Ned Touchstone - An Unusual Publisher

An Unusual Publisher

Touchstone was a professional researcher and writer and owned and operated the largest retail book store in Shreveport. He was an avid reader and was known for his extensive vocabulary and for remembering and quoting large portions of published books and poetry. For eight years, he published in his print shop in Bossier City numerous weekly newspapers in Louisiana and Texas, including the Bossier Press and the Waskom Gazette in Waskom in east Texas. Before owning and operating his newspapers, he worked on Capitol Hill as an administrative assistant for five years for Democratic U.S. Representative Overton Brooks. Touchstone researched and authored the bill to construct the Veteran's Hospital in Shreveport. An incident occurred during his years as a legislative aide when Touchstone encountered several Puerto Rican nationalists who were running down the steps of the Capitol. This small group of armed radicals had attacked several congressmen and wounded two in the arm. The radicals were fleeing when they encountered Touchstone, who was at the time entering the building with three other clerks. Touchstone, who was unarmed, ran up to the first armed man, knocked him to the ground, and took his weapon.

Another legislative aide on Brooks' staff was Billy McCormack, later the pastor of the University Worship Center in Shreveport and a founding director and vice president of the Christian Coalition of America.

In 1962, he became the editor of The Councilor, a publication of the White Citizens' Council of America, of which his mail list included a worldwide readership of over 106,000. The Citizens Council was formed in the middle 1950s to oppose the civil rights movement in the South. The White Citizens' Council's membership was composed of a growing group of conservative white southerners who sought to exert financial pressures on civil rights supporters. The greater part of the members were medium to lower-income whites who were staunch supporters of what was called "the southern way of life." The Citizens' Council grew in numbers until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a frequent target of Touchstone's editorials.

Touchstone's newsletter, The Councilor was hostile toward liberals in both major parties, and particularly the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Often Touchstone employed editorial ridicule and vociferous personal attacks against those whom he politically opposed. However, Touchstone was an expert researcher of truth and facts and never lost a legal challenge regarding any of his articles. Touchstone was often host to citizens from all over the United States and even various British dignitaries, who were faithful followers of his revelations and the news behind the scenes.

Touchstone was known for his dry humor and play upon words as well as his political cartoons. He once printed a "Letter to the Editor" in The Councilor in which an African American man from the North derided young blacks in Sebring, Florida, where the city had set aside a beachfront for black recreation, but the site was constantly littered, "filthy," in the words of the letter writer, and therefore unusable. There were before and after photos to support this claim, but liberal readers found it offensive.