Local Treasures: Jackson Baker

The journalist has chronicled politics and news in the Mid-South for more than six decades.

by

“So what exactly is a ‘Local Treasure’? An old person?” 

The man asking the question is Jackson Baker, who has asked a lot of questions in his long life as a reporter, teacher, and writer.

Baker is quickly assured that age is merely one of the qualities of those profiled in Memphis Magazine’s Local Treasures series.

The contributions they’ve made to Memphis are the deciding factor, and Baker certainly has the bona fides, having played a central role in the city’s politics and journalism for several decades. He’s perhaps best known locally for his unstinting coverage of politics — local, state, and national — for the Memphis Flyer since its inception in 1989, but the earlier years of Baker’s career also make for a fascinating and compelling story, the kind of dramatic narrative that Baker himself has written so well countless times. Let’s start at the beginning.

“Hi, I’m Elvis Presley.”

Baker grew up in the Bethel Grove area of Memphis, on Lamar Avenue near Airways. “It was a lower-middle-class neighborhood,” he says. “My dad was a traveling salesman and my mother was a homemaker. Dad also owned Baker’s Shoes for the Family for a while. We lived very modestly.

“Then one day [in 1955], a Cadillac showed up in the front yard next door, and it didn’t take us long to figure out that Elvis Presley had moved in, with his parents,” he says. “He’d just hit locally with Sun Records and hadn’t become a national sensation yet, but he was famous enough that my sister had trouble keeping her girlfriends from coming over all the time.”

Baker was five years younger than Elvis and remembers how they met. “We had a bathroom in the hallway of our house,” he says, “and just down the hall was a little cubby with a phone. I came out of the bathroom one day and there was this dude talking on our phone. He put down the receiver, stuck out his hand, and said, ‘Hi, I’m Elvis Presley.’ As if I didn’t know. I remember thinking, ‘Man, that’s a good-looking guy.’”

The Presleys rented the house next door to the Bakers for six months — and never had a phone — until Elvis signed with RCA Victor Records and moved on to a more luxe neighborhood and into the national consciousness. But he left a lasting impression on the young Baker. “He was one of the most photographed characters in human history,” he says, “but no picture did him justice. He was gorgeous, one of those people who, immediately on sight, you realize, ‘This is a spectacle.’ The whole thing made me rather notorious in high school as ‘the guy who lives next to Elvis.’” 

“Put his ass in jail.”

After graduating from Central High School in 1957, Baker went off to Vanderbilt on a partial scholarship. It was not a good fit for a young boy of modest means from Memphis.

“It didn’t take me long,” Baker says, “to realize there was some pretty fast company up there, economically. As a freshman in the late ’50s, you encountered right away a rigid class system. Greek-letter organizations were the determinants of your place in the social scheme of things. Before you had a chance to define yourself, you were thrown into the maelstrom of fraternity rush and assigned to this or that group more or less on the basis of your pre-existent social profile.

“And the worst thing about it was that once you were sorted out that way, you couldn’t rise out of your circumstances in later years. Your place in the class system was fixed. So, I scaled down and spent two quarters at the University of Tennessee. Then finally, in the fall of 1960, I enrolled at the University of Memphis and graduated in 1964 with a degree in English.” 

The Vietnam war was beginning to rage on the other side of the globe, and Baker decided to preempt the draft by joining the Air National Guard. It proved to be a life-altering, and perhaps life-saving, decision. During a physical, it was discovered that Baker had a bone tumor in his back.

“I’d had the lump for years, and just considered it a nuisance,” he says. “It wasn’t malignant, but they removed it and gave me a medical discharge, and that got me out of Vietnam.” 

Freed from military obligations, Baker landed his first journalism job, joining the Millington Star as a reporter in late 1964, where he worked until early 1966, when he got a tip that the Blytheville Courier-News was looking for a reporter. That job proved to be a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

“The Courier-News had a great editor, Hank Haines, who always had my best interests at heart, and who let me pretty much have free rein, so I wrote a lot about politics,” Baker says. “Then in 1967, Hank told me I should check in with the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, who he’d heard might be interested in my services. I took Hank’s advice, and sure enough, they knew about me and they hired me, and I ended up covering civil rights, the war on poverty, race relations, and politics. It was a hotbed time and place for all that.” 

And things were about to get hotter. In March 1967, Baker got a tip that bribes were being passed in the Arkansas legislature in support of a bill to legalize gambling in Hot Springs. Lawmakers were getting $1,000 each to back the bill.

“The legislator who told me about it authorized me to use his name,” Baker recalls, “and I thought, ‘I’ve got a hell of a story here.’ I checked with a couple other legislators and one of them said, ‘Yeah, that’s true, but don’t use my name.’

“I wrote the story, and Michael B. Smith, a reporter for the Pine Bluff Commercial, wrote a parallel story,” he says. “They called a grand jury in Little Rock and subpoenaed both of us to testify.”

When questioned about how he got the story, Baker named the legislator whom he’d identified in the story. Then he was asked if there was anyone else who’d told him that bribes were being passed.

“I said, yes, but I’m obliged not to use their name because they’d given me the information on a pledge of confidentiality,” Baker says. “I tried to enumerate the principle, but it was a principle the judge didn’t recognize, and his final words [about] me in that grand jury session were, ‘Put his ass in jail.’

Smith, the Pine Bluff reporter, stuck to his principles, too — so both he and Baker were jailed on contempt of court charges.

“We were in there for two days, in a cell with a murderer,” Baker says, “then on the third day we got released, mainly because the story was getting all kinds of publicity. I got my picture on the cover of my own newspaper, and there was enough heat that finally the guy we were protecting revealed his identity. A couple days later we got picked up and thrown in the felony tank again and were there for another couple days before we were able to officially clear ourselves.”

“I kind of got into a difficult period.”

Quite an auspicious start for a journalism career. But Baker was just warming up. Later that year, he married Carol Orr Snowden of Memphis, whom he’d met while working at the Millington Star and who would become the mother of his two sons, Marcus and Justin.

Baker left journalism at that juncture and decided to try his own hand at politics. He began by working for the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Frank Whitbeck. After his candidate lost, Baker ventured back into academia, this time at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where the 1960s counter-culture was in full flower. 

“It was 1968, and I was newly married,” he recalls. “And the campus was a hub of dope and free love, but somehow I managed to get two master’s degrees — one in English and an MFA from the writing program. Then, in the fall of 1972, I got a job teaching creative writing and English at the University of Memphis.

“As the Memphis Flyer’s editor for 21 years, I believe I can legitimately claim to have edited more words written by Jackson Baker than anybody on the planet. And they are always good words, and always good sentences, often built layer upon layer like the work of a good novelist. I’m proud to have been a part of the lasting contribution Jackson has made — and continues to make — to this community.”

— Bruce VanWyngarden

“Things were going pretty well and I got promoted to assistant professor, and then I kind of got into a dificult period,” he continues. “In the spring of 1974, my wife took my son Marcus to the doctor. He was having trouble with his vision, but the problem wasn’t with his vision. He had a brain tumor. They told us that he had about six months to live, at best.

“All I did for the next six months was research every possible way I could to find out what a cure might be for this condition. I read medical texts and such published research as I could find. I went to San Francisco to consult a hot-shot specialist; took Marcus to the Mayo Clinic. All to limited or no avail. It was my life. My entire system was revved up to max at all times, looking for The Cure, even as we settled into the ugly business of seeing Marcus undergo massive radiation, whole-brain and spinal.

“I was smoking lots of marijuana, opening up the senses wide. And suddenly, I began to see connections in things and to have some psychic experiences. I was all of a sudden into the fourth dimension in full force, though still holding forth in the normal three-dimensional world. And simultaneously all traces of Marcus’ tumor disappeared. It seemed (and was) a miracle. To state it baldly, you can stamp me a believer. I do not doubt I touched the hand of God.”

“Jack is not a man of a few words; he is a man of many words, and he likes using them and chooses them carefully. I think people in politics like him and respect him for giving them time and a fair shake. One of his many memorable quotes was about President Bill Clinton: ‘He gives you 15 seconds but it’s a good 15 seconds.’” — John Branston, former Flyer columnist and reporter

Baker’s ventures into the psychic realm (and his dope smoking) inadvertently led him to the Menninger Foundation, a national leader in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and mental health that is known for its innovative and open approaches. In the 1960s, for example, the clinic studied Swami Rama, a noted yogi, for his ability to exercise voluntary control of bodily processes (such as heartbeat) normally considered non-voluntary. It was part of a Menninger research program into creativity and the paranormal, and it was right in Baker’s wheelhouse at the time.

“My parents were living in Kansas, and on a trip up there to see them for Christmas in 1975, we went to a Christmas party,” Baker recalls. “I was looking around the party to score some dope, and I saw a guy who was bearded and sort of hippie-looking and I approached him. He turned out to be a psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation. I went to his house that night and we smoked and talked, and I was invited to the Menninger Foundation’s annual consciousness seminar, which was held in the spring. I ended up going to it for years, because that’s who I was back then. I was a teacher and writer, but I was also beginning to see myself as a prophet — to show you how crazy I was — or how opened-up I was, depending on your viewpoint.

“At any rate, I was opened-up enough to get wholly into that life and was accepted as a member of the fraternity of people who did that sort of thing. One person I met with was Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. (Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, studied near-death experiences, theorized the model of the five stages of grief, and wrote the well-known book, On Death and Dying.)

“Buckminster Fuller was also there,” Baker adds. “Those were the kind of people I associated with for a few years, but finally, that stopped happening, because it gets to the point where you either do that sort of thing and it takes you somewhere or you crash.”

Baker crashed. “By 1979, I’d screwed up my tenure at the University of Memphis. I’d really thought I was a prophet. I exceeded limits, and I’ve never been very good at practicing politics. I trespassed against the usual protocols of academic behavior, took chances, and stepped on toes. Even as I was still growing and reaching, I forgot to render to Caesar, recklessly ignored restraints, and played myself out of an academic tenure that should have been a sure thing.”

“Best Cover Story of 1989”

After getting divorced in 1981, Baker knocked around for a while, then in 1982, got invited to work for a candidate for Congress from Arkansas named Charles George. George was a long-shot, low in the polls, but he finished a close second and Baker was given much of the credit, somewhat belying his belief that he wasn’t good at politics.

On the strength of his work for George, he was then hired by Arkansas Congressman Bill Alexander. “I worked for him for two or three years,” Baker says. “I’d gone from being nowhere to being someone with a reputation for being able to run a political campaign.”

“I’ve been looking for the right word to describe Jackson and landed on ‘unconstrained.’ No limitations or guardrails. Apart from politics, he can talk about anything: history, literature, music, sports, film, pop culture, etc. He thinks bigger. Feels more. And he never stops learning, experiencing, and evolving. If he wants something, he’ll lock in and figure out 1,000 ways to get it, whether it’s a story nobody else can get or a Volcano Taco from Taco Bell. If he wants to go somewhere he’ll eventually get there. Maybe it was the day after Linda’s funeral — but I think it may have been the same evening — he called and asked if I’d be up for covering the 2016 political conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia. I wasn’t surprised. He’d occasionally compared himself to iron horse journalists like Mike Wallace or, in more self-effacing moments, to Arthur Miller’s salesman, Willy Loman. Of course he’d want to work through this moment too. It’s just how he’s built.” — Chris Davis, former Flyer writer/reporter who reported on numerous political conventions with Baker

After his stint with Alexander, Baker returned to Memphis — and to looking for his way forward. He met his second wife, Linda Young Balentine, who he would marry in 1989 and with whom he fathered daughters Rose and Julia. He sold shoes at Thalhimers Department Store in the Mall of Memphis for a while, and began stringing for various publications, including Time magazine. In 1988, he decided to pay his own way to both national political conventions: the GOP’s in New Orleans and the Democrats’ in Atlanta. When he got back, he wrote a story about his trips and sold it to Memphis Magazine.

“It was the first thing I did for [then-publisher] Ken Neill and Memphis Magazine,” Baker says. “Then, Ken got in touch with me when the Flyer was getting started in 1989 and asked me to pitch a story. The first article I did for the Flyer was on Christian conservative [and founder of the Moral Majority] Ed McAteer. I remember they had a big ceremony to celebrate the Flyer’s first year and Ken gave me a framed award, ‘Best Cover Story of 1989.’ I still have it. I think it was the first and only ‘best cover story of the year’ award that he ever gave.”

Baker wrote two more profiles in the Flyer’s inaugural year — on wrestler Jerry Lawler and local Democratic Party kingmaker Bill Farris. On the strength of those stories, then-Flyer advertising director Jerry Swift urged Neill in the spring of 1990 to hire Baker to do a weekly politics column, the thinking being that in order to draw mainstream advertisers, the Flyer needed to get away from its image as a paper known mostly for its racy personal classifieds and full-page topless club ads. Neill took Swift’s advice, and upped the ante by also hiring respected daily newspaper journalist John Branston to cover city government and do a weekly news column. Suddenly the Flyer had some gravitas.

“Two weeks after I started writing a column for the Flyer, I had a case of writer’s block. I needed help, so I sought out Jackson and asked him what the secret to his longevity was. He rattled off the answer right away: ‘You have to write, factually, succinctly, and always have a point of view. That’s what readers want to read, no matter the subject.’ I walked away, saying to myself, ‘So that’s why Jackson Baker is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Memphis journalists!’”— Les Smith, former reporter for Fox13 and Flyer columnist

Baker was soon showing up at every political event in town, making connections and gaining respect for his work, which was always scrupulously balanced. “I went everywhere and that’s how I got established as a political writer in this town, and to at least some extent how the Flyer got established as a serious newspaper,” Baker says. “And Branston was such a pro, and a hell of a journalist. I think both of us really helped put the Flyer on the map.”

Baker was — and is — indefatigable. At one point he was simultaneously politics editor and political columnist for the Flyer, contributing editor for Memphis Magazine, contributing editor of the Tennessee Journal, commentator/contributing editor at WREG-TV, and the local stringer for Time magazine. And he hasn’t missed a national political convention since the first two he attended and wrote about back in 1988.

Baker is broadly respected for his fair-minded reporting. He has won innumerable writing and reporting awards through the years, and is, at 85, still working his beat despite getting three four-hour dialysis treatments every week. He is a singular and remarkable human being and Memphis is lucky to have him. You might even say he’s a local treasure.