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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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pro-Eisenhower pieces that we had-and I must say that we really had very few after that-would not have been written by me. In other words, there was no question at all that if I didn't want to support Eisenhower, I certainly wasn't under any compulsion to, as a member of the editorial board.

2However, when the editorial announcing the Times' support for Eisenhower (vs. Stevenson) was decided upon (by publisher and editor), I was asked by Merz (the editor) if I cared to write the pro-Stevenson part of the editorial, explaining what a great person Stevenson was, and I readily complied. Thus the editorial had a pro-Stevenson element.

if I had been editor at the time, and had felt this way, we really would have been in a pickle. I really would have been, because I would have had to take a leave of absence if I could not have been able to persuade the management, namely, the publisher, that we should switch from Ike to Adlai. I would have hoped that I would have been able to persuade him, but that was something I didn't have to face because I wasn't in charge of the page. Although I did try to persuade him, but I didn't succeed.

Q:

Another question comes to my mind as far as the paper's own interest in things, such as this lawsuit you had with these people in the south. What sort of a relationship is there between the paper's own direct interest, editorials written, news coverage, etc.?

Oakes:

We, of course, have had a-what this suit was all about was the integration question, which an ad [ran] attacking the segregationist policies of the city government of Montgomery. Then the other suit involved basically the same thing in respect to Birmingham, although the circumstances were different. The Times' editorial policy, during the suit and after the suit, has been exactly the same. It has been against the segregationists' policies, and in favor of integration.

Q:

Actually, I meant the coverage of the suit itself, and the editorial on the-





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