The Charlotte News

Monday, January 28, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that U.N. negotiators in Korea provided to the Communists this date a 14-point plan for exchange of prisoners, and the Communists promised to study the proposal. The plan entailed the basic points of an allied proposal presented on January 9, including voluntary repatriation, though that proposal was one which the Communists said they could never accept, reiterated this date. Because of the disagreement over voluntary repatriation, there was no chance at present of turning the matter over to staff officers to work out final details.

A draft plan on truce supervision, however, had been presented to the Communists by the U.N. negotiators the previous day, on which staff officers were scheduled to start negotiation this date, but which had been postponed by a day at the request of the Communists. The remaining sticking point on truce supervision was the insistence by the Communists on elimination of the U.N.-demanded ban on airfield construction and repair during an armistice.

In the air war, U.S. Sabre jets exchanged fire with 50 Communist MIG-15s over North Korea, but no damage was claimed by allied pilots. It had marked the first appearance of enemy jets since they had lost ten during a battle the prior Friday. Overcast skies curtailed allied airstrikes this date.

Only light patrol contact had been reported on the frozen 145-mile front in the ground war. The quietude of the front, however, had been interrupted by Communist propaganda loudspeakers proclaiming celebration of the Chinese lunar new year, the Year of the Dragon.

The Supreme Court this date, in a 7 to 2 per curiam ruling in Briggs v. Elliott, set aside a lower special three-judge District Court decision which, by a vote of 2 to 1, had upheld segregation per se in the public schools of Clarendon County, South Carolina, pending a report on progress on establishing equal facilities, vacating that decision of the previous June 21, which had required that the public schools report back to the court within six months on its remedies of the unequal schools to which the State had stipulated. The Supreme Court indicated that the lower court had received this report during the pendency of the appeal to the Supreme Court but had not provided its views pending the outcome of the Supreme Court review, and so wanted the lower court to indicate those findings before the Supreme Court rendered a decision in the case. Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas dissented on the basis that they believed the case was ripe immediately for adjudication of the Constitutional challenge to the statutes and provisions of the Constitution of South Carolina mandating segregation of the public schools, which the lower court had denied.

The earlier dissent by Judge Waring in Briggs, finding segregation per se unconstitutional, would, with considerable elaboration, provide the basis for the unanimous decision in Brown, that decision, however, having been steadily forecast since 1938, with State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, through the 1950 Sweatt v. Painter decision, not representing the solid break from the past, as often perceived, but rather the culmination of a steady path toward overruling Plessy during a period of 16 years, the former case by case determinations having demonstrated consistently that separate-but-equal facilities could not be realistically achieved in the states.

In Charleston, S.C., Judge Waring, 71, announced that he intended to retire from the Federal District Court, effective February 15. He had been the subject of threats of impeachment following his dissent in the Briggs case and his prior decision striking down attempts in South Carolina to privatize the Democratic primary system to prevent blacks from voting, as well as speeches he had made advocating an end to segregation in the South. The South Carolina Congressional delegation making the threat, however, had not followed through with action two years earlier. In fall, 1950, U.S. Marshals had been ordered to guard his home after stones had been thrown through a window, following threats he had received by mail and telephone and the burning of a cross on his front lawn. He had been appointed to the Court in early 1942 by FDR.

As Judge Waring had, himself, learned, however, segregation, into which all of society had been born for time immemorial, before the Founding, even unto Biblical times, was something which the courts could rule unconstitutional and subsequently ameliorate with approval or disapproval of plans for slow rectification of the disparities resulting from it, but integration of society, long maintained in separation of the races, in the workplace, on public transportation, in dining and overnight accommodations, at the fountains, even in the face of society's younger members attending educational facilities together, could only occur through people on all sides of the color lines introducing themselves to the continuum of the color spectrum and beginning to understand that humanity and continuing education, daily, are the common bridges which traditions and superstititions systemically had insisted be the delineators to impose separation, not just by race but also by religion and socio-economic class, steerage versus first class on the liners by which many immigrants came to the shores of the United States, delineators to suggest, for want ultimately of jingling silver in the pockets, unworthiness, uncleanliness, unhealthiness, to fulfill the perceived expedient need for a servant class, cheap labor to keep prices down, to serve those possessed of the commonly agreed attributes of superstitiously endowed blessedness, the lucky ones cleaned by the green, all of which myths began to tumble in the face of commonly felt economic depression, in the face of a wealthy, well-educated, but crippled man in the White House for 12 years, later in the face of a wealthy, well-educated, heroic but infirm man in the White House for the relatively brief period of less than three years, cut short by the worst brutality has to offer, inflicted on all of society at once, in one day, a cross-generational understanding which can all go for naught unless maintained generationally into the future and practiced dutifully by the elders who remember, and truly remember, not with a stern lecture, waxing with pointed fingers of blame at those not understanding these simple lessons of history, or deemed not to understand, superimposing a faux superiority and, sometimes, even punitive sanctions against those who have been adjudged wanting of sufficient experience to achieve the understanding, only serving thereby again to create a new underclass for the purpose of maintaining subservience to the master, stimulating inevitably concomitant reaction thereto...

The Supreme Court also refused review of three appeals involving Judith Coplon, the former Justice Department employee who had been accused and convicted of plotting to spy for Russia in two separate Federal cases involving the same basic facts, her alleged taking of file summaries from the Department to hand over to a U.N. Secretariat employee from Russia, whom she claimed was her lover, and who was subsequently deported without serving time, despite conviction with Ms. Coplon.

In Paris, the U.S., Britain and France this date formally announced to the U.N. political committee that they would demand U.N. action in the event of Chinese Communist or Russian aggression in Southeast Asia. U.S. delegate John Sherman Cooper urged immediate and earnest consideration of the matter by the body. The matter arose during debate on a proposal to condemn Russia for violating its 1945 treaty with Nationalist China. Earlier, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky had accused the U.S. of preparing aggressive moves against Communist China along the South China border and that the U.S. would likely declare such actions as "defensive measures against China's aggression whenever events begin to take their course on the southern borders of China, in Thailand, Burma and Yunnan Province." That vague reference to "events" had been interpreted by Western observers to suggest that the Chinese might use charges of U.S. aggression to justify new military action on the southern border with Indo-China.

In Cairo, King Farouk turned the existing Government out of office and returned to power a veteran political "strong man", former Premier Aly Mahar Pasha, stating that the change was necessary to restore law and order after riots had erupted in Cairo on Saturday. Western observers found the move possibly to make settlement easier between Britain and Egypt regarding defense of the Suez Canal and control of the Sudan, issues which had caused violence the previous year when Egypt canceled treaties with Britain on those areas, formed originally in exchange for British policing of the areas. The new Premier, who, before World War II, had pro-British sympathies, pledged to fulfill the "independent unity of the Nile valley", to eliminate British control, and maintain stability, security and peace. The Premier had been interned at British insistence during the war because of his talks with representatives of Mussolini, but his public statements recently had indicated advocacy of a pro-Western policy. Police in Cairo estimated that about 20 persons had been killed and 80 wounded in the rioting on Saturday, and the British estimated that they had suffered 15 casualties. About 300 persons had been arrested in connection with the riots. A nighttime curfew was put in effect and martial law had been imposed for two months throughout Egypt.

A Russian underground organization in West Germany reported that near East Berlin on November 7, Soviet secret police had invaded a Red Army officers' drinking party formed to celebrate the Bolshevik Revolution, and arrested more than 50 officers following toasts which had stated "down with Stalin", accompanied by pistol shots, prompting the secret police to surround the hall. The incident had been related to the West recently by a Red Army deserter.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived home in England following his trip to the U.S., which he stated he was certain had "done good".

Price administrator Mike DiSalle told this date the joint committee studying the budget that price controls needed to be tightened to protect the nation from runaway inflation. He also stated that he was setting up a committee to search for areas in which decontrol might be possible.

In Cleveland, a Capital Airlines plane suddenly dropped 3,800 feet before leveling off, causing injury to five passengers, who were then treated at a local hospital after the plane landed.

In Minneapolis, a mother and her four children were missing and believed to have been burned to death this date in a fire which had swept through a three-story business and apartment building. Eight other occupants of the building were missing but believed by firemen to have taken refuge with friends to escape 15-below-zero weather.

In Ohio and West Virginia, thousands of persons sought higher ground as floods of the Ohio River and other streams caused by heavy rainfall inundated low-lying areas, the worst of which occurring in a section of Wheeling, W. Va. At least three persons were dead or missing. Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio had ordered National Guard units to stand by on an emergency basis.

On page 12-A, the eighth segment of the serialization of Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Book Ever Written relates of the story of Jacob.

On the editorial page, "TV Needs Some Attention" finds that even the staid State Department was awakening to the potential advantages of television, as its Foreign Service Journal had suggested recently television diplomacy.