Charlotte Tillar Schexnayder is one of my favorite people. Still mentally alert at 96, Charlotte was recently inducted into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame. Along with her late husband, Melvin, Charlotte was editor and publisher of the Dumas Clarion, one of the finest weekly newspapers in Arkansas.
I first heard of the Schexnayders and their feisty little paper when I was in high school in the 1960s. Frequently the Arkansas Gazette reprinted an editorial from the Clarion in its Sunday editorial pages--and though I was a kid at the time, I thought the clearly but forcefully written editorials were superb. I was awed by the editorials and the female editor with the unusual name who wrote them. I am still in awe of Charlotte Schexnayder.
Charlotte was born on Christmas day in 1923, the daughter of Jewell and Bertha Terry Tillar. Her paternal grandparents, Dr. Stephen O. Tillar and Fannie Harrell Tillar, were founders of the town of Tillar.
Dr. Tillar, who had served in the Confederate artillery during the Civil War, relocated his family from Drew County to Desha County when the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad laid tracks through the county in the early 1870s. Tillar built a large plantation, and a town named for him grew up near the farm.
Charlotte's maternal ancestors included Edwin Bancroft, a Massachusetts native who was an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, Bancroft and his wife moved from Virginia to DeValls Bluff, in Prairie County, where he established a liberal Republican newspaper, the White River Journal. "Thus I always felt," Charlotte wrote in her autobiography, "I had ink in the bloodlines." However, she stressed, "I did not follow his example of staunch Republicanism."
Charlotte recalled in her autobiography, Salty Old Editor: An Adventure in Ink (Butler Books, 2012), that her early years were happy ones. "Tillar (population 267) offered an extended family," she remembered. One of her clear childhood memories pertained to the Tillar telephone exchange: "We had wall-mounted phones and our number was 18. I could go to the phone and say, 'Mrs. Hayes, will you get me Miss Caroline's house?' Her answer might be, 'Honey, she's out in her garden right now,' or 'She's not at home. I heard her say she was going to McGehee.'"
The arrival of the Great Depression when Charlotte was a child brought great challenges to the Tillar family. In 1931, Charlotte's father died of pneumonia, her grandfather died, and the family plantation was lost to creditors. Her mother provided for the family by teaching English in the public schools, serving as the school librarian, and offering music lessons.
Charlotte discovered journalism when her seventh-grade English teacher recommended that she do a newspaper project. "I obtained a sheet of white butcher paper large enough to make a tabloid-size four-page paper. Using a daily newspaper as a pattern, I ruled off the columns, and writing longhand focused on local stories." Years later Charlotte recalled: "In that project, I was forever marked."
Following high school graduation, Charlotte attended Arkansas A&M College for two years before transferring to Louisiana State University to study journalism.
Charlotte graduated from LSU in 1944, and two years later she married Melvin J. Schexnayder, who had also studied at LSU before joining the Army. "I had previously wondered how to pronounce Schexnayder, but I was to pronounce and spell it for others for my lifetime!"
For a while the newlyweds worked at the McGehee Semi-Weekly Times, but in March 1954, with the help of a few investors Charlotte and Melvin purchased the Dumas Clarion. From the start, Charlotte was in charge of the editorial page. Her editorials could be hard-hitting, such as when she condemned Gov. Orval Faubus for instigating the 1957 integration crisis.
Both of the Schexnayders were high-energy, active people. In addition to parenting three children, the couple was involved in many professional journalism and newspaper organizations. Melvin was elected president of the Arkansas Press Association in 1962.
Charlotte became president of the Arkansas Press Women in 1955. She was the first woman elected to membership in the Little Rock chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, becoming chapter president in 1973.
Four years later she was elected president of the National Federation of Press Women. Nineteen years after Melvin's service as president of the Arkansas Press Association, Charlotte became the first female president of the group in 1981. She became the first female president of the National Newspaper Association in 1991, having previously served as its treasurer.
All of these responsibilities resulted in an incredibly busy schedule. In one week during her tenure as president of the National Federation of Press Women, Charlotte traveled 7,000 miles.
Having grown up in a family of politically active Democrats, it was only natural that Charlotte would be interested in politics. Gov. Dale Bumpers appointed her to the Commission on the Status of Women, and Gov. David Pryor named her to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, believed to be the first woman to serve in that post.
In 1984 Charlotte ran unopposed for the State House of Representatives. During her seven terms in the Legislature, she was a strong voice for reform. She also took care of her district. During the 1989 legislative session Charlotte fought toe to toe against a powerful local state senator to defeat a plan to dump garbage from eastern cities into a Desha County landfill.
A strong supporter of education, Charlotte was also a reliable advocate for public libraries. Perhaps she most deserves recognition for her efforts to establish a state ethics commission.
It was a sad day in April 1998 when the Schexnayders sold the Clarion. In her autobiography, Charlotte wrote that she wept for weeks after selling the paper. However, in looking back over her 52 years as editor of the Clarion, the then 75-year-old summarized what kept her going all those years:
"Offering our community a vision; stimulating public thought; listening to those with little hope and the mighty with agendas; question why people of good will can't change age-old hatreds; offer consolation when needed; and find fun and challenge in every day."
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 09/29/2019