Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at The Wall Street Journal

CHAPTER 13Managing Editor

AS SUMMER TURNED INTO FALL in 1957, two stunning, transformational events, a world away from each other, suddenly transfixed the country. In Little Rock, Arkansas, in early September, Governor Orval Faubus, defying a federal court order, called out the National Guard to prevent black children from entering all-white Central High School; in response, President Dwight Eisenhower sent army infantry to clear the way and enforce the court’s school desegregation decree. A few weeks later, on October 4, the beep-beep-beep of a radio transmission from an orbiting satellite high above the earth jolted the world with another stunning surprise: Russia had beaten the United States into space with its successful launch of Sputnik ...