The Charlotte News

Wednesday, September 9, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: More news arrives to the front page with regard to the victory by the Australians under General MacArthur at Milne Bay in New Guinea.

The Russians tenaciously held the line at Stalingrad, even if Paul Mallon on the editorial page this date finds the stand probably too tenuous to maintain for long against such concerted Nazi strength, that the fall of Stalingrad was inevitable as the snows of winter to come.

A speech provided the incoming class of Wake Forest from its president, Dr. Thurman Kitchin, a physician originally, appears on the page. Once again, it raises the recurring question of a generation gap, but resolves the discrepancy in favor of the sustenance of tradition by the incoming class.

This entering class, incidentally, was the first to admit women to Wake Forest.

Dr. Kitchin was a friend to W. J. Cash, and a year and a half earlier had written him a hearty congratulatory note upon the publication of The Mind of The South.

He was president of the college from 1930 to 1950, retiring just as the groundwork was being laid for moving the campus from the town of Wake Forest to Winston-Salem, to which it officially relocated in 1956, a year after Dr. Kitchin’s death.

His father and brother were both U.S. Congressmen and another brother, W. W., was Governor of North Carolina from 1909 to 1913.

In the context of indicating that his speech was to the class of 1946, it is noteworthy that the little preview on the front page to the right bothers darkly to balk at future human prognosis by adding parenthetically, "if by that time there is any such thing as college graduation".

No one may fault the thought, as it certainly appeared dubious enough at the time.

Incidentally, a small preview of the sports page just below that comment tells of Jim Tatum’s first season as the University of North Carolina football coach. He would turn in a respectable 5-2-2 mark at his alma mater before joining the Navy at age 30. After the war, he would make a name for himself as head coach at the University of Maryland, winning a national title in 1953. He would then return to UNC in 1956 and coach three seasons, with moderate success in the latter two tries. But he suddenly died at age 46 in the summer of 1959 while suffering from Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

"Georgia Bells" in the editorial column writes of the probable victory of Ellis Arnall over Gene Talmadge, the "wheedling, con-talking showman who snowballed into dangerous power", as the piece aptly describes him. Arnall won. But Talmadge was not done, elected yet again in 1946 to his fourth two-year term, only two of which were consecutive, from 1933 to 1937. He died, however, before taking office.

Governor Arnall, a liberal in the New Deal tradition, reformed state government to eliminate the controls vested in the governor, usurped by Talmadge. He also eliminated the poll tax designed to deter African-Americans from voting. Arnall served until 1947.

The Legislature elected Eugene Talmadge’s son, Herman, future Senator and Ervin Senate Watergate Committee member in 1973, to take up his father’s mantle after his death. Arnall protested the election, however, and refused initially to surrender the Governor’s office to the younger Talmadge until Talmadge, borrowing a leaf from his father’s manual, had Arnall locked out.

Arnall served the Truman Administration in the Office of Economic Stabilization and turned down an appointment as Solicitor General.

Eventually, in 1966, he ran for governor again, primarily against chicken restaurateur and race-baiter, Lester Maddox, who had in April, 1964 used pick-handles to prevent African-Americans from being seated in his Pickrick restaurant, who had on July 3, the day after President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that for which President Kennedy had given his life the previous November, wielded a handgun to prevent African-Americans from being seated in accordance with the law of the land, a disgraceful little man following in the footsteps of the Gene Talmadges, the Bilbos, Barnetts, Faubuses, Wallaces, others plentiful of the stripe in the South through its dark history, adding however to the mix his own peculiar hands-on violence to the already inflammatory race picture deepening in crimson in the Deep South of the early 1960’s; just two months following Maddox’s pick-handle antics and twelve days before his gun-wielding episode, members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, near Philadelphia, Mississipppi.

Jimmy Carter, a state legislator running for the office for the first time, also entered the 1966 Democratic race for governor, running as a moderate alternative to either Arnall or Maddox, splitting the vote such that the plurality to Arnall was insufficient to defeat Maddox, requiring a run-off which Maddox won.

Jimmy Carter would be elected Governor in 1970 and Lester Maddox, a bitter rival, would become Lieutenant Governor, and sometime talk-show host apology demander.

We never had any of his chicken. We hear it was not fit to eat. Stringy, greasy, that sort of thing.

The only thing with which we disagree somewhat in the argument propounded by the Government lawyers in 1964 in Atlanta's Federal District Court, by way of establishing that the Pickrick was substantially engaged in interstate commerce and thus was covered by the Act, is the notion that his ham and bologna came from Tennessee. We opine that his ham and bologna obviously, regardless of label, came out of the same place to which his own lawyers had argued his food ultimately went--the Chatahoochee.

Anyway, the fellow with the pipe and broom at the giraffe cage further informed the lady, we understand, that she should just look for the man there named Benjamin who had been sitting mopily at the location tossing peanuts through the bars, appearing for the previous 42 years to wait idly for someone to return, which by 1967, when in the real world, incidentally, Lester became Governor, meant that Ben had been sitting there for 67 years. He had a new car by then.

Then he read the Bible quote of this day, and took off for Santa Barbara, going north from Berkeley.

Then, after the bus ride, he went back to the zoo where he has been ever since.

Speaking of 1962, last night while searching for some more jingle jangle, we ran across this little clip which you might enjoy. They may seem not very hep now, but it was, after all, 1962, or somewhere in there. They were at the time.

On our first trip to New England a few decades ago, we took along a tape of those songs, among others. They are good for a ride through New England in the early fall when the leaves are turning. Try it sometime.

The other evening, and this a true story, we went to open our garage door and there was a grasshopper sitting on the garage door handle. That had never happened before and we thought it worthy therefore of imparting, as grasshoppers have crept into the print here, from Isaiah, from Numbers, and from an unfathomable reference in the editorial column, all in the last few weeks.

Well, we opened the garage door and the grasshopper bounded into the yard, into freedom, and we let it go.

Incidentally, last night also, we discovered that former Kingston Trio member John Stewart passed away January 19, 2008. News is sometimes a little slow to reach us, as with a snail, and so we dedicate to him the music we reference above, even if it’s that of a group once in competition. We always enjoyed his music, both with the Trio and afterward. It, along with that of others, accompanied us on our way to Mexico for the first time. Try it sometime.

We also have been to Kansas.

And, remember, don’t hunt the deer out of season. It’s bad for the snails and grasshoppers, just as are the mountain lions in the back hills, or barrancas, as the Spanish call them.

Framed Edition

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