Uncommon Friends

Uncommon Friends is the untold story of the unlikely friendship between East Tennessee Republican Howard H. Baker Jr. and Middle Tennessee newspaper publisher John L. Seigenthaler. This dual biography details the intersection of the lives and careers of these men, born two years and political worlds apart. Seigenthaler was an early Kennedy advocate in the South, marshaling a small group of Democrat activists for JFK’s New Deal ambitions in the region. Baker came from generations of mountain Republicans in East Tennessee. Before he entered the 1964 special Senate election (necessitated by the sudden death of Senator Estes Kefauver), Baker visited Seigenthaler in his editor’s office at the Nashville Tennessean. Baker wanted to discuss the current political environment in Tennessee and hoped to assess his own political prospects. It was a long visit, with Democrat and Republican taking measure of each other and finding they agreed on many things, including the merits of restoring a two-party system in Tennessee. Thus began a decades-long relationship between two men who wanted only the best for their state and country.