The Charlotte News
Friday, March 23, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that U.S. paratroopers bolstered by Rangers jumped this date behind enemy lines north of Seoul in Korea and caused 20,000 enemy troops to beat a hasty retreat. The Communists, however, rallied later and were trying to surround the outnumbered 3,300 paratroopers. An armored column leading a fresh allied infantry drive joined with the paratroopers near the drop site south of Munsan. A second tank column rolled through Uijongbu and fanned out to the east, north and west. The enemy won back a commanding peak four miles west of Uijongbu and late on Friday were sending heavy artillery and mortar fire into the allied positions.
Ground commander General Matthew Ridgway landed near Munsan only a half hour after the paratroop landing and was reported in the midst of a heavy firefight at one point. He told reporters that the purpose of the operation was to kill the enemy.
In central Korea, an American patrol pushed to within two miles of Chunchon, encountering no enemy troops, but had to stop at the deep and swift Pukhan River. Elsewhere in the sector, the enemy stepped up their resistance, digging in ten miles south of the 38th parallel around enemy-held Mt. Kari.
The Army announced that it was cutting in half the April draft call, to 40,000.
In Paris, the Big Four deputies trying to work out an agenda for a Big Four foreign ministers conference were meeting informally to try to determine whether they should continue in their efforts. The three Western representatives were reported to have stated to Andrei Gromyko of Russia that unless agreement was forthcoming, the conversations should be ended.
A large Air Force C-124 transport plane with 53 aboard was missing in inclement weather over the Atlantic, while headed from the U.S. to England. Aboard was Brig. General Paul T. Cullen. Rescue planes dispatched to the area from which the last radio contact with the plane had been received had not spotted any wreckage.
In New York, fireman John Crane, who had testified to the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee that he had provided large amounts of money to former Mayor William O'Dwyer, former Water Commissioner James Moran and others for their support of the Uniformed Firemen's Association, said that he would not resign his national post in the International Association of Firefighters, despite the union having suspended him as vice-president and informing him that he would either resign or face ouster.
Senator Charles Tobey of the Kefauver committee said that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ought examine the position of Mr. O'Dwyer as Ambassador to Mexico in light of the testimony of Mr. Crane. Ambassador O'Dwyer and Mr. Moran had denied receiving the payments.
In a letter to Vice-President Alben Barkley, William Jeffers, World War II head of the Federal rubber program, said that the President was throwing money "down a hundred rat holes" and had lost the people's confidence while operating on the old theory of tax and spend.
The CIO packinghouse workers awaited a strike call against the nation's meat packers but were not planning to strike the following Monday.
In response to a letter from former Governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond, current Governor James Byrnes said that he would not be a candidate for the Presidency in 1952 on the States' Rights ticket and would not assume a position of leadership in that party. Governor Thurmond had been the nominee of the party in 1948 and had urged Governor Byrnes to assume the mantle.
In Raleigh, the State Senate killed the bill to modify the State's ban of the closed shop.
Also in Raleigh, a convicted murderer and rapist, Curtis Shedd, was executed in the gas chamber. Also executed was James Richard Hall, convicted of raping and murdering his sister-in-law. Governor Kerr Scott refused to intervene in the execution of Mr. Shedd despite his lawyer's contention that he was not mentally competent, a claim supported by State Senator R. S. Jones. The Governor relied on the reports of psychiatrists that both men were competent.
Thousands of devout Christians made the Good Friday pilgrimage through the streets of old Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa to the tomb believed to have been where Christ was taken after crucifixion on nearby Calvary. Easter was taking place during the worst drought in 80 years in the Holy Land.
Not reported on the page, the N.C.A.A. Basketball Tournament Western regional semifinals took place this night in Kansas City, with Kansas State beating Brigham Young, 64 to 54, and Oklahoma A&M beating Washington, 61 to 57. Both the Eastern and Western regional finals would take place Saturday and the championship game would take place in Minneapolis on Tuesday.
On the editorial page, "The Vacation Is Over" finds that with the return of the President to Washington after spending three weeks in Key West, he faced a troubling time, perhaps as trying as when he first became President after the death of FDR on April 12, 1945. A decision had to be made whether the U.N. troops should again proceed north of the 38th parallel and if so, why. Congress still was debating whether to require Congressional approval before the President could send troops to NATO, delaying implementation of NATO's common defense plan. The RFC hearings had revealed a pattern of behavior encouraged by the White House, which included favoritism and influence. Labor was threatening to abandon the defense mobilization program.
The President would need to assert his best statesmanship in resolving these problems. But the people had been given ample reason to wonder whether their confidence in him as a leader had been misplaced. The way he met the current crisis would largely determine, it suggests, how his place in history would be viewed many years hence.
"Negroes … and the University" finds that it had been clear for some time that UNC would have to open its graduate and professional schools to qualified black applicants based on unequal segregated facilities. Judge Johnson Hayes had ruled against Floyd McKissick and three other black applicants to the UNC Law School based on a finding that the North Carolina College for Negroes Law School in Durham was substantially equal to the UNC Law School, and the case was pending on appeal. But the same judge had found the Durham public schools for black students not substantially equal to those for whites. The State had not provided a medical school for blacks and a black student had recently applied to the UNC Medical School.
Thus, it was not surprising that the executive committee of the UNC Board of Trustees had recommended that applications from black students to the graduate and professional schools be considered without regard to race or color, a recommendation to be presented to the full Board on April 4.
It finds the handwriting on the wall, that North Carolina would need to integrate its graduate and professional schools to meet the requirements of substantial equality of facilities as required by the 1950 Supreme Court decision in Sweatt v. Painter and other cases. While that did not mean that the public schools would have to be integrated immediately, the day was approaching when either equal facilities would have to be provided or segregation abolished. An "irresistible tide of events" was taking place, it finds, which was "registering an ever-higher watermark of Christian democracy", a "rough jolt to tradition".
"Come, Now, Mr. Green" tells of agreeing with AFL president William Green that the Defense Production Act was not perfect but disagreeing with his statement that the Congress had adopted tax laws which soaked the poor and spared the rich. It publishes a table of taxes from 1950, showing that starting at $50,000, nearly half was taken by Federal taxes, progressively becoming larger as income increased, until it reached over 70 percent of $200,000 and 81 percent of a million. It concludes that the current income tax soaked the rich "to the saturation point".
"Ha! We Thought So" tells of the Washington Post reporting that people in Washington were viewing the televised Kefauver crime hearings on a set viewable inside or outside station WTTG. The viewers would drop in to see the broadcast during good weather but remained outside when it was raining. The curious pattern prompts the piece to wonder whether it indicated that the people of Washington lacked the sense to come in out of the rain.
Drew Pearson, in Paris, tells of it being more than two years since the foreign ministers had met in Washington and agreed to form NATO. Yet, beyond a paper agreement and some formation of conflicting committees, nothing had been done concretely to realize the common defense program. The appointment of General Eisenhower as supreme commander had gone a long way toward encouraging hope and optimism among Western Europeans that it would be realized, but still Congress debated the authority of the President to send troops, delaying General Eisenhower's work in organizing the military.
In early April, the first American division would be sent to France and from there would proceed by train to Germany, providing a morale boost for the Europeans. The arrival would be greeted as was the Normandy landings of June, 1944. It was being urged that France and England also each send one division to provide a further psychological boost. At present, the Russians had about 70 divisions in their standing army plus 30 East German divisions. By contrast, NATO presently had eight divisions to defend a 500-mile line. France had promised by year's end ten divisions, and Britain had promised five for Europe and five for other parts of the British Empire.
General Eisenhower, who had, on doctor's advice, quit smoking, was also on a diet and had only a carrot salad for lunch. That had led him to place strictures on the food available to other officers of NATO, abolishing their two-to-three hour Parisienne lunches.
The implementation of an education program for allied troops in Europe regarding why they were opposed to Communism was being debated. Some of General Eisenhower's staff wanted it, to be in the same vein as Frank Capra's series of films "Why We Fight!" during World War II, with the General providing additional radio talks. The State Department and British were hesitant, however, as they thought it smacked of politics and the British did not like the idea of American propaganda going out to British troops.
Marquis Childs tells of the President having seemingly lost control of the direction of the country and in need of getting it back, lest his role in history, about which he appeared concerned, would be compromised. He had been on a three-week vacation in Key West while further testimony was adduced with regard to the influence and favoritism on Government loans made by RFC.
Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Banking subcommittee investigating RFC, wanted appointment of a commission to study the relationship between Government employees and those who sought influence from them, while Senator Paul Douglas was planning to submit a proposed set of rules to apply to those in Government and those outside seeking special favors.
Mr. Childs thinks the President ought appoint such a special commission as proposed by Senator Fulbright to begin reform. If, as increasing numbers of the President's friends were suggesting, the President did not intend to run for re-election in 1952, he should take a dispassionate look at the job of the Presidency and suggest the need for changes, perhaps even leading to a constitutional convention to clarify and resolve modern complications which had arisen between the proper exercise of authority by the Legislative and Executive branches of government.
Robert C. Ruark tells of Glenn McCarthy throwing his annual party at his Shamrock Hotel in Houston, that actor Chill Wills was present explaining that he was not feeling well because he must have "got a-holt of some bad ice." Sophie Tucker had to be carried out on a stretcher but urged the partiers to continue in her absence. Robert Mitchum had not made it this year to set off fireworks against the wall. There were no horses ridden into the dining room. The latest Texas joke was that a fellow was socked in the jaw after he said, "Mr. Truman had raised taxes," because the person delivering the sock thought that he had said, "Truman was raised in Texas."
Mr. Ruark finds Houston unconcerned with Frank Costello or Virginia Hill or the other witnesses appearing on television before the Kefauver committee but that the city had its own fledgling television which showed a local woman demonstrating to viewers how to walk properly up and down stairs—as close to culture, he says, as he had come lately.
A letter writer who was a Republican candidate for the State Senate in 1950 tells of Senator Taft having spoken at a dinner in Charlotte sponsored by the Young Republicans, with half those present having been Democrats, five or six Young Republicans, and the rest "servile sycophantic patronage seekers". He thinks Senator Taft would have served Republicans better to have spoken directly to a gathering of ordinary people.
A letter writer compliments the editorial, "That 'Will for Accomplishment'", regarding an unnamed speaker at a local civic club who had opposed the President's Point Four program of technical assistance to underdeveloped countries as being sentimental, the editorial having taken issue with the speaker for espousing selfishness and not understanding the practical aspects of the program, that it rooted out poverty and ignorance, the seeds of Communism.
A letter writer finds Senator Taft, in saying that the victory of Willis Smith in the North Carolina Senate race had helped Republicans win Congressional races, to have overlooked the controversy surrounding Senator Frank Graham having at one time supposedly recommended for appointment to West Point a black applicant as being a chief cause for his defeat the prior June by Willis Smith. He wonders what had happened to columnist Westbrook Pegler's threat to investigate the Graham campaign, finds it the equivalent of a hit-and-run driver having the victim investigated.
A letter writer from Pinehurst tells of Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith having voted against a bill narrowly passed by the Senate to provide Federal assistance to the states to build public health centers, and also against an amendment to authorize expenditure of 20 million dollars annually for Federal aid to improve local public health units. He recalls that during the campaign The News had said that Senator Graham's vote on many issues canceled out that of Senator Hoey. He finds that on these cited matters and others related to the common good, it would have been better to have a vote to cancel out that of Senator Hoey.
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