A Nation’s Conscience: A Farewell to Bill Moyers (June 27, 2025)
by Scott Sosebee
It is not very often that I get to write a column that is both historical and personal. This week, the passing of East Texan Bill Moyers on June 26 has made that unfortunate occasion possible. Mr. Moyers, who I never met in person but communicated with via email and telephone, was a Life Member of the East Texas Historical Association, and he delivered the Georgiana and Max Sims Lale Lecture in 2000 to ETHA members, SFA students, and a large crowd of admiring Nacogdoches residents. 2000 was before my time at SFA so I was not in the audience that September evening, but former Association director Archie McDonald once told me that he was one of his favorite guests and without a doubt lecture benefactor Max Lale’s very favorite since it was he—Lale—that gave Moyers his first job as a journalist when he hired the sixteen-year-old Moyers to be a “cub reporter” for the “Marshall News Messenger.” Max was the publisher/editor for the paper at that time and he and his wife Georgiana remained close friends with Moyers until the end of their lives.
I mentioned that I never got to meet Mr. Moyers in person, but I felt like I had. I took over for Archie as Executive Director of the East Texas Historical Association in 2008. Dr. McDonald must have informed Mr. Moyers of the change because I was very pleasantly surprised to have received an email from Moyers shortly after “welcoming me aboard” and also relatating how much he treasured the Association, his friendship with McDonald, his special relationship with Max and Georgiana, and his continued friendship with Max Lale’s second wife, Cissy Lale, who was then a Life Member of the Association’s board of directors. Mr. Moyers continued to email every time he received our “East Texas Historical Journal” in the mail. It was usually a short message letting me know the articles he liked, how much he looked forward to receiving his copy (he once wrote that it “was his little slice of the East Texas he so cherished growing up”) and occasionally complimented me on the Journal’s look and layout, which as he was a former print journalist that meant quite a lot. Full disclosure, I gathered and edited the articles and reviews in the volumes, but Kim Verhines at SFA Press was and is responsible for the “look” of the “ETHJ,” but I took the compliment for both of us.
Born in Hugo, Oklahoma, Moyers and his family moved to Marshall when was a young boy; he always considered Marshall his home and spoke endearingly of it on many occasions on the national stage. He understood and acknowledged the flaws of his East Texas home region—particularly its slow movement toward racial integration and embracing of full civil rights for non-White citizens, but he was never condescending about it and always believed that East Texas was responsible for engendering in him the values and lessons that allowed him to take the stances he did and support the causes that were close to his heart. Bill Moyers was certainly a political liberal, one of those old-line FDR liberal/populists who believed that the greatest thing a federal government could do was make life better for those citizens who did not have the natural advantages of birth and wealth. In fact, his contemporary journalist Peter Boyer was quoted in the “New York Times” as saying that Bill Moyers was “a rare and powerful voice a kind of secular evangelist.”
Calling Moyers an evangelist is an apt term, for while he made his biggest mark in the nation as a print, television, and radio journalist, as well as a presidential aide, he was also a Baptist minister—and it was his faith and what he believed God would have him to do that guided his path in life, career, and ideas. Moyers had left Marshall to enroll at North Texas State College in Denton to major in journalism. He was popular, as he was elected class president two years in a row. When he was just a sophomore, he wrote a letter to the then majority leader of the senate Lyndon Johnson to ask for a job serving as part of his 1954 re-election campaign. Johnson must have been impressed with the young student as he not only hired him to help on his campaign, he talked Moyers into transferring to the University of Texas in Austin, where he would graduate in 1956 and also work at the radio station Mrs. Johnson owned in the city.
He would then go on to spend a year on a religious history fellowship at the University of Edinburgh and then enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He became an ordained minister and took a job teaching ethics at Baylor University. Moyers would have done well in the academy as well as in a pulpit, but LBJ called again when he decided to run for president in 1960. He once again served on the campaign, this time as Johnson’s personal assistant. Johnson did not get that nomination, losing to John F. Kennedy, but he did accept Kennedy’s selection of him as vice-president. They won, but Moyers wanted a new opportunity so he resigned to go to work on Kennedy’s new Peace Corps.
When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Moyers immediately flew to Dallas and met Johnson at Love Field to offer his services. He helped draft Johnson’s initial address to the nation and then stayed on to serve as a presidential aide to Johnson during his presidential terms. He became LBJ’s Press Secretary in 1965, but he resigned in 1966, citing fatigue, a desire to be with his family, and wanting to move to a new chapter in his life. He became the publisher of “Newsday,” the paper of record for Long Island, New York, and in that job strengthened the reputation and reporting of that organ. I have always thought that Moyers’ greatest talent was as a print journalist. He understood what a paper needed to be in that era, and he was an absolutely fantastic writer. He would eventually go on to work for PBS and CBS, where he probably gained his greatest exposure.
I called Mr. Moyers in the summer of 2019. I wanted him to come back and give the Lale Lecture again in 2020 as an anniversary of sorts of his first address. He was excited to do so. Well, we all know what happened in 2020, and the Association had to cancel our meeting that fall. Bill and I talked again about him coming in 2021, but like it did on many people, that pandemic must have taken a toll on Moyers and he said he just wasn’t well enough to travel to Texas from his home in New York. He and I continued to exchange emails for the next year. When I didn’t receive correspondence from him in 2023 or 2024, I should have taken the initiative and checked on him, but we humans are fools and we let what we call our busy lives intrude on what is really important, so I didn’t do it. When I heard the news of his passing, tears came to my eyes, both for missed opportunities and the knowledge that we have truly lost one of the great human beings on our planet. We need men like Bill Moyers to help us get through these difficult times.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.