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Award announcement, including a biography of Brooks Hays, for the Brooks Hays Memorial Christian Fellowship Award Brooks Hays Brooks Hays was one of Arkansas's most honored sons. His career was very nearly unique in its application of Christian principles and Christian faith to a life of public service in government. Hays was an influential member of Congress who fell [a] casualty in the general election of 1958 to the tide of unreason that was sweeping the South in resistance to school desegregation. He was defeated after he undertook the role of mediator between President Eisenhower and Governor Faubus in the Little Rock school crisis, but in adversity he fashioned a second career more illustrious than the first. He became an advisor to presidents (Kennedy and Johnson), a distinguished lecturer at leading universities including Rutgers and Wake Forest, in a symbol of courage in the service of his country and his fellow man. He was himself a "profile in courage" perfectly suited to the pattern of heroes commemorated in the book that John F. Kennedy had written as a young man. The career of Brooks Hays was remarkable in a number of ways, including the place of honor he earned in the service of both church and state. He was a Southern Baptist—indeed, at that time, the only layman to have become president of the Southern Baptist Convention (he served two terms in this position). He was a member of the Second Baptist Church in Little Rock during his years in...

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Brooks Hays Materials

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University of Arkansas