Newspapers: Spoofing the Despots

One sweltering summer day in 1959, a pedestrian waited impatiently to cross a street in downtown Richmond, Va., while a car blocked the intersection. The driver, busily chatting with a friend out the window, would not move on. His patience exhausted, the pedestrian finally bolted across the hood of the auto. Unfortunately for him, the driver turned out to be an off-duty policeman who promptly haled him to court, where he was charged with malicious mischief and fined $25.

James Jackson Kilpatrick, the fiercely individualistic editor of the Richmond News Leader, got...

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