Clarity

An essay in The Masthead, the quarterly journal of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, of which I am a fringe member, begins:
"Growing up in a small town in Arkansas in the '50s and '60s, the Arkansas Gazette was one of the few institutions that earned any credit for our poor state."
Having lived in Arkansas 18 years myself, I learned that the Arkansas Gazette did not grow up in the '50s and '60s. It was already old by then.
But of course, the writer was referring to herself. The only word that should follow the comma after "'60s" is "I," as in "I knew the Arkansas Gazette was ..."
And I have no idea what credit it earned; only its banker knows that. She probably means the Gazette was one of the few institutions that "was a credit to" Arkansas in an era when racism tarnished the state's image.

The author, an editorial writer with the (Lexington) Herald-Leader continues:
"When I was five, that paper and the national news were full of images of ugly people screaming at teenagers who wanted to go to school."
Certainly the actions of the screamers were ugly, but the people were rather average looking. To avoid adding too many words, the modifier "ugly" could be moved in front of "images." That wouldn't mean the photos were of poor quality. Although the photographs were well-framed and clear, they were "ugly" because of the horrible history they recorded — white students taunting and yelling at black students attempting to enter Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

Then:
"I grew up thinking that Orval Faubus, the governor who stood in their way, was wrong, and the newspaper, the Gazette, that called him out was right."
But did Faubus stand in the way of the ugly people or the teenagers who wanted to go to school? The readers might, for a moment, think that Faubus stood in the screamers' way since they are the subject of the preceding sentence. They must surmise from the context that he stood instead in the teenagers' way.
By the way, in the most famous of those photos, the "people screaming" are also teenagers, fellow students at Central, adding to the potential confusion.

Point 1: Most readers would figure what the writer meant in this essay, even though it is not written clearly.
Point 2: Write clearly anyway. Don't force readers to pause to decipher your meaning. That's when you lose them.