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
Famous quotes containing the words running for, running and/or education:
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“Whatever may be our just grievances in the southern states, it is fitting that we acknowledge that, considering their poverty and past relationship to the Negro race, they have done remarkably well for the cause of education among us. That the whole South should commit itself to the principle that the colored people have a right to be educated is an immense acquisition to the cause of popular education.”
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