Running For Superintendent of Education
In 1967, Touchstone ran as a Democrat for Louisiana state superintendent of education. He claimed that he would use administrative measures to thwart the continuing process of school desegregation in Louisiana, completed in August 1970. He was badly defeated by incumbent William J. "Bill" Dodd, a long-time Louisiana politician. Incidentally, Touchstone was born in Sabine Parish, and Dodd, who was seventeen years Touchstone's senior, was reared in Sabine Parish.
Ned Touchstone was in Cuba on New Years Day 1959, when the communist Fidel Castro overthrew the government there with his rebel army. Touchstone was ordered to stay in his American-owned hotel, but he instead chose to leave under the cover of night and walk through the bullet-ridden, fire- burning city of Havana so that he could gather facts for the first news story telephoned from the island to the United States. He spoke with several national news networks and made history while risking his life to get the truth of the communist conquest of Cuba to the American people.
Touchstone critics tried unsuccessfully to nullify his achievements by claiming, falsely, that the journalist was affiliated with the radical Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Read more about this topic: Ned Touchstone
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“In my state, on the basis of the separate but equal doctrine, we have made enormous strides over the years in the education of both races. Personally, I think it would have been sounder judgment to allow that progress to continue through the process of natural evolution. However, there is no point crying about spilt milk.”
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