During the sixty-eight years that he edited the Arkansas Gazette, John Netherland Heiskell made that newspaper nationally known for its courageous stand against lawlessness and for its devotion to journalistic integrity. Although known as the South's "Old Gray Lady" as a result of its plain makeup and graphics, the Gazette earned international acclaim for Heiskell's condemnation of southern resistance to the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation order.

One hundred years old at the time of his death, Heiskell was born on 2 November 1872 to Carrick White Heiskell and Eliza Ayre Netherland Heiskell at the Rogersville, Tennessee, home of Eliza's father, John Netherland, a prominent lawyer. The future editor's father, also a lawyer, had served as a Confederate army officer during the Civil War. Shortly after John's birth the Heiskell family moved to Memphis, where he was reared.

While still a boy, Heiskell exhibited a taste for serious reading, preferring encyclopedias...