While Lucile was many things in her lifetime, I see one of her most notable moments as having written “The Bald Knobbers, which at the time was one of the first authoritative efforts to document the Ozarks vigilante groups. Can you share a little about how this project came about, and if you learned anything new about it during your research for the book?
“Lucile was born just 30 or so years after the Civil War, and her childhood was full of stories about the War, and about the vigilantes who roamed the countryside in the years after the war, including the Bald Knobbers.
“When she came back to the Ozarks after stints on the Denver Express and El Paso Times, she became very interested in Ozarks history and began interviewing people about their memories of the Bald Knobbers and researching old newspapers from the 1880s, when the group was terrorizing Christian and Taney counties. Her conversations and her years of research culminated in a 1939 book, ‘Bald Knobbers,’ published by Caxton Press.
“The book attracted the attention of at least one Hollywood studio, and Lucile hired an agent to represent her, but the beginning of World War II interfered. Later, musician Burt Behrman wrote a ‘Bald Knobber’ opera that was performed only a few times.”
Read the full interview at Ozarks Alive.
Lucile Morris Upton landed her first newspaper job out West in the early 1920s, then returned home to spend half a century reporting on the Ozarks world she knew best. Having come of age just as women gained the right to vote, she took advantage of opportunities that presented themselves in a changing world. During her years as a journalist, Upton rubbed shoulders with presidents, flew with aviation pioneer Wiley Post, covered the worst single killing of US police officers in the twentieth century, wrote an acclaimed book on the vigilante group known as the Bald Knobbers, charted the growth of tourism in the Ozarks, and spearheaded a movement to preserve iconic sites of regional history. Following retirement from her newspaper job, she put her experience to good use as a member of the Springfield City Council and community activist.
Told largely through Upton’s own words, this insightful biography captures the excitement of being on the front lines of newsgathering in the days when the whole world depended on newspapers to find out what was happening.
Susan Croce Kelly was a reporter at Lucile Morris Upton’s own Springfield News-Leader. She is the author of Route 66: The Highway and Its People and the managing editor of OzarksWatch at Missouri State University’s Ozarks Studies Institute.
Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks is part of the Ozarks Studies series, edited by Brooks Blevins. It is a series that acknowledges the awakening of a scholarly Ozarks studies movement—one that crosses disciplinary boundaries as it approaches regional study from a variety of vantage points—and positions the University of Arkansas Press as the publisher at the forefront of the movement. As the only university press headquartered within the Ozarks region and as a press with a solid background in the publication of books on the region—Rafferty’s The Ozarks, Land and Life, Morrow’s Shepherd of the Hills Country, Harper’s White Man’s Heaven, Sizemore’s Ozark Vernacular Houses, and many more—the University of Arkansas Press is ideally suited for the first series that will level a scholarly eye on the Ozarks and Ozarkers.