The Charlotte News
Friday, May 21, 1954
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Hanoi that three defense posts in the southeastern sector of the vital Red River Delta had battled fiercely this date to hold off encircling Vietminh forces, as the French Union defenders of the fallen Dien Bien Phu had sought to do. French aircraft parachuted ammunition, guns and food to Vietnamese defenders and French non-commissioned officers in the three posts, who had been under constant heavy mortar attack and machine-gun fire for nearly two weeks. On two occasions, one of the posts had repulsed Vietminh infantry assaults, though outnumbered by the enemy by six to one. French fighter planes and bombers had heavily hit the rebel attackers, with B-26's having dropped scores of 1,000-pound, delayed-action bombs, timed to explode at the point the rebels launched their nightly infantry assaults. Thus far, the Vietminh had failed in all of their attempts to capture any of the outposts, all of which were within a 50-mile radius of Hanoi. During the previous two weeks, the Vietminh had cut off all road communications with the three posts and had tightened their encirclement of them.
The French high command said that 159 wounded had been evacuated from Dien Bien Phu and that it hoped to fly out another 100 this date.
At Geneva, deadlocked East-West talks regarding the Indo-China portion of the peace conference had resumed in secret this date as France was reportedly seeking to limit the initial negotiations to a cease-fire in the Associated State of Viet Nam, desiring to keep the talks separate from armistice regarding the other two Associated States of Cambodia and Laos, as the Vietminh and other Communist delegations, the Soviets and Communist Chinese, were insisting be resolved at the same time. The French had demanded immediate withdrawal of Communist troops from Laos and Cambodia, causing a temporary one-day recess the previous day. French sources said that the French delegation would seek agreement in principle on proposed zones in Viet Nam in which opposing forces would be assembled under the armistice plan proposed by French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault. If successful in carrying out that proposal, the French hoped to turn over the question of defining those zones to a subcommittee of military experts, and to assign another subcommittee the question of getting Vietminh forces out of Laos and Cambodia. It was generally conceded that the conference had reached a crucial stage with both the West and the Communists refusing to give ground on basic issues.
Communist China's air command was reported to have concentrated a substantial force of jet fighters and light bombers along its mainland coast opposite Formosa, a build-up apparently occurring since the armistice in Korea the prior July, allowing diversion of air power from Manchuria. The build-up of aircraft consisted almost entirely of MIG-15's and IL-28 jet bombers. There was no indication that officials in Washington were unduly alarmed about the prospects of any immediate move against Formosa. The redeployment appeared to have been undertaken gradually, part of a broader program which had dispatched larger numbers of aircraft to fields in southern China, close to the Indo-China border.
The three Democratic Senators on the Investigations subcommittee, Senators John McClellan, Stuart Symington and Henry Jackson, investigating the dispute between the Army and Senator McCarthy, this date said that the public was entitled to hear anything relevant to the dispute contained in transcripts of monitored phone calls, including those of their own calls. Putting an end to speculation that Senator McCarthy might withdraw from the hearings based on the President's order against disclosure by any member of the executive branch to the subcommittee of any information regarding private discussions on the dispute and documents related to those discussions, the Senator indicated that he would be back when the hearings resumed the following Monday. He referred to the President's order, however, as effectively taking the Fifth Amendment and said that he did not understand what the executive branch had to hide.
Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana said this date that he had been informed that the choice of a location for the Air Force Academy had been narrowed to five sites, four of which were, respectively, in Indiana, Michigan, California and Colorado, but was not aware of the location of the fifth possibility. There was no indication as to whether the Huntersville site near Charlotte was the fifth still under consideration.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this date that cost of living had declined slightly in April, the third decrease in three months, almost entirely the result of lower excise taxes which took effect on April 1. The decline meant a penny per hour pay cut for about 1.25 million workers in the automobile, aircraft and farm equipment industries, whose pay rates under union contracts were tied by an escalator clause to the cost-of-living index.
In Raleigh, the Democratic state convention demurred against taking any action on the segregation issue the previous day, after being told by attorney Irving Carlyle of Winston-Salem, keynote speaker at the convention, that "as good citizens", North Carolinians had no choice but to comply with the law out of respect for law and order, the "source of our strength as a state and as a nation". Resolutions which protested the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, handed down the prior Monday, had been defeated in two of the 12 Congressional district meetings which preceded the convention. Delegates of one of those districts had adopted a milder resolution calling on the convention to recommend that Governor William B. Umstead adopt some form or procedure for the handling of the important and delicate matter. That resolution, however, had fizzled when it failed to obtain a second to the motion in the committee on resolutions and platform. The convention adopted a platform plank on education which said that the state, under the guidance of the Democratic Party, would meet and successfully solve "all problems, known and unknown", which confronted public education "in this anxious hour".
In Kansas City, two St. Louis policemen who had captured the couple who had kidnaped and then murdered Bobby Greenlease the previous September, executed for same late in the year, were sentenced to prison this date for lying to a Federal grand jury about what had happened to the unrecovered bulk of the $600,000 ransom paid by the wealthy automobile dealer father of the six-year old boy. One former lieutenant of the police department, a veteran of 27 years, was sentenced to three years, and a rookie patrolman under his command was sentenced to two years, both convicted of perjury. The defense had unsuccessfully sought probationary sentences.
In Lansing, Kans., a 29-year old man was hung for the fatal shooting of an 18-year old in October, 1947, the ninth person executed at the Kansas State Prison since Kansas had reinstated capital punishment in 1935. The man had maintained his innocence. The victim had been shot by a man who accosted the youth and his girlfriend on a country road. The executed man uttered a prayer of forgiveness for his sins, just prior to his hanging.
In Jacksonville, N.C., a young Marine captain, stationed at Camp Lejeune, used a hatchet to kill his three children and assault his wife, who was in serious condition, before killing himself with a butcher knife. No motive for the slayings had been established. The coroner said that apparently the captain had attacked his wife first and then killed the three children, all of whom were in bed. A civilian neighbor had heard the wife scream just before she had fled into the front yard with her head bleeding from multiple wounds. The neighbor ran to the home and sought to restrain the assailant, at which point the captain seized a butcher knife and stuck it into his own throat, exhibiting the "wildest look" the neighbor had ever seen. The public information officer at Camp Lejeune said that the captain had recently been in a highly nervous state. The coroner said a doctor attending the wife indicated the belief that she would recover. The captain had been stationed at Lejeune only since November, but had been in the service since 1939.
In Efland, N.C., at least 30 cars of a Southern Railway freight train had jumped the tracks and piled up in a crumpled mass this date, but no one was injured.
On the editorial page, "The Tranquil Are Gobbled Up" indicates that Eric Hoffer, a San Francisco longshoreman and also a philosopher and writer, had written an article in Harper's, titled "The Workingman Looks at the Boss", in which he had stated his views on labor-management relations, representing what it regards as a keen analysis of the capitalistic system, while at the same time providing a basis for understanding the value of controversies and conflicts going on in the country and around the world. Mr. Hoffer believed that the division between labor and management ought be obvious, that it was management's job to manage and the job of the workers to protect their interests to the extent they could, with each side goading the other to perfect their organization. He believed that any doctrine which provided for oneness of management and labor could be used to turn the worker into a compliant instrument in the hands of management and that the most formidable employer was one who cast himself in the role of a representative and champion of the workers. He suggested that the best stimulus for running ahead was to have something from which one was running and that the "millennial society", where the wolf and lamb would dwell together, would be a stagnant society.
It opines that historian Arnold Toynbee had in mind such controversy and conflict when he compared Soviet Russia and the Western democracies to a catfish among a netful of herring. The Soviet threat kept the democracies alert. Similarly, racial conflict in the South had hastened the equalization of facilities for black citizens. The McCarthy-Army hearings, despite their deviations from the main topic, were focusing needed attention on the division between and possible threats to executive and legislative powers.
It indicates that controversy and conflict, while wearisome at times, were worthwhile and necessary, and better than constant agreement and tranquility. It quotes the late William Randolph Hearst: "Whatever begins to be tranquil is gobbled up by something that is not tranquil."
We are not certain that quoting William Randolph Hearst on much of anything is very worthwhile in convincing the reader of the validity of your thesis, which, at base, is a lot of gobbledygook without facts to back it up. What your premise ultimately boils down to is that every deficiency in a society is good because it needs remedy, and so aspiring to a better society is really a useless endeavor, as the ideal society would be one not tolerating further change. Thus, one should welcome injustice as the ultimate panacea for all of your ailments. It may sound good to adherents of the exponent of yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst, raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, but not to those who value justice and fairness as the ultimate, if unattainable, goal of any society. Yes, yellow journalism sells newspapers, and if it weren't for injustice, newspapers would have little of interest on which to editorialize, and editors would be reduced to copy-readers and layout artists, devoid of viewpoint. But that is no reason to champion injustice as a means to an end of providing justice. You are off the track, somewhere caught in the fishing nets.
In your world, if the Soviet Union ceased to be, the Western democracies would have to invent a foe to maintain that pressure from controversy and conflict. And, while, of course, that was the case, with the Tourists having come to supplant the Commies as the foe du jour, just as the Commies had supplanted the true foes to democacy, the Facists and Nazis, that still does not validate your thesis or suggest that it is in any regard salutary. It is the ultimate in circular reasoning.
"Borrowers Deserve a Better Break" indicates that while there were many ethical small-loan companies and many upright justices of the peace, North Carolina afforded loopholes for the unscrupulous lenders and jaypees.
It recounts that a Raleigh cabdriver had borrowed $50 from a small loan company, which induced him to sign a worthless check as "security", and when he got behind on payments, he was taken to jaypee court, where he was told that if he would plead guilty, he would get off lightly, agreeing to continue payment on the loan, paying the jaypee seven dollars in costs. Then he got behind again on the loan payments and was put in jail, presumably for contempt or on the worthless check charge, and required to pay another seven dollars in costs. Insurance, interest and fees on a $50 loan ordinarily cost about $11.50, such that principal, insurance, fees and fines added up to about $75 in the case.
Anxious lenders wanting to collect debts by whatever means they could, plus the justice of the peace system which allowed for the collection of fees from each conviction of a debtor, combined to create undue hardships on the already hard-pressed borrower. It suggests that it would be in the interest of the ethical small-loan companies to press for higher standards in their profession. Local small-loan company officials were reportedly interested in correcting some of the abuses in the system. It finds that the justices of the peace could hardly be expected to initiate changes which would deprive them of their principal source of income, and so it remained for the General Assembly to revise the jaypee system. Legislative action, it urges, ought also limit the loan sharks, unless the ethical small-loan companies would raise the profession's standards.
"Spend More Time on the Road" provides a confession of a formerly pass-happy motorist who had reformed, as cited by the Vocational Guidance Committee of the Kiwanis Club of Lincolnton, embarked on the worthwhile project of curbing the persistent passer. The account indicated that on one trip of 70 miles, the confessor had averaged a speed of 52 mph in 81 minutes of driving time, passing frequently, and remaining under a state of tension the whole time. On a second trip, he was relaxed and did not pass at all, averaging 47 mph in 89 minutes of driving time, saving only eight minutes during the first trip while passing frequently.
Enforced minimum and maximum speed laws in heavily-traveled sections of New York and New Jersey, it informs, made passing almost impossible. Some motorists, without being forced to do so, would follow the example of the "reformed passer" if they stopped to realize that frequent passing saved little time, while contributing to many accidents.
"Libraries Aren't Teen-Age Clubs" indicates that there was a trend in library planning which it believes should be halted. An article appearing in Everyday magazine described, in glowing terms, plans for the new St. Louis Public Library, having a special room with blond, birch modern furniture, red, blue and yellow cushions, with music records and earphones, chess lessons, drama clubs, classes in newspaper and creative writing, and bobby soxers helping to plan other activities. There would also be some books, but none in that gay room would be "gloomy and heavy".
It indicates that it had always regarded libraries as places to read and perhaps to dream and think, and suggests that the earlier in life such habits were formed, the better. Schools, civic clubs, and church clubs provided the outlet for such teenage social activities. It suggests that the youngsters who appreciated the wonderful books in a library should be able to do so without being "bugged by their unbookish fellows who would exclaim 'Lamp that weird doop with the book!' on their way to the room with the colorful cushions and phonograph."
Like, pops, you just don't dig that bookville has become square and the bookbin has to make like a place for the diggers so that it can be, like, relevant again, you dig? "Lamp that weird doop"? What does that mean, daddy? That sounds like popsville going diagonal into the trapezoidal complex in Simpletown.
A piece from the Daily Tar Heel, titled "Needed: One Soapbox", indicates that in some remarks on education during his visit to the UNC campus, physicist Harold Urey had developed a picture of academic freedom as, "The right to express whatever view we hold to be correct." He had suggested that the teacher had to be free to express his view without interference from the university or investigating committees.
The editorial, probably by new editor Charles Kuralt, would, it counsels, be extremely self-evident to many, but was a principle under attack in many quarters. It is thus glad to see the reassertion of the principle by Dr. Urey.
It indicates that his definition of academic freedom implied the right of the student to study whatever the student desired and to follow curiosity wherever it might lead, even if to nonconformist social, political and religious views. It ventures that most people in the country conformed, but conformity was foreign to the ideals of the university. Professors were paid to produce new ideas and students worked to find the truth, and that if a university were made to conform, it would no longer be a university.
It posits that American universities needed what UNC needed, a few soapbox orators with alien beliefs to stir things up a bit, academic freedom in its true sense, the best way to strengthen democracy, on the campus and across the country.
A piece from The State magazine tells of a barber at the Sir Walter Barber Shop in Raleigh having reminded that the morning shaving rush in the local barbershop was a passing institution. The writer could remember when the shops were crowded with early-morning shaving clients, dropping in before work, with many businessmen and merchants sneaking off in the middle of the morning to obtain a shave and participate in a morning bull session, as they now sneaked off for coffee. Then, a shave was only a dime, but was enough to make it a luxury for some who could only afford a shave every other day. Others shaved themselves during the week and splurged on Saturday night with a barbershop shave. Once per month, the weekend splurge stretched to cover a shave and a haircut for two bits, plus maybe a shine. The town's rich added a shampoo or massage, while a few would ask the barber to give him "the works", which included a singe, supposed to beautify as well as edify the hair.
But all of that had passed away, especially the shave. The spread of the safety razor and the electric razor had completed the destruction. The writer's barber friend at the barbershop said that he did not average one shaving customer per week at present and he doubted that there were a dozen straight razors in use in Raleigh.
Thus, we have to conclude that there
were considerable liberties taken in the presentation of a certain
film in 1988, which depicted plentiful shaves in the barber chair in
a small Mississippi town in 1964. Protests should be organized to
demand truth in cinematic presentation, with no excuses allowed for
the need to compress into two hours that which had transpired over a
period of five months, against a backdrop of the decades preceding, or to compress into certain characters the feelings of revulsion at the heinous acts of cold-blooded murder of three innocent young people felt by millions of Americans of all races, Southern and non-Southern alike, at the time of the events depicted. We demand documentaries, not false dramatic
presentations. The barbershop scenes should have utilized only
electric
Of course, one must also make room for the probability that in 1964 in the small Mississippi town portrayed, there was considerable atavistic behavior in many respects, hearkening back to the late 19th and early 20th century, and so one could also make allowance for the possible continuation of the tradition of the barbershop shave and bull-shooting convention, at least among the well-heeled of the town.
Sorry, we did not mean to disillusion you. Raleigh was, obviously, a much more advanced society by 1954, being a part of the university triangle.
Drew Pearson indicates that former President Truman had been having breakfast in Washington the previous week when DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell had asked him to join his table occupied by Democrats Lee Metcalf of Montana, Don Mitchell of Iowa, Jay Turner of the District of Columbia, and Ward Clark of South Dakota. The conversation turned to the Army-McCarthy hearings and the question of whether investigating Senators should obtain confidential information from the President. President Truman said that there was always a tendency on the part of Congressional committees to seek information from the executive branch and that when he had been in Congress, he recalled that they had tried to do the same thing. But, he cautioned, "this fellow", referring to Senator McCarthy, was not only trying to obtain information, but was seeking to embarrass his own party. Mr. Truman reminded that as a Senator, he had been chairman of the same committee during the war, having started the Government Operations Committee, and that what they had been doing was to provide oversight to prevent people from stealing Government money "by the shovelful", stressing such problems in military supply and weapons contracts. He said that he had gone to the White House every week or so to consult with President Roosevelt, calling attention to certain people who were engaged in improper conduct, at which time the President would make a note of the entire matter. A week or so later, he would return to check on what the President had discovered, and sometimes he had been able to report that things had been straightened out, while at other times, he would say that he had not been able to do anything and that Senator Truman would "have to take care of that s.o.b." After the former President had departed the breakfast table, Mr. Turner had remarked that Mr. Truman had then gone on to the White House, while Senator McCarthy "has gone to the doghouse."
Senators who had read the lengthy memorandum sent to them by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, showing why the substance of the high-level Justice Department conference of January 21 with Army general counsel John G. Adams, regarding the trouble the Army was having with Senator McCarthy and Roy Cohn seeking special favors for drafted Private G. David Schine, could not be published, did not know that most of the Republican memo had been written by the Democrats. Former Attorney General Howard McGrath, serving during the last year of the Truman Administration, said that the memo had been in the files for four years and that Mr. Brownell had only dusted it off, changing a few words. Mr. Pearson notes that the memo had gone back to the days of George Washington, showing why Presidents did not have to reveal confidential matters to Congress—unless the matter involved criminal conduct, such as obstruction of justice, and was being sought by a prosecutor as part of a criminal investigation.
The natural gas companies had been slipping so many rate increases through the Federal Power Commission that some municipalities were talking about forming gas co-ops to protect themselves from price-gouging. They would be publicly owned gas companies, similar to the electric co-ops which had blossomed during the Thirties as a result of abuses by the private power companies. He notes that the latest windfall handed to the natural gas companies by the new Republican-controlled FPC had been a decision to permit the gas companies to base rates on "fair field value" rather than actual production costs, permitting a ten-fold increase over the old rate-making formula, though the rates would be raised gradually so as not to alarm consumers. In the case of the Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Co., that single FPC decision had increased the value of its natural gas reserves by about 300 million dollars overnight, approximately 100 times the depreciated net investment costs carried on that company's books.
Business Week, in an editorial, examines Alcoa's quandary regarding its continued sponsorship of the CBS program "See It Now", hosted by Edward R. Murrow, in the wake of the controversy stimulated by the March 9 broadcast devoted to Senator McCarthy and his rise to power, which had prompted a bitter reply four weeks later by the Senator, also aired on "See It Now", in which he attacked Mr. Murrow as a Communist sympathizer for his association with a student exchange program in 1935 which had scheduled a summer program in Moscow, ultimately canceled by the Soviets, claiming that the program was designed to inculcate Communism in the participating students, despite that program having been endorsed and advised by leading educators of the time.
The controversy cut both ways with Alcoa, with some viewers hoping that it would drop the program, while many others would be disillusioned if it did so. The latter group included many whose support Alcoa had been trying to obtain with its sponsorship of the program. Alcoa, it indicates, had comported itself with dignity in the process of its decision.
The problem, it points out, was that single sponsors presented most television programming, and, if television adopted the same format which had been adopted for many years by newspapers and magazines, having multiple advertisers, the problem would be eliminated as there would be no capability of concentrating pressure on a single sponsor to cancel a particular program.
It indicates that it was important, just as in magazines and newspapers, for television news to be able to editorialize, in addition to simply reporting the news. Sponsors, in turn, had to be as courageous as Alcoa had been in resisting pressure from that part of the public organized against particular views expressed on a sponsored program. The public, including stockholders, customers and special interest groups, had an obligation of their own, to recognize the right of such sponsors as Alcoa to sponsor individual programs. Alcoa paid CBS two million dollars per year to air "See It Now", and without any conditions on its editorial content. By doing so, Alcoa created separation from the views expressed on the program, and should be accorded that deference by the public.
It finds that Alcoa was doing a great public service in bringing such a program as that of Mr. Murrow to television, but it believes that such programs could continue and television reach its full stature only if sponsors could buy time, just as magazine and newspaper advertisers bought space, without taking responsibility for the editorial viewpoint expressed.
Congressional Quarterly indicates that several bills were pending in Congress to end Federal administration of Indian affairs in 14 states, including California, Florida, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, New York, Oregon, Nevada, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.
The previous year, Congress adopted a resolution declaring its policy that "as rapidly as possible" Indians should be made subject to the same laws as other citizens, ending their status as wards of the United States. In compliance with that resolution, the Interior Department had drafted a series of bills providing for withdrawal of Federal supervision in eight tribal jurisdictions, and later other bills were introduced impacting the tribes in the aforementioned states.
In February, the National Congress of American Indians called an emergency conference, attended by delegates representing one-third of the Indian population, declaring that any legislation to end Federal obligations recognized by treaties should occur only with the consent of the Indian tribes affected. Lobbyists and spokesmen opposing the bills stated that the Indians were already free, that the only limitation or protection applied to their trust property, and that taxation of the trust property, which was tax-free in most states, would cause them to lose their land. They also feared that less educated Indians might be cheated out of such tribal land resources as oil, uranium and rich timber and grazing areas.
The Department of Interior contended that whenever tribal property was involved, the bills provided the Indians with a range of choices concerning its management or disposition, and that the measures developed had been accomplished through consultation with the tribal groups affected.
Nevertheless, many tribes were dissatisfied with the legislation and some states had not agreed to provide services which the Indians now possessed, and it was feared that their cultural identity, if not their assets, would be lost.
A letter writer from Pinebluff comments on the editorial of May 18 regarding the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, holding that continued segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional, no longer passing muster under the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, previously allowed on the dubious proposition of existence of "separate-but-equal" facilities, never in fact realized in 58 years of practice. The writer takes particular exception to the statement in the editorial that a majority of the parents of both white and black students might decide that it was in the best interests of their children not to force "the difficult psychological and sociological readjustment" which integration would cause. She finds that children did not find integration difficult or even considered it at all unless they were conditioned to do so by their parents. Left to themselves, she counsels, there would be no psychological or sociological differences perceived by the children. She indicates that one way to end racial prejudice was to allow children to attend school in the same classes, regardless of race, creed, or color. She relates that she had attended public school in Philadelphia and New York many years earlier with several black children in her classes and that it had never occurred to her to feel superior to them or to protest their being there. Nothing disastrous or awful had happened, and she had grown up without intolerance to "other of God's children". Her sons had also associated in school with black students and had turned out well, one having become a medical doctor, another a major in the Army, and a third being a special honors student at Georgia Tech. When she had attended Smith College, there had been one black student in her dormitory and she had turned out to be one of the smartest, best-mannered, most intelligent students there. That student's father had been a doctor and her mother, an outstanding lawyer. She predicts that the South would take the new ruling in "a fine spirit of cooperation and thus make tremendous forward strides that will put it right out in the front of our nation."
A letter from Bob Cherry, Jr., notes "with considerable bitterness" the decision in Brown, "despite the clear language of the Constitution to the effect that the individual states have jurisdiction with respect to educating its citizens." He finds it "revolting" that the arguments of "a mere handful of radical 'reformers' and rabblerousers" within a racial minority, parenthetically referring to the NAACP, had been able to obtain an unanimous decision from the highest court in the land, "clearly contrary to the will of the overwhelming rank and file of the Southern people". He indicates that Southerners should not be unduly alarmed at the present, as there yet remained the problem of enforcing the decision, that at that point, "a great people will rise to the challenging occasion with the fearless courage and vigor which has characterized them since the birth of the republic." "Long live our magnificent republic! But raise that beautiful Confederate flag several notches, Stonewall! Methinks it's flying too low in this hour 'neath yon gorgeous southern sun!"
No, wethinks it is you who is flying
too low against a southern moonshine—not unlike Travis Barnette in the well-known picture from the below-linked Life article of December 18, 1964, advertising with his four fingers his Klannery Kounseltation
One might quibble with the Brown Court for not having stated fully its legal premise in such manner that it could be understood better by posterity, that being the result of the desirability of achieving unanimity of decision—which is never the result in any case of the single Justice who is nominally the "author" of the majority opinion, but rather the outcome of conferences and passing of drafts of an opinion among the other Justices for comment and addition or subtraction to achieve consensus and support. But as to the fairness and justice of the result vis-à-vis the Constitution, no one could differ but an idiot—stewed so deeply in Southern fried tradition that they could no longer see reality beyond the hazy mists of that glorious day of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, to whom "if only" became the ruling fantasy, one which would have been, had it been translated to reality, both short-lived and disastrous in its own right, as the South as a separate nation was condemned to fail in abject poverty within a short period of time.
Plainly, the first writer and the next writer have, by far, the better take on the matter and the better arguments. Separate school systems constituted an undue drag on the treasuries of those states practicing such apartheid arrangements, which is why, during those times, the South routinely was behind the nation in educational attainment from its public school systems and why there was a great tendency, as a result, to poverty status when compared to other states of the nation where segregation was not institutionalized, even though often practiced de facto, resulting from the physicial arrangement of segregated neighborhoods within a given community.
There is nothing magical per se about integration, but certainly an integrated school system, where a student is able to gain a firsthand understanding of other racial constituencies, as well as other creeds and socio-economic strata, informs that student with a more realistic appraisal of life as it transpires outside of school in the community at large. Segregation only maintained the superstitious myths regarding nonsensical theories of racial superiority, the ultimate resort of persons on any side of racial divides unable to find pride and dignity in anything more significant than their ethnic or racial heritage because of lack of inculcation of individual pride and dignity in their own individual accomplishments. Such views of racial superiority then lead inexorably to dehumanization of the members of the out-group, thus justifying any form of sanction exerted on failure of members of that out-group to conform to the standards demanded by the "superior" group, including the ultimate sanction of infliction of torture and death for non-adherents.
Thus, came the deaths of the three civil rights workers on June 21, 1964, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, Mississippi, at the hands of reprobate Klan members, sanctioned by local law enforcement. While those murders were only three of many, many of which went unreported because of fear, they focused attention, as no other such murders had, on that part of the South which had refused to become civilized in a modern age and resorted to tribal brutality to enforce its dictatorial will on the non-compliant with that particular tribe's customs, traditions and rites of entry, the first of which was skin pigment and racial identity, as it was the only thing left which such tribesmen could find to afford them dignity, that special place now being threatened by the out-group and its champions from "the North".
A letter from a black minister, who had written previously to the newspaper favoring integration, praises the Brown decision, finding that it expressed the conscience of a nation and was the greatest Supreme Court decision ever written. He indicates that the possibility that separate facilities might be equal was immaterial, that segregation in public schools, in and of itself, as the Court had found, was unlawful discrimination. He believes that an integrated country would be stronger spiritually and morally, and that adjustment to it would be necessary to perfect human brotherhood. He believes that the Supreme Court had performed the highest type of public service in showing the way to the "Golden Age of a better future era".
A letter from the president of the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte expresses appreciation to the newspaper and to the local radio and television stations for complete cooperation with their publicity committee.
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