“Solid – Satchmo Louis Armstrong”: Grand Forks Herald Coverage of Louis Armstrong and Little Rock

On this date in 1957, Louis Armstrong put his career on the line to speak out against racial injustice occurring in Little Rock, Arkansas, venting to young reporter Larry Lubenow, “The way they’re treating my people in the south, the government can go to hell.” Armstrong’s comments were made in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the birthplace of Federal Judge Ronald Davies, who ordered integration of Little Rock’s schools. This became the defining Civil Rights stance of Armstrong’s lifetime and is the centerpiece of a popular post we published back in 2020.

Lubenow’s editors at the Grand Forks Herald were shocked when they read Armstrong’s comments in the first draft of the story and asked that Lubenow get Armstrong to sign off on the article before they printed it. In one of the most famous parts of the story (first reported by David Margolick in 2007), Lubenow presented the story to Armstrong in his hotel room while the trumpeter was shaving. Armstrong read it, approved it, and wrote “Solid” on the bottom of it, before posing for a photograph, his face still lathered with shaving cream. I have been asked multiple times over the years about where this copy of the story ended up, and I always assumed it was tossed at some point.

Imagine my surprise when, earlier this month, the Grand Forks Herald published an excellent summary of the Louis-Little Rock incident by Sav Kelly–with a photo of the “Solid” approved copy of Lubenow’s story!

That’s when it dawned on me that the Grand Forks Herald was recently digitized and made available on Newspapers.com. Again, Kelly’s September 2 piece (with quotes from Lubenow’s daughter) is highly recommended, but a deeper dive on Newspapers.com provided even more stories–particularly letters to the editor–that are worth sharing here. Thus, this will not be the entire saga of Armstrong and Little Rock repeated again (again, David Margolick’s Elizabeth and Hazel is highly recommended), but instead will just focus on coverage originally printed in the Grand Forks Herald.

Armstrong in Grand Forks to do a one-nighter with his All Stars, something the paper began advertising several days in advance; here’s an ad from September 10:

The day before the concert, the paper used one of Louis’s publicity photos to spread the word:

Then came September 17–and Lubenow’s interview with Armstrong in his hotel room. Here’s how it appeared on the front page of the Grand Forks Herald on September 18, 1957:

Once Lubenow’s story it the wire services, it was front page news around the world on September 19, though they always omitted Lubenow’s name; credit goes to David Margolick for discovering his identity before the 50th anniversary in 2007 (you can listen to Lubenow tell the story in his own words in this NPR interview). The Grand Forks Herald knew they had the scoop and made it the focus of their front page on September 19, even including photograph Ed West’s image of Armstrong shaving:

Since it’s a bit on the small side, here’s the text:

Satchmo Remarks Big News
Remarks made by Louis Armstrong, the trumpet – playing “ambassador of jazz,” to a Herald reporter Tuesday night reverberated across the nation’s front pages and airwaves today. Armstrong scored President Eisenhower and Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus for handling of the Little Rock integration squabble and said he has given up plans for a government-sponsored trip behind the Iron Curtain.
See Red Propaganda
The news story resulting from Armstrong’s hot words scarcely had cleared the Associated Press wires before newsmen in other areas started calling the Herald to find out how they could reach Armstrong, himself. He was en route to Montevideo, Minn., where he was scheduled to play a concert Wednesday night. In Washington, the State Department had no comment. But officials said Soviet propagandists undoubtedly, words would seize because upon the Reds already have been pounding away at integration” troubles as indicative •f American intolerance toward Negroes.
White House Mum
One spokesman, noting Armstrong’s remark he might visit Russia on his own, said the Russians probably would be quick to extend him an invitation for such a trip as a propaganda measure.
A tour under government sponsorship had been discussed for some time and State Department officials earlier had expressed themselves as delighted over Armstrong’s promise to “fracture them cats” behind the Iron Curtain. From the vacation White House at Newport, R.I., James C. Hagerty, presidential press secretary, declined comment. 
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And here’s that photo one more time:

By September 22, the Grand Forks Herald decided to publish a more detailed version of how it all went down, though written by Editor and Publisher M. P. Oppegard and not Lubenow:

Just because it might be difficult to read the old newsprint, here’s a transcription of Oppegard’s column:It Seems to Me”
An internationally famous Negro musician used the columns of the Herald the other day as a national forum for unloosing a bitter blast against all E concerned over the Negro school integration problem.
Here in the home town of Federal Judge Ronald N. Davies, who is presiding at Little Rock in the integration case, Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong pulled out all the stops to give vent to his feelings in the matter.
He found President Eisenhower lacking in intestinal fortitude, called Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas a “plowboy” and “a houn’ for publicity,” and temporarily, at least, brushed off the government’s offer to send him behind the Iron Curtain as a “good will” ambassador.
It isn’t likely that Armstrong’s outburst helped the cause of integration; but here in the friendly north, and with a receptive audience, it was not unnatural for him to feel the “urge” to get his feelings off his chest.
The story, sent out from the Herald office over the wires of The Associated Press, caused quite a stir, and had Armstrong’s managers later trying to get him off the hook with statements that he wasn’t mad at anybody and that he had been “led” into making his rather bitter statement.
TO SUGGEST THAT “THE SATCH” was “led” into making his statement is about like suggesting one “leads” a bull in a rampage through a china shop, although we have no direct knowledge that any such thing has ever occurred.
A Herald reporter sought out Armstrong innocently hoping to get a story relating to the Negro musician’s profession, for Satchmo has a wide and sometimes wild following, and whatever may be an expert’s opinion of his musical ability, it has proved quite remunerative.
The reporter didn’t even have a “leading rope” with him, nor did he have to employ “leading” words to get Satchmo launched on his tirade, giving repeated emphasis to his insistence that the reporter “get that right,” particularly in his criticism of the government and some of the folks at the top.
Telling the government to “go to hell” is rarely a reasoned admonition, for it is a common expression among folks in expressing disgust over people and institutions, without too much thought to the implications involved.
But it was obvious that the feelings in Armstrong’s heart and mind had been simmering long and had come to a full boil, and there was no further place for them to go but “out.”
JUST BY WAY OF ILLUSTRATION OF some of the wariness of the newspaper craft, the rather startling expletives used by Armstrong, which seemed to have added emphasis when they appeared in cold type, caused some concern among those in management who must guard against possible libel actions.
On the rare possibility that Armstrong might suffer a case of remorse, perhaps induced by the thought that this sort of thing might not fatten his boxoffice appeal, and therefore recant his words, precautionary action was taken.
Eighteen hours after his outburst, another Herald reporter and a photographer were dispatched to his hotel room, got a picture of him preparing to shave, and obtained a vehement confirmation of everything he had said to the first reporter.
ON TOP OF THIS, HE WAS SHOWN the telegraph-printer copy of the story the Herald had dispatched over the AP wires, and he gave it his enthusiastic endorsement.
“That’s just fine,” he said, “don’t take nothin’ out of that. That’s what I said and I say it again.”
Invited cautiously to put his endorsement on the story with his signature, the beaming musician, using a lead pencil, scrawled the word “solid” at the bottom of the sheet of copy and affixed beneath it his not too legible signature, “Satchmo Louis Armstrong.”
It developed, through Satchmo’s later enthusiastic iteration and reiteration of what he had said that no such precautions against libel were necessary. But you never can tell. A denial can easily “pull the rug out from under” a most accurate reportorial account, and open the way to libel action.
For if he denied having said the President had no “guts” or the “country can go to hell,” a jury might easily have concluded he, and not the reporter, was telling the truth, and that the account had held Satchmo up to ridicule, contempt, loss of income, and a lot of other things that make libel actions successful.
M. M. OPPEGARD.
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The next day, September 23, the Grand Forks Herald published the visual of Lubenow’s draft of the story, complete with Armstrong’s “Solid” and signature–what an amazing thing to finally see after all these years!

The Herald continued publishing articles on Louis and Little Rock as they hit the wire services, such as this one about a boycott of Armstrong’s music in Hattiesburg, Mississippi:

When Armstrong refused to back down, the Herald published another Associated Press article on September 23, one containing this startling quote I have never seen published anywhere else: “There are people signing my name to things that I didn’t say,” Armstrong said said, “and telling that I’m backing down from what I said. I’ll never back down from the things I said and the things I believe in. I’ve played fine colleges and universities and had the crowd roarin’ and jivin’ and yellin’ for more Louis. Then I leave and go across the river and see a colored man hangin’ in a tree. What kind of jive is that, man?”

And when Armstrong congratulated President Eisenhower for sending in the 101st Airborne Divison to straighten out the situation in Little Rock, the Herald printed an Associated Press article on that, too, on September 25:

But it was also on September 25 when Editor and Publisher Oppegard finally took Armstrong to task in an Editorial:

Oppegard was far from alone in his feelings. In the weeks to come, the Grand Forks Herald continued to publish letters about Armstrong’s comments–each one featuring a negative view on the trumpeter. Social media didn’t exist back then, but Letters to the Editor did, and their tone is sometimes sadly reminisicent of the discourse that plays out on the internet in real time on a daily basis. Some of the statements are upsetting and needless to say, we do not condone them, but instead present them for the historical record. We’re also only including a few visuals because the original layout makes them difficult to read, but we will include all of the text.

First up was a letter published on September 22, written by Willard Johnson:

APOLOGIZES FOR SATCHMO
GRAND FORKS – I am colored man. I am married and two small daughters of grade school age. Both my wife and I attended schools in this city. Our daughters now attend these same schools.
We are not always happy with statements made by people of our race. We are not happy with the statements made Louis Armstrong during his visit to Grand Forks. Further, the majority of colored people throughout the United States will feel the same way about this. Armstrong is simply (and I say this honestly) a very poor musician who has given little thought to the opportunities he has derived from the white people in this country. Actually, very few colored people believe that Armstrong is really as good as his publicity men have led him to believe.
We do not think that the white people are yet ready to accept us on an equal social basis. The vast disagreements in the south about colored children attending public white schools is in itself a national shame continually kept alive by politically amibitous persons from both political parties.
As far as we are concerned here, and many thousands of colored people in the south, we do not care to have our children attend white schools any more the white people want their children to attend colored schools. The colored race is being used as a political “football”, the country over. Less than 30 per cent of colored people in this country actually want an equal social level with white people.
We are happy just the way things are. We live well, work, have the same joys and sorrows as the white people -and the same opportunities. You cannot judge all the colored people by the utterings of a man like Louis Armstrong. We wish to apologize for his statements.
WILLARD JOHNSON
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On September 25, the “Herald Mailbag” published two more hateful letters, both from South Carolina:

CALLING ‘US’ NAMES
SPARTANBURG, S. C–I am citizen of, South Carolina and I read your article, that you had the guts to print a sorry Negro like Satchmo call the President of these United States “two faced” and “gutless.”
I think it shows just how lowdown these Negroes are getting now, to let him get away with calling the President names, and us as well. He made a big mistake when he called us names.
Is the “Great Satchmo” so yellow that he gets hundreds of miles from the South to call us names? I think, for your health you had better never come south of the Mason-Dixon Line, for those remarks you made will only make things worse for you and your race now.
And as for the “colored race” having a country; you have, miles across the sea, why not pack up and go back “home” pal, the apes and headhunters are waiting for all of you; we Southerners have had enough of you.
And I’m sure we all agree, you Negroes go back to your “way of life” and we’ll keep ours, you do that or stay here and keep your big lip shut and let things be, as they will be no better for any of you Negroes if you keep up like you are.
PHILIP THOMAS MABRY

SOUTH CAROLINA VIEW
SUMTER, S. C. After reading an article reprinted from your paper on the remarks of Louis Armstrong, I don’t have any hard feelings towards you for printing it for that is your job. I’m just happy to know that you were man enough to print what was said.
First, his dropping plans for a government sponsored trip to Russia. Nothing will be lost by that but a big expense the taxpayers won’t have to pay. Also, if he will go to Russia his own, maybe they will keep him over there to tell about how his NAACP friends are treating the Negro in the North. He can stay in the North and talk, for most of the Northern Negroes are being brainwashed just like him. But if he came down here with the same kind of talk, some of the good Southern Negroes would take him out on a rail.
I was born and raised here in the South and have worked with the Negro all my life. Some of my best friends are Negroes, but they stay in their place. They have the same chance for getting ahead as I do. They have finer schools than we Southerners do. They have new cars where I, and several others like me, don’t. But most of all they are free to do as they please. They, the Negro, not the halfbreed that has floated south trying to start trouble.
Louis Armstrong can stay in the North and run off at the mouth about things in the South but if he came South you couldn’t get him to say anything because some Negro would shut it for him. Furthermore, anyone who would sign his name to a statement with profane language in it to be printed in a newspaper for young children to read has no respect for the children of this country. How could you expect him to have any respect for the pure Negro race or white race, let alone his kind.
As far as Governor Faubus of Arkansas being an uneducated plowboy it looks to me as that plowboy has the upper hand as of now. You, Louis Armstrong, aren’t pleased because the NAACP can’t tell him what to do. The pure Negro of Africa would not have you, Satchmo, and the North doesn’t want you except to use you as they want so maybe Russia will have you for a while.
Armstrong, if you haven’t gotten enough tips from your friends to make this trip, come South, and maybe some good Negro will give you a one-way ticket to Russia. One more thing, I am one of those uneducated plowboys, but my blood is pure Irish and I don’t intend for it to be mixed with the blood of a Negro.
If you read this, Armstrong, read also the report from the FBI and see if you have the courage to answer. Why don’t you come South and ask the good pure Negro what he thinks of his way of life.
J. M. NESBITT
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Three more letters were published in the September 27 “Mailbag,” two of them anonymously:

NEGROES’ COUNTRY
ORANGE, Texas–Satchmo, concerning your statement that the colored man almost hasn’t got any country, the Southern people think that if the northern Negroes and others keep playing into Communist hands, none of us will have a country very long.
About 25 per cent of the colored people live up North and 75 per cent live in the South and like it South, so please, let the South tend to their own business and the Communists will not have a chance to start a civil war and something else, the Negroes are not tied down South. If they want to go North, there are all kinds of transportation.
Also, if there are any people behind the Iron Curtain that a little trumpet playing will fracture, they are fractured already.
If the government would use the money it spends on sponsored trips to other countries at home here, our own people would be a heck of a lot better off. This is how 95 per cent of the people of the South feel.
The Negroes of the South have good schools, churches, cars and jobs so what has the Russian Communist promised them?
TYPICAL SOUTHERNER.

DISCRIMINATION
DETROIT, Mich. – Read the account on Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong. I am sick and tired of a few colored people like Armstrong, [Roy] Wilkins and [Jackie] Robinson making derogatory remarks about our government and country. The white people in this country have been good to these men, so much so, they have fattened their bellies and are living in high style. If they don’t like our society, let them go Africa and create a society to their own liking.
Who cares what the other countries say about us? That is a good bugaboo slogan which Armstrong and company. are pounding into our ears. Why should I pay taxes to send him to Russia anyway? If he wants to go let him pay his own expenses.
Many white people as well as the colored folks are discriminated against for some reason another, such as religion, etc. I’m discriminated in my own religion (Catholic) which religion does not allow me to participate in their social clubs, not because of the color of my skin, but because I’m a divorcee.
I believe the colored leaders are not facing the real issue in the South, but are using this social change to stir up race hatred.
MARY BROWN.

ST. LOUIS COMMENTS
ST. LOUIS — An AP dispatch from Grand Forks tells us that Louis Armstrong feels that “a colored man hasn’t got any country!” These are strange words, coming from Armstrong, whose own case is the best possible proof that he is talking pure “hog-wash.”
Nation-wide the Negro makes up about 10 per cent of the total population. If that “stranger from Mars” dropped in and listened to persons like Louis Armstrong he get the idea that this country has sixteen sixteen million Negroes living in chains! That they are beaten and abused, hungry and cold, living in cellars and coal-bins, and getting their livings out of trash-barrels and garbage cans.
Armstrong knows a lot better than this. He knows that there are thousands upon thousands of Negroes like himself. He also knows that a very large percentage of our Negro population lives on a scale which compares very well with the standards set up by their “opposite numbers” among the white citizens. And he also knows that the percentage of slum-dwell-ers is very nearly as high among whites as it is among Negroes. Our white slums will compare very “favorably” (?) with the Negro slums, and there are more of them because we have 10 times as many white folks, and a lot of them very poor.
I spent my school days in a state which sent children of both races to the same schools. And there was no bar, in that state, to a Negro’s progress. Among them were artisans and artists, musicians and menial servants, men with business abilities and men without ability of any discernible kind. They all had unrestricted access to every school in the stateand in point of progress they did no better than the Negroes in states which restricted the Negro to schools reserved for his color.
I hasten to add that neither did they do any worse – there simply was no discernible difference, as the accomplishments of the Negro were set out in their own publications.
I am not at all “outraged” by the fact that states have chosen to “desegregate” their schools. I am, however, extremely annoyed by the loud – mouthed Louis Armstrongs who scream that the Negro has been enslaved and prevented from making “progress,” while the evidence proves so conclusively that his progress has been just as rapid as his own abilities permitted.
If Armstrong prefers to stay on the “seamy-side” of things I can throw a few bricks myself. Here we have a Negro population amounting to almost 20 per cent of the city’s total. This one-fifth of the total population is responsible for almost exactly 60 per cent of the crimes of violence in our city. This is taken directly from the police records. It is authentic. Put into ordinary figures, you are just 12 times as likely to be the victim of a violent assault by a Negro as you are by a white assailant. And we have some pretty vicious white criminals too, make no mistakes about that; we just don’t have so many in proportion to our white population.
This is the place where “progress” is wide open for the Negro. When he gets sufficiently civilized to do no more than 20 per cent of the crime, while he makes up 20 per cent of the population, I am sure that everyone will concede that he has made moral and spiritual progress in addition to the material progress he most certainly enjoys today.
FAIRPLAY.
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Three more letters followed on October 2:

AMBASSADOR SATCHMO
NEW ORLEANS, La. – Louis Armstrong remarks about the low people of the South: Just put down to Negro ignorance and stupidity. Ambassador of the U. S. Russia. Yes, a good example of jazz and rock and roll monkeyism, which causes the nations to think so little of the U. S. A. If we are to have goodwill ambassadors, let them be intelligent and men who have respect for their country and can command the respect of other countries. That goes for Armstrong’s friends also.
The white people of the South are not the barbarians that the agitators say. We have had less friction here than in the North and Negroes are noted for lies and stealing. If Ike and his Negro loving clique have their way we will be pushed down beneath the Negro standard.
If ever a man has caused hatred may and trouble between the two races it is Dwight Eisenhower and the Supreme Court justices. They are the guilty ones, not the Southern white race.
I am a Southerner by birth and will fight Ike and his bunch of dictators for the rights of the white people of the South. Ike may well hang his head in shame in the dastardly cowardice he has shown in dealing with the Constitution of these United States. Don’t believe all the rumors you hear about cruelty to the Negroes.
Please show understanding. A white grandmother will understand when she has to baby sit with a mulatto grandchild.
MRS. IDA S. DUKE.

PASSPORT TO RUSSIA
VERONA, Virginia – I make a move we give Louis Armstrong, Eartha Kitt and Lena Horne and their friends, both black and white, a passport to Russia with no return. LILLIAN E. VAN PELT.

PLOWBOY OPPORTUNITIES
CROOKSTON, Minn. – Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong, reputed to be a musician, recently made some very profound statements. Newspaper accounts attribute the following statements to Mr. Satchmo: “Eisenhower has no guts.” “Governor Faubus is nothing but an ex-plowboy.” “The government can go to hell.” It’s getting so “my people haven’t got a country.”
As a result of these statements it is now expected Eisenhower will, upon recommendation of the State Department, make Satchmo our next Secretary of State. In golf language (and there is a lot golf being played these days) such an appointment will be par for the course as far as our present administration is concerned.
Many people are particularly interested in the statement that Governor Faubus is “nothing but a an ex-plowboy.” Is there something derogatory in an American advancing from plowboy to the office of governor of a great statè? Once upon a time there was an ex-rail splitter who became the most beloved president of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln. Have we not been spending millions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money to prove to the communistic world that only in America can a man advance from plowboy to president?
There are millions of good solid American citizens who feel that Dwight Eisenhower, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Robeson, Satchmo Armstrong & company have done a great disservice to the colored people by trying to force integration. The white people of the South are fully as intelligent and fully as moral as the white people of the North. By what stretch of the imagination do we in the North feel we are so well qualified to handle the affairs of the South?
ARNOLD E. TALLE.
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One final letter was published in the Herald on October 6:

SATCHMO’S BIG MOUTH
WALHALLA, N. D. – Louis Armstrong’s outburst of irresponsibility proves his ignorance of two old proverbs. One says, “turn your tongue in your mouth seven times before speaking;” the other one says “Speech is silver, silence is golden” but that fact would not excuse him from blowing his top and his insipid parroting shows a lack of restraint apparently fanning under an uncontrollable temper. His unpardonable terms against the government in regard to an executive decision by the President, instead of prompting conciliation has resulted in protest. His attitude is far from displaying the olive branch that would help to settle this unfortunate school integration dispute. But regardless of his brash exposition, we will not condemn his race, having feelings for the remarkable services rendered by members of the Negro race.
Satchmo, you have been heard, but your recent expostulation will certainly not raise your prestige; you hit the wrong key inviting criticism that you deserve.
Naturally, Satchmo, your career as a trumpeter, a noisy boogie woogie requires an exhuberant accumulation of air, that has to find an exit when not trumpeting, a rather uncomfortable position, becoming a big windbag. Nevertheless we shall not agree with the system you used to let some escape from your inners when in Grand Forks. Your ridiculous manifestation of self importance dimmed your fame.
So, Satchmo, in the future when what you think and what the public believes in, do not agree, do as those old proverbs tell you to do, don’t shout, keep to yourself what may hurt those in your vicinity. Shut that big mouth of yours.
LEON A. DUBOURT.
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That concludes this round-up of unanimously negative letters sent in from all over the United States. But it’s only fair to give Armstrong the last word, as the Herald did publish another Associated Press article on October 30, 1957, featuring Armstrong’s fiery statements made while in Buenos Aires:

‘Satchmo’ Gets Noisy Greeting In Argentina
BUENOS AIRES (AP)-Trumpeter Louis Armstrong says the U.S. government could “put its. foot down” to stop race disturbances “but, you know, the government is run by Southerners.”
Touring South America with his band, the famous Negro musician told newsmen after his arrival Monday night that American Negroes are beginning to refuse to be pushed around.
“We don’t take that jive now,” he said, adding “I’ll tell the same thing to anyone I meet down here.”
Armstrong after the Little Rock segregation riots announced he was rejecting a State Department invitation to take his band to Russia. Three weeks later he said he had changed his mind and would go if the State, Department wanted him to.
The jazz player’s arrival here for a two week engagement touched off a near-riot as Argentine fans mobbed him at the airport. Undeterred by fire hoses, the crowd burst through police and fire lines and almost forced Armstrong to the ground in their welcome.
Armstrong and the band were hurried to the airport hotel after fist fights had broken out in the crowd. “Somebody could have got hurt,” the trumpeter said, “and if we get hurt we can’t blow.”
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That concludes this look at the coverage in the Grand Forks Herald of Louis Armstrong and Little Rock. Honestly, in the digital age we currently live in, a similar post could have been made using almost any available newspaper, but since the whole saga began in Grand Forks, it was only appropriate to focus our attention there. What began as excited sharing of the Larry Lubenow “Solid” article ended the stomach-churning letters to the editor, but it all enhances our ever-expanding knowledge of the saga of Satchmo.