and whoever met them at the door of the cafeteria — I don’t know whether it was a state trooper or Clarence Thornbrough or whoever it was — and they said, “We came here to eat.” And they said, “Well, this is a private club. You’re not members, so you cannot eat here.” And they said, “Well, we’re members of the public. This is a public facility, and you can’t have a private club in the state capitol. It’s ridiculous.” And they tried to make their way around and get into the cafeteria. And first thing you knew, the state police were swinging their billy clubs, and they were knocking all these kids down, right and left, and grabbing them and dragging them up the stairs.

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