Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State
Marshall stated to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he
opposed any major revision of the U.N. without Soviet approval, as
it would destroy the organization and result in opposing military
alliances. He stressed that the problems of peace in the world could
not be remedied by changes of structure of the U.N. He said that
Soviet leaders had severe misconceptions about Western intentions,
which needed to be overcome.
Paul Hoffman, ERP administrator, approved 35.5 million
dollars worth of food to be shipped to Britain as the first
allocation to that country and the largest single allocation yet
under the program.
U.N. officials met with Arab representatives in Jericho to
discuss the proposed truce for Jerusalem. A ceasefire order had been
extended indefinitely while the truce negotiations transpired. Both
old and new Jerusalem remained relatively quiet this date. Jews and
Arabs had agreed, according to the Red Cross, to respect neutral
security zones in Jerusalem, the Jaffa-Tel Aviv area, Haifa, and
Tiberias.
Jews intended to declare a new Hebrew state on May 16, after
the end of the British Mandate the previous day, with Sarona, just
outside Tel Aviv, to be the provisional capital. The independence
proclamation would be signed by David Ben-Gurion, head of the
provisional government.
In the Ohio Republican primary, Senator Taft was leading
Harold Stassen 11 to 9 in the 23 contested delegate races out of 53
total, the other 30 being uncontested for Senator Taft. Senator Taft
claimed that, with the Ohio results, he had more delegates secured for the
first ballot of the Republican convention than any other candidate
in the race. He said that many "New Dealers and radical
Democrats" had crossed over, at the suggestion of Mr. Stassen,
to vote in the GOP primary and that these voters helped to make up
the majorities for Mr. Stassen's delegates, far fewer than he had
projected.
An anti-Truman slate of electors was elected in Alabama,
pledged to vote against any candidate supporting civil rights in the
general election in November. A majority of the Alabama delegates to
the convention were pledged to walk out if the Democrats placed a
civil rights plank in the platform.
The President remained hopeful of a settlement before the strike deadline of May 11 in the rail
dispute of three railroad brotherhoods regarding their demanded 30
percent wage increase.
John L. Lewis asked a Federal Court to dismiss the lawsuit
which sought to bar pension fund payments pursuant to the recent
settlement of the coal strike providing for same.
The Senate voted to send the margarine bill, eliminating
discriminatory taxes on the controlled substance, to the Finance
Committee. It had already passed the House.
Stay clear of the stuff. It will do you no good. You could
wind up down the rabbit hole.
The President would depart June 3 on a train trip to the
Pacific Northwest, with major speeches planned at Chicago and Omaha,
as well as at three stops in California along the way, including his
previously announced commencement address at U.C.-Berkeley on June
12.
Be sure and attend.
In Burlington, N.C., the Sheriff was holding one man for
investigation in the mutilation and robbery of another, occurring
during the latter's hitchhiking with four men.
The Mount Holly High School would be without its football
coach and principal after a months-long squabble over the site of
a football game based on supposed better police protection and
seating arrangements in Belmont. Both men had resigned.
In New York, actress Arline Judge had announced an indefinite
postponement of her slated marriage.
In White Pine, Tenn., a woman who had suffered from a "mild
form" of encephalitis, "sleeping sickness", awoke
for the first time in twelve years. She remembered very little of
her nap which began in 1936.
Don't tell her too much too soon about the intervening
events. She may go back to sleep and ask to be awakened again only
at a point when it was all over, maybe on A-Day in 1953.
On the editorial page, "A Blow to Southern Customs" finds the Supreme Court's pair of decisions handed down the previous
Monday, holding that restrictive covenants on sale or rental of real estate
to blacks could not be enforced by government action, Federal or
state, for the enforcement action being violative of the Fourteenth
Amendment Equal Protection Clause, to open a can of worms involving
all manner of private segregation, imposing hardships on the South's
longstanding customs.
It suggests that it would have been better for the Court to
have continued to ignore the Fourteenth Amendment in terms of strict
adherence to it and maintain the separate-but-equal doctrine.
While it was ultimately correct in its predictions, it would
take another 16 years and court fights for several years after that
to break down the remaining legal barriers to segregation in schools
and privately-owned public accommodations. The decisions in question
were limited in scope to enforcement of restrictive covenants on
private property and did not invalidate the covenants per se as long
as there was voluntary adherence.
Ultimately, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would rely on the
power conveyed to Congress by the Commerce Clause, as well as the
Fourteenth Amendment, to bar discrimination in all public
accommodations substantially affecting interstate commerce. Brown
v. Board of Education, in 1954, and its implementing decision
the following year, provided for the desegregation of public schools
"with all deliberate speed", based on the old
separate-but-equal doctrine having not produced equal schools.
Thus, the advocates of slow adjustment were given some
leeway. The reactionaries would have had it the old way until hell
froze.
As the piece recognizes, the 14th Amendment had been ratified
in 1866. It was time for it to be given full effect, as 52 years of
Plessy doctrine had failed to accomplish anything but
entrenchment of inequality in the society and the acculturation of
generations of people, though not all of the people, to a perception
of blacks as inferior by the fact of the caste system in which they
were forced to live.
We have said before that we believe that had W. J. Cash lived
beyond July 1, 1941 and perhaps returned as an editor at The News
or, more probably, elsewhere, he would have welcomed these
changes, with due caution for force bills from the Federal Government
for their tendency in the past to produce reaction in the South. But
his tone, we believe, would have inevitably been very different from
that displayed in these more recent editorials, which appear very
nearly, if not wholly, to lament such progress in race relations via
the old rationalization that "we can take care of our own race
problem". Plainly, given the post-war racial violence,
inclusive of lynching or attempted lynching with ultimate impunity
in North and South Carolina during the previous two years, the South
was helpless to control the violence. Putting down and deploring
lynching and the Klan was one thing. But there was a prominent
disconnect after that point between polite tolerance of "benign",
non-violent forms of institutionalized racism and true progress in
race relations, meaning integration of society in every respect and
finally acknowledging that which should have been recognized not
only in principle but in practice from the Founding, that all human
beings are entitled by inherent right of birth to equal human
rights. Parsing it to suit economics and rationalizing limitations
of rights on the times and quaint notions of chattel property, as in
the antebellum era, and thereafter on the need for time to adjust
slowly to assimilation of blacks into mainstream society,
constituted the unwavering constant prevailing for the previous 160
years since the Founding.
Something had to change and the courts began to recognize
that fact, made more visible by the war.
The best teacher is to ask one's self how one would feel if
you were denied housing, not just once, but routinely in certain
geographical areas, because of the color of your eyes or your hair
or the sound of your last name. How would you feel if you were
denied admission to a public school within your geographical
district only because you have freckles or just look funny to
someone whom you have never met and knows not a whit about you or
your personal worth, and could care less?
"More Services? More Taxes" tells of taxes
increasing with more government services, as being promised by the
various candidates for public office at the Federal, state and local
levels.
It quotes the Hartford (Conn.) Courant anent Lt.
Governor Arthur Coolidge of Massachusetts regarding his contention,
for which he had apologized, that the South was stealing Northern
industry, saying that part of the reason for the exodus south was
more favorable tax treatment.
The editorial suggests therefore being cautious in voting for
candidates favoring more programs which would raise taxes.
"A Sample of Our Best Students" provides results
of a test given at the University of South Carolina to 95 students
of all levels, from freshmen to seniors, regarding their inability
to name various members of the U.S. Government, from a single
Supreme Court Justice, save 13 percent of those sampled, to both
South Carolina Senators, only 71 percent, to a single Cabinet
member, 24 percent, or three Republican candidates for President, 56
percent, etc.
The student newspaper, The Gamecock, had produced the
poll. The poor results, suggests the piece, demonstrated the
desperate plight of the educational system.
All college newspapers today across the country ought conduct
among their readers this same poll, together with issue-specific
questions to test substantive knowledge of politics, and publish the
results. We would bet that the 1948 results would sound highly
informed by comparison, but we may underrate the political acumen of
the collective student population of the country. We hope so.
We have no vested interest, incidentally, not having been in
college in 1948 and never having been a Gamecock.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "'The
World's Safest Drivers'", tells of the country's deaf mutes
being the world's safest drivers, as described in Ford Times.
It reported that in Pennsylvania, 3,000 deaf mutes out of three
million drivers were licensed. None of the deaf mutes had ever been
involved in a fatal accident and none had been involved in an
accident for the previous nine years where there was an injury. For
the same number of non-handicapped drivers, the average would have
been 400 such accidents.
A special test, more exacting than for ordinary drivers, was
devised for the deaf mutes to become licensed. Each driver was
examined by a special board to determine that the person did not
drink, that each time he got behind the wheel, he drove as if he
were being tested, that he had high alertness with no noises or
conversation to distract, and that he believed in and practiced
the Golden Rule.
Drew Pearson tells of campaign advisers for Robert Taft
telling him to become known as a liberal to improve his flagging
stock by informing the people of his goals, that he believed in
higher living standards and liberty. He was told that his poll
results would be better against the President if he were the
nominee, as he was at present only one of several Republicans vying
for the nomination.
A feud, similar to that between the margarine and butter
interests, was brewing regarding maple syrup, as Senator George
Aiken of Vermont was preparing to crack down on restaurants which
served corn syrup instead of the genuine article.
Avoid both. Use honey.
Legislation in the Senate was awaiting the end of the Ohio
primary at the behest of Senator Taft, head of the Republican policy
committee, especially the badly needed bill to expand the Air Force
to 70 groups.
Mr. Pearson again looks at Standard Oil of California and
Texaco as the prime movers in the oil lobby, intent on getting
control of both tidelands oil and Arab oil, lobbying the
Administration to change the policy to disfavor partition of
Palestine, and the Congress for the legislation to turn the tidelands
oil over to the states.
He provides a list of seven men employed by the Arab-American
oil combine, Aramco, or, in one case, Standard of California, who
had also worked for the Government.
Marquis Childs examines the hypothetical presidency of either
Senator Taft, Governor Dewey, or former Governor Stassen, finding
each alternative to be fairly certain in color, but not so when juxtaposed to a Republican Congress which might be elected with one of those
candidates. It might be hopelessly reactionary, as with President
William McKinley at the turn of the century.
Increasingly, the 80th Congress, especially Republicans favoring high tariffs, were trying to defer decisions
until 1949
and the voters were entitled to know what that delay meant. It
appeared that they were awaiting a Republican president that they
might undo the New Deal completely.
For instance, they were deferring the Reciprocal Trade Act
extension, a key part of the Marshall Plan's success. Not to renew
it would signal a return to trade protectionism of the past, such as
that prevailing after the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, leading to
disastrous consequences on the world stage.
The record of the 80th Congress was spotty and the voter had
a right to be suspicious of deferring decisions until 1949. A few
Republican leaders in Congress could manipulate things to undermine
the best intentions of a Republican President.
The country would decide to defer that prospect, in its
entirety, for another four years.
Samuel Grafton tells of there being a war boom during the
war, a scarcity boom afterward, and presently a foreign policy boom.
Prices, briefly coming down in February, were on the rise again. The
previous year, the poor corn crop kept prices up. In 1948, it was
the tax cut, the Marshall Plan, and, most prominently, prospects of
rearmament.
Consumers could not afford the higher prices and the present
boom was based on expectations. Labor was pressing for higher wages
again to keep pace with higher food prices. The boom was dependent
on world insecurity. The country was searching for security while
leaning paradoxically on insecurity.
It pointed up again, he urges, the failings of not
aggressively seeking peace but rather trying to effect peace through
arms and aid.
A letter writer responds to the letter of A. W. Black of
April 29 regarding his view that the United World Federalists were
unrealistically striving for an Utopian model in seeking world
government, instead favoring mutual disarmament and respect for
boundaries as a recipe for peace.
The writer concludes that Mr. Black was the person seeking
Utopia while the World Federalists were dealing with reality.
Two letter writers thank the newspaper on behalf of the
Classroom Teachers of Mecklenburg County, of which they were
officers, for cooperating in helping to improve education in the
state's schools.
