One of Arkansas' foremost journalists died Sunday.
Roy Reed of Hogeye was 87. He had a stroke early Saturday morning and was kept on life support at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville until after his daughter arrived on Sunday night, according to family members.
A Garland County native, Reed was a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and New York Times.
He covered the civil rights movement in the 1960s, shadowing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and witnessing the “Bloody Sunday” melee when police and posses beat black marchers with clubs and bullwhips on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965.
Later, he was the London bureau chief for The New York Times.
Reed moved his family to Hogeye, 13 miles south of Fayetteville, in December 1978. He taught journalism at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for 16 years.
He published three books of his own work, including a biography of former Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus. Reed also edited Looking Back at the Arkansas Gazette: An Oral History.