The Charlotte News

Wednesday, October 29, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President's Committee on Civil Rights had issued a report urging passage of state and Federal laws to end immediately all forms of racial segregation in the country, including that of schools, buses, trains, theaters, hospitals, hotels and restaurants, the armed services, housing, and in private employment. The Committee also asked for enactment of Federal anti-lynching, anti-police brutality, anti-poll tax, voting rights, and fair employment practice laws. It also recommended that the Justice Department enlarge its civil rights section, an action which Attorney General Tom Clark had taken the previous Monday. The report stated that the "separate but equal" doctrine had resulted in separate but unequal facilities, preventing an atmosphere in which civil rights could be fostered by groups working and living in the same environs. Forbidding association between groups of people, it concluded, created a caste status in the minority group.

The report stated that while legally-enforced segregation was limited mainly to the South, informal segregation also existed in the North, particularly in housing and hotel and restaurant accommodations.

The Committee urged that to assure the victory of the democratic ideal abroad, it was imperative to have the international community see America as free of discrimination.

The Committee wanted a review of the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war with an eye toward prevention in the future of deprivation of civil rights to a group based on race or ancestry.

It favored granting of the right to vote to Indian citizens of New Mexico and Arizona and granting of American citizenship to the people of Guam and American Samoa.

It also favored giving the residents of the nation's capital the right to govern themselves, vote, and to be represented in Congress.

The report criticized "irresponsible opportunists" who labeled every person or group with whom they disagreed as "Communists". It found that while there was some legitimate concern regarding the activities of Fascists and Communists in the country, that both groups were willing to lie to mask their totalitarian tactics, a state of "near-hysteria" had developed regarding the supposed threat of Communism, such that it inhibited free exercise of democracy.

The Committee favored clarification of loyalty obligations for Federal workers and setting up of procedures for protection of their civil rights. It also recommended registration for all groups which sought to influence public opinion.

The Committee was chaired by Charles E. Wilson of G.E. and its membership included Frank Porter Graham, president of UNC.

The President thanked the Committee and said that he would study the report before making any statement, hoped that it was the equivalent of a new Declaration of Independence.

HUAC cited two more persons for contempt, writer Samuel Ornitz and producer and director Herbert Biberman, for refusing to answer whether they had ever been members of the Communist Party. Mr. Ornitz, who worked on "It Could Happen to You", "Two Queens", and "The Man Who Reclaimed His Head", declined to say whether he was a member of the Screen Writers Guild. He was represented, along with 18 other writers, by Robert Kenny, former California Attorney General.

Two other film writers, Alvah Bessie and Albert Maltz, had also been cited for contempt, to join Dalton Trumbo and John Howard Lawson in the stocks. HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas, enjoying Congressional immunity against complaint for defamation, stated that there was no doubt that the four previously cited contemnors were Communists and had been for a long time.

The DNC unanimously elected Senator J. Howard McGrath of Rhode Island to be its new chairman, replacing Robert Hannegan who had resigned for health reasons. The Committee also selected Philadelphia as the site of the 1948 convention and was planning to consider a proposal to give states which had voted Democratic in 1944 an increase of four delegates each as a bonus, an increase from the former bonus of two delegates.

A DC-3 cargo plane had crashed near Sylva, N.C., killing its three crew members. The plane had been en route from Charlotte to Gainesville, Ga.

The Charlotte Housing Authority, with an eye toward slum clearance, asked the City Council to begin enforcing its standard housing ordinance, implementation of which had been deferred because of scarcity of building materials during and after the war. The Authority claimed that the materials were now available.

Tom Watkins of The News reports on the trial of the chief Safety Inspector for the City on a charge that he misappropriated parking meter collections. Another City employee, also indicted and who had already pleaded guilty to the charge, testified that the defendant had purchased for him large quantities of bootleg liquor, and had done so for other City employees, all from money collected from the parking meters. The State had rested and the defendant took the stand, denying any misapplication of funds or purchase of bootleg liquor, claiming that the other defendant had paid for the liquor with the parking meter money. Numerous City employees testified to his good character.

Tom Lynch had contributed a piece to the newspaper regarding the pitiful state of the athletic budgets at the two black high schools in the city and a special game, the "Queen City Classic" between the West Charlotte and Second Ward Schools, had been arranged to publicize the need for improvement of these budgets. The piece believes it would be to the great advantage of the community, socially and educationally, to support the effort.

The piece thinks that the Committee's zeal had overlooked the right of the individual to have freedom of thought and that conditions would not change in state laws until public opinion would demand it. And such public opinion molded through many decades of indoctrination would take equally many decades to undo. The resulting patterns of conduct could not be eliminated overnight by passage of laws.

The Committee's demands thus betrayed naivete regarding the forces at work on the Southern mind, and required, for implementation of its program, the negation of the very democratic procedure it advocated.

It points out that the "right-minded people of the South" were aware of the problems which the report addressed and were busy trying to educate the Southern mind to eliminate its enduring prejudices while fostering economic development, all designed to bring a fuller measure of social justice to all people in the South.

It opines that the "bombastic demand for upheaval" made by the Committee would only engender resentment in the South and complicate and delay the process of advancement.

But, as President Kennedy would ask plaintively in June, 1963, at the promulgation of the civil rights bill to eliminate racial discrimination in all facilities open to the public operating in interstate commerce and the voting rights bill to provide all citizens the right to vote in Federal elections, if not then, when? It was every bit as relevant to point out in 1947 that the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued by President Lincoln 84 years earlier without remarkable progress being made toward an integrated society, as it was 16 years later when the President memorably pointed out that 100 years of delay had transpired without black citizens yet able to realize the full measure of equality of opportunity and civil rights in the country, even, in certain states, without being afforded the opportunity to vote.

And the primary concomitant, as sociologists had advised for decades, for any society to recognize that equality, as the Committee pointed out, was for there to be complete integration of society, legally, educationally, socially and economically. Thus, as long as Jim Crow survived in the South, as long as separate facilities were recognized as lawful and socially acceptable under the costly and seldom realized "separate but equal" doctrine approved in 1896, there could be no equality of rights and opportunity in the society. All of the incidents of recognition attendant the ordinary individual mind's acceptance of another as equal militated against it: educational segregation, economic segregation, physical segregation, all in fact existing in a milieu, not exerting itself toward equality but rather toward diminution of those in the segregated minority, maintained through Pavlovian-induced negative association, continually feeding on itself to enforce the maintenance of those conditions via the economic and social conventions of the time.

The only barriers which were allowed to be crossed interracially in 1947 existed in the field of professional entertainment, and even those were grudgingly breached, usually allowed only on condition of maintaining and fostering stereotypes easily acceptable to the mass audience to which the purveyors of the entertainment most often pandered.

The piece hopes that with airlines, rushing to meet jammed holiday schedules, complicated by weather, would learn from previous mistakes and improve their safety record.

The President went on to indicate that relief costs for Europe were being raised with rising prices and that it could go higher were Congress to refuse to act to control prices. He stated that he had no intention of asking for restoration of full price control, as it would be too costly to set up the bureaucratic machinery again to administer it and would take too long to obtain approval from Congress. But he did want authority for allocation of key materials, greater export-import controls, and price ceilings at the producer level on certain primary commodities. He did not state, however, what commodities ought be subject to control or the materials to be allocated. Those questions would likely be answered at the next meeting with Congressional leaders.

He tells of GOP Congressman August Andresen of Red Wing, Minnesota, having given strict orders to his delegation touring Europe that there would be no sightseeing. When a plane was delayed in flying to Rome because of turbulence over the city, the Congressmen were re-routed first to Nice, then toward Pisa, at which point Congressman Harold Cooley of North Carolina looked out the window of the plane and remarked that he could see the Leaning Tower. Mr. Andresen then chastised him for sightseeing.

At least Mr. Cooley did not start discussing duck hunting and the perils of wooden defenses again.

He next describes the considerations of a site for the Democratic National Convention for 1948. The President and Postmaster General, former DNC chairman, Robert Hannegan, desirous of a Western location to attract votes, both preferred San Francisco. But the city discouraged the choice as it was already overcrowded. Los Angeles was favored by other party leaders, but the weather was a concern in trying to hold the meet in the open-air Coliseum, and a fear developed that supporters of Henry Wallace might picket. Philadelphia was disfavored on the basis that delegates, with little to do in a convention with a foreordained result, might wander off to Atlantic City and leave the first televised political convention showing empty seats to the viewing audience. But eventually, Philadelphia was selected, also to be the site of the Republican National Convention.

Parenthetically, the predicted dullness of the Democratic convention would be interrupted by the Dixiecrat exit, led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, predicated on the strong civil rights plank placed in the platform, introduced by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey.

Mr. Pearson next imparts off-the-record chatter during the HUAC hearings, chairman J. Parnell Thomas encouraging Robert Taylor to tell exactly what he had imparted to the Committee in the spring, after remarking to him of the splendid job which Adolphe Menjou had done for the Committee two days earlier, on the previous Monday to start the hearings. During a photo session for newsmen, Mr. Thomas was asked to pretend to be talking to Mr. Taylor, and he began discussing a friend's broken leg.

Perhaps, he was vaguely making association with the unfortunate plight of John Wilkes Booth, probably not that of John Alexander Kennedy, the Superintendent of the New York City Police Department, on July 14, 1863.

Another HUAC member, John McDowell of Pennsylvania, was heard to whisper of the egg laid by member John Wood when he suggested that a law be passed to permit employers to fire anyone whose views might be detrimental to the country, and then that it would be even worse when John Rankin, campaigning in Mississippi, would return.

Chairman Thomas had given a chilly reception to Paul McNutt, counsel for the movie producers, when he sought twice to have Samuel Goldwyn called to testify.

The differences were that the enemy was unseen, the results of action or inaction slower to become manifest.

The Chatterly-Whitfield Colliery was a well-run mine in the town. It had been profitable before nationalization of the coal industry the previous January 1, as the owners had put back sufficient capital into the mine operation to modernize equipment and keep it highly productive. But despite the favorable working conditions, half the miners failed to report to work on Mondays and an average of 25 percent through the week. If they could be induced to work full time, then the mine's production, compounded throughout England, would ease the shortage of coal.

The men's refusal to work was the result of wartime habits and other long-term social conditioning, not the result of socialization. The owner of the mine believed it to be the result of the fact that the miners could not buy very much which they wanted with their earnings. The goods were either not in the stores or were too high in price. The Pay As You Earn income tax program also cut deep into their Friday paycheck. The workers also went into the country in the summers to pick hops or fruits with their families, serving as an outing which also generated income.

The basic question was what had been shown to America on its motion picture screens which caused viewers to be in peril of being indoctrinated to a Communist way of life. The answer was nothing.

Well, there was "Song of Russia", appearing in 1944 when Russia was the saving-grace ally during the war, crippling Hitler for the West, necessary to Russia's own survival.

Mr. Grafton continues that without such a danger to the country identified, the probe became as a search for absolute zero. But the investigation, albeit by inadvertence, had opened the door to the question of the proper limits of Congressional investigation. Government power had always been deemed in the country since the Founding to have limits.

The FBI had carried the country through the war without much sabotage and with little intrusion to personal freedom and civil liberties. Mr. Grafton favors a test by which there ought be at least a foundational fact of a danger before a probe of this kind would be launched.

And, in the 1957 case of Watkins v. U.S., the Supreme Court would, in essence, agree with that basic concept, requiring HUAC to state the pertinence of its inquiry to its properly circumscribed special legislative purpose and, upon objection by the witness, to provide notice of the subject of its specific inquiry and the question's pertinence to the subject.

The Communists would need reunite with the Socialists to return to power with a spare majority, an unlikely prospect as Moscow had denounced the Socialists as traitors to the working class.

Democracy's chief bulwark lay among the white collar and professional classes, the small bookkeepers and the small farmers. But they were being faced with economic ruin by the erosion of savings against inflation.

The future of France depended largely on American policy and the speed with which the Congress would enact the Marshall Plan and the Administration would then implement it. America would need cooperate with France in its policy toward Germany so that the French people would have no ground to fear Germany again becoming an industrial and military power.

The French at present were pessimistic about the Plan and America's ability to protect France against the dangers to democracy mounting in Europe.

While the American people plainly supported the policy of aid to Europe, action coincident with that support was necessary.

The editors respond that they were experimenting with both cartoonists, not intentionally presenting one or the other on an equal basis but choosing between the better of each cartoon on a given day, based on the timeliness of the topic and its presentation. They seek reader response on the new policy.

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