The Charlotte News
Wednesday, December 7, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in London, former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, 72, who had directed creation of Britain's welfare state, had resigned this date as leader of the Labor Party. The replacement would come from a fight between deputy leader Herbert Morrison, Hugh Gaitskell and Aneurin Bevan, the latter the Welsh leader of the party's left wing who was given almost no chance against the other two, both followers of Mr. Attlee's moderate policies, with Mr. Morrison's age of 67 possibly counting against him. Mr. Attlee had held the position of party leader for 20 years, a record in modern British politics. He provided his resignation in a closed meeting of Labor members of Parliament which had lasted less than 30 minutes, with his colleagues saluting him with "For he's a Jolly Good Fellow", with Mr. Attlee being visibly moved, his lips quivering, at the tribute. His retirement had come from age and ill health, with Labor's recent defeat in the general election perhaps having accelerated the decision. The previous summer, Mr. Attlee had suffered a slight stroke, had recovered, but found himself increasingly fatigued as he conducted the party's battles in Parliament, often through all-night sessions of Commons. Eight months earlier, Winston Churchill had resigned as Prime Minister and head of the Conservative Party at the age of 80. Mr. Attlee had served as Deputy Prime Minister to Mr. Churchill during the coalition Government of World War II and then had become Prime Minister, himself, in July, 1945, when the Conservatives were swept from power in preparation for a postwar economy. He had established a socialized health system, nationalized the railroads, coal mines and several other industries, with taxation policies and social benefits having reduced the difference between the status of rich and poor. Labor had announced it was giving "fair shares for all" but had been plagued by a series of financial crises which, among other things, had forced the devaluation of the pound. Abroad, British rule in India was terminated during Mr. Attlee's six years as Prime Minister and there had emerged in its place a broadened British Commonwealth, including India, Pakistan and Ceylon.
In Frankfurt, West Germany, an explosion had destroyed a new apartment building in the midtown area before dawn this date, burying 32 Germans beneath a 20-foot high mass of wreckage, with 26 persons, including seven children, believed to be dead, the worst disaster in West Germany's postwar rebuilding period. Six hours after the blast, the damaged wall of an adjoining building was threatening collapse on 150 German and American rescue workers, prompting them to run from the debris, but soon resumed their work. Seven injured persons, three men, two women and two children, had been rescued from the wreckage, with one, a 12-year old boy, being carried out on a stretcher after being buried for six hours. By midday, the bodies of another four men, three women and a child had been dug from the debris. The owner-architect of the building, who was among the dead, had, along with his tenants, moved into the building only two weeks earlier. The building was occupied by 12 families. A U.S. Army engineer unit had rushed heavy bulldozers to help police and firemen in the rescue and clearing effort, and U.S. soldiers joined in removing mortar and bricks from the debris. One eyewitness said that it appeared that a big bomb had hit the building. One man, clad in pajamas, had been found beneath an overturned bathtub which had sheltered him from the debris, while a 28-year old woman was wedged between two blocks of concrete which had similarly protected her. In 1954, a four-story building in Cologne had exploded, killing four persons and injuring eight.
At Pearl Harbor, Navy clubs this date dedicated a memorial to the dead in the attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, in a ceremony on a platform on the sunken battleship U.S.S. Arizona, with the actual unveiling to take place later on nearby Ford Island. A total of 3,303 military personnel had been killed, of whom 3,077 belonged to the Navy, with 1,102, including an admiral, still entombed in the Arizona.
In Casper, Wyo., police had found a woman's skeleton in a concrete tomb in the home of a respected family of seven, solving her disappearance 29 months earlier. The skeleton was found clutching a rude cross, and was contained in the basement of the home of her former husband, a former schoolteacher in Casper. The County Attorney said that the body had been pointed out to authorities by the person who had buried it, the first and present wife of the deceased woman's husband. They had been married some years earlier, had two children and later divorced, and he had then married the now deceased woman, and they had a child by the marriage. She had disappeared in July, 1953, but for unexplained reasons, had not been reported missing by her husband until about nine months later. The deceased woman's parents had urged the police to continue their investigation, at which point they interrogated the husband's present wife, and she had signed a statement that she had gone to the home in 1953, that the wife had opened the door and stumbled against a pile of bricks which had toppled over, killing her, at which point the present wife had dragged the body into the house, returned several days later and buried it in the basement. At the time, the husband was building the home and the basement was unfinished. The body had apparently been placed in dry cement and was then wet down and covered with dirt and a concrete floor. Police did not know where the husband and the five children in the household were at the time of the death. Some time afterward, the woman who had buried the body had returned to live with her former husband. He had resigned as a shop instructor at the local high school the previous spring, and in August, he, along with the family, had moved to Worland, Wyo., where he worked as a machinist, with the home left unoccupied. Acting on the direction of the woman who had buried the body, police had begun drilling in the basement the prior Monday night, at first being unsuccessful, until the pet dog of the family, a St. Bernard, came into the basement and began whimpering over the spot where the body turned out to be buried. The former husband identified a wedding ring on the hand of the deceased, saying he had given it to her. Police had permitted the husband and his current wife to return to their home overnight. Nothing wrong here. It all makes perfectly good sense.
Dick Young of The News indicates that Charlotte school commissioners were pleased with their share of the State's allocation of the remaining 25 million dollars out of the 50 million dollar State school bond issue, with Mecklenburg County's part being $770,655, the City schools receiving about $470,000 and the County getting about $300,000. The City School Board during the morning undertook formal action to express their appreciation for the City's share, which the commissioners said would be more than enough to construct one school building. The allotment was the largest for any county in the state, but the per pupil allotment was next to the lowest, with one commissioner saying that he felt that school growth ought be an important factor in the allocation of funds, that where there were more students, the need was greater, as in Charlotte and Mecklenburg.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that the County School superintendent, J. W. Wilson, had expressed disappointment in the County's share of the money, indicating hope for a per capita share, which would have amounted to about a million dollars for both the City and the County, rather than the allotted $770,000. He said that the countywide school enrollment amounted to about four percent of the total state enrollment and that the County's share would not solve the problems which would confront it in 1956 and 1957, particularly the latter year. He said that the money would be placed where it was most urgently needed, and that a New York school consulting firm was making a survey of the situation at present, that when completed, the County School Board would have reliable information and be in a better position to see what the problems would be. The State had set aside three million dollars of the total to be distributed on the basis of effort by the counties to meet school needs, and Mecklenburg officials considered the county to be strongest on that point. Eight million had been allocated on the basis of ability to pay, with the remaining 14 million based on need.
In Charlotte, a gas war appeared to be in the making this date, or perhaps was only a carry-over from the previous one of late October, as prices had fallen to 27.9 cents in the Plaza-Independence Boulevard shopping area, where reports were that the prices might go as low as 15 or 16 cents per gallon, as it had during the previous gas war, which had ended on October 29 after ten days. On November 1, stations in the Plaza-Independence area had dropped the regular gasoline price back to 28.9 cents, where the price had remained until the present morning. The gas war was spreading all over town and indications were that prices might fall again in another day or so.
A Superior Court jury of 11 white men and one black man had this date begun deliberations regarding a 69-year old Huntersville black man charged with the second-degree murder of another black man, with the defendant capable of being found guilty on either second-degree murder or manslaughter, or not guilty. He was charged with the shotgun slaying of the other man, with the defendant having claimed self-defense.
Two men who had been charged the prior Monday with the pre-dawn theft of narcotics from Doctors Pharmacy on Central Avenue had waived a preliminary hearing in City Recorder's Court this date, and the judge had set bond for their Superior Court appearance at $1,000 each, with one of the men having been charged with the attempted armed robbery of Beatty's Service Station on Wilkinson Boulevard the previous July, but had been found not guilty. City detectives had recovered part of the narcotics from a small oil drum off old Park Road eight miles from town, estimating the value of the drugs at $4,000 if sold on the black market. The owner of the store said that the loss to the store was about $500. The burglars had cut the front door glass around the lock and had entered the store in the wee hours of Monday, taking at least 26 bottles of morphine, codeine, tincture of opium, phenobarbital and similar narcotics. The thieves had been observed making their getaway in a blue Buick. The defendants had been arrested the previous day, less than 48 hours after the break-in. The story does not tell how the police came to suspect the pair. Guess we will have to await the exciting details when they come to trial.
Donald MacDonald of The News indicates that the search for a Huntersville Prison Camp escapee facing a life sentence imposed in 1949 for murder of his wife had centered around a section northwest of the town this date, with prison officials indicating that the prisoner was dangerous. He had made his escape by crawling through a steam tunnel. He had been brought to the camp the previous March from Central Prison in Raleigh to work as a laborer while the camp was being remodeled to house white prisoners convicted of misdemeanors. By noon, the hunt had not turned up any evidence.
Ronald Green, News sportswriter, reports that Oasis Temple of the Shrine had a move afoot to add 5,000 or more permanent bleacher seats to Memorial Stadium, which would increase the capacity to 23,000 or more. The move had been prompted by the great demand for tickets to the Shrine Bowl game, an annual contest between the top high school players of North and South Carolina, with the proceeds going to the Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children in Greenville, S.C. Shrine officials were considering sponsoring a project separate from the Bowl to raise funds for the addition, as the Bowl's proceeds were reserved for the Hospital.
In Las Vegas, a farmer being harassed by a gopher had dropped a concussion bomb into its hole, but according to the farmer, the gopher had pushed the bomb, with the fuse burning, back out of the hole, at which point the farmer had picked it up and hurled it away, the bomb exploding, igniting a hay pile. Firemen had saved the farmer's home and barn, but 12 tons of hay had been destroyed. The farmer claimed that the gopher still peered from its hole.
On the editorial page, "Ike Best Answer to Katzenjammers" indicates that the "razzle-dazzle road trip of Khrushchev & Bulganin, the Kremlin's Katzenjammer Kids," had produced distinctively different reactions in the U.S. and Britain, with the British having been hotly indignant, one press officer having been so riled that the Foreign Office had put him under wraps to cool off, while the State Department, prior to the joint U.S.-Portuguese statement during the week, had said only that the demagoguery of Mr. Khrushchev was apt to be self-defeating.
It finds that the reaction of the British, who had formerly colonized India and Burma and thus had been the more specific target of the Russians, was understandable, but also suggested that the British were more concerned with the fear that the Russians were succeeding with their crude appeal to the masses.
Nikita Khrushchev's violent, petty arguments with reporters, his profaning of a place of prayer, and his persistent vulgarity were the very antithesis of diplomacy, making him look utterly ridiculous, but he and his "straight man", Premier Bulganin, were not playing to a cosmopolitan audience, instead shrewdly trying, in a manner reminiscent of the late Senator Theodore Bilbo, to ingratiate himself and Russia with the vast masses of Indians and Burmese, believing that their illiteracy, isolation and hatred of the colonialism from which they had been lately freed, would bind them to the yoke of Communism.
It indicates that when one considered the success of demagogues, even in the U.S., it was not so easy to believe that the Indians and Burmese would see through the ballyhoo of Nikita Khrushchev and reject it. Two things were clear, that the Kremlin vaudevillians were drawing good crowds and where crowds gathered, nostrums could be sold, and that no matter how ridiculous it was, the Russian show was the only one in town.
It suggests that if the Russian tactics posed any solid threat to the reputation of the British and Americans in the Far East, then the President should undertake, if his health permitted, a tour of the Far East, taking him not only to India and Burma, but to as many nations as he possibly could visit, the most eloquent way for the U.S. to express its sympathy and friendship for the millions who intended to be free if they could find the way. It posits that his presence and reputation as a man of peace, which even the Communists had not dared to attack openly, would be a telling answer to what the Russians had said in public and what their subversive apparati continually said behind the scenes in Asia.
It concludes that the President could do nothing more effective for the sake of world peace than to make such a tour through the lands where the name of the U.S. had once represented affection and liberty.
"Our Own Cure for Collegiate Rioting" finds that there was something uncanny about the transmission of fads among children who were too old to be juvenile delinquents and too young to have any clearly discernible values, referring to the "college set" which was particularly susceptible to fads, whether swallowing goldfish or hoisting 300-pound heifers to the roofs of dormitories. The present fad appeared to be rioting on campus, which it finds to require the same mental capacity as hoisting heifers, but producing a more satisfying din.
Not long after the previous weekend's Georgia Tech riot in response to Governor Marvin Griffin's call for the Board of Regents of the University system to prevent Georgia colleges from participating in athletic events where the opponent had a black member of their team, students at Wake Forest had staged their own riot before the home of the president of the College, Harold Tribble, burning the latter in effigy and emitting various blood-stirring cries of derision and defiance, which no one would dare utter in their individual capacity in the quiet of the president's study.
It finds that the Georgia Tech students had been striking a blow against the "massive silliness of racial prejudice gone haywire" but had chosen an equally silly way to make their point, while the Wake Forest students had appeared to be simply boiling with suspicion that Dr. Tribble had been attempting to de-emphasize athletics at Wake Forest, a claim which he quickly denied in front of the students. After hearing his denials, the students then stormed the girls' dormitories, shouting, "Beat State!" and "Panties!" (The juxtaposition of those two chants might conjure images suggestive of subliminalization of "I Was a Teenage Werewolf", but that movie would not be released until 1957.)
It indicates that it was too bad that spanking had fallen from favor for both small children and big children with smallish minds. It suggests that a return to the old verities appeared in order, adaptable to goldfish swallowers, heifer-hoisters and student rioters.
Wait'll they start streaking...
"Axle-Bender" tells of the City having formed a crew of sidewalk inspectors whose purpose was to find cracked sidewalks and negotiate with adjoining property owners to repair them. It hopes that the City would send the inspector to look at the distressed pavement on the South Church Street railroad overpass, which had started as a crack, but to a motorist going 20 mph, was now "an axle-bending chasm."
"Tippecanoe and DeSapio Too" indicates that Senator Estes Kefauver had inadvertently referred to a Averell Harriman at the Chicago Democratic gathering as "Governor Harrison", which had caused political punsters to recall that the Whig ticket in 1840 had been William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, running under the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", prompting them to dub the as yet inchoate presidential bandwagon of Governor Harriman as "Tippecanoe and DeSapio Too", in reference to Tammany boss Carmine DeSapio, seeking to organize a campaign for the Governor, who remained steadfast in his support of Adlai Stevenson and insistent that he was not going to be a candidate for the nomination.
It finds that it suggested the need for old-fashioned sloganeering in U.S. politics, that recent attempts to produce genuine slogans had paled by comparison with past triumphs, citing as examples, Herbert Hoover's "a chicken in every pot", the 1952 Republican slogan, "Had Enough, Vote Republican," and "Time for a change", as well as "Happy days are here again," the refrain of the Democrats following the election of FDR in 1932.
It suggests that there had not been a real "slang-wanging slogan" with any style since 1884 when the Rev. S. D. Burchard had coined the phrase, "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion", as a brand for the Democrats, running Grover Cleveland, which was said to have cost James G. Blaine the election by alienating New York Catholics. It finds that the slogan, "Turn the rascals out", had a satisfying crackle in 1872, in support of the Democratic candidacy of Horace Greeley against the graft-ridden Administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. It views as the classic of all time, "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight", the Democratic slogan in 1844 which had demanded that the Oregon territory, then jointly occupied by the U.S. and Britain, be included in the U.S. to its fullest extent northward, to 54 degrees, 40 minutes, the southern boundary of Alaska.
It views the trouble with honest political sloganeering to be that it slipped too easily into mere name-calling. It cites as example the campaign of 1896, when excitement had hit a fever pitch and those supporting William Jennings Bryan had labeled as "Plutocrats" the Republicans, while the Republicans, supporting William McKinley, had labeled the Bryan supporters as "Anarchists".
There had been slogans referring to President Martin Van Buren's silver spoons, William Henry Harrison's log cabin, Mr. Blaine's bloody shirt and South Carolina Senator "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman's calls to the wool-hat boys. In more recent times, White House chief of staff Sherman Adams had called the Democrats "sadists" and Senator McCarthy had accused the whole Democratic Party of treason.
It concludes that the slogan-makers had lost their artistry, that there were politicians who could "stroke a platitude and make it purr like an epigram," but that the masters of the political catchword had all gone to work in advertising for Lever Brothers.
Don't worry, Mr. Nixon will employ those advertising men to remake his image in 1968, with the memorable "Nixon's the One", even if it was pregnant with connotations which enabled an opening for opponents to deride it satirically in memorable posters featuring a young woman, with subtle reference to his well-known nickname provided by former Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas during their 1950 Senate campaign, in which his campaign had labeled her the "pink lady". The prescient in 1972 might have adopted, "You Can Wind up in the Pen with RMN".
In any event, in 1960, "All the Way with JFK" would carry the day. We do not recall any Nixon slogan in that one, except perhaps the one supplied by the young boy in the ghost outfit at O'Hare Airport in Chicago during a campaign stop by the Vice-President on Halloween, even if the boy needed an English lesson. His ill-fitting, obviously hand-hewn costume bore on its front the crudely printed phrase: "JAXCK Don't Stand a 'Ghost' of a Chance". Just what that extraneous "X" was supposed to represent can only be fathomed by the imagination.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Gone with the Gondolas", tells of there now being motorized gondolas on the Thames to Cambridge's mile of River Cam, a fact which it believes would have inspired Gilbert and Sullivan to write dirges instead of the gay tunes which opened most of their famous operettas: "We are called gondolieri,/ But that's a vagary…" It views it as a vagary that the gondolier would now have to keep his song in time with the putter of a gasoline engine.
"Beware, you drivers of Victorias on the steep roads of Mount Royal; farewell, you camel drivers in Egypt and Morocco. If a gondola can be motorized, it can happen to you, and a few modern industrial effects may as well be introduced into Mendelssohn's boat songs and Strauss's Lagoon Waltz. Call it despair if you will: we are having our mandolin wired for color television!"
Drew Pearson indicates that there was more than met the eye behind the cheerful optimism by RNC chairman Leonard Hall in saying that the President would run again in 1956, Mr. Hall having taken his cue from former New York Governor Thomas Dewey. Mr. Pearson relates that Mr. Hall did not even discuss a second term with the President at Gettysburg, after having talked about it earlier with Mr. Dewey. White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, the "assistant president", and Attorney General Herbert Brownell had also consulted with Mr. Dewey about the President running again, all three agreeing to come as close as they could to declaring him a candidate without making the announcement for him, the President not having stated to them that he would run. But they had convinced him that he would have trouble pushing his legislative program through Congress unless he at least gave hints of running again. Mr. Hall had done his best to convince the Republican national committeemen meeting in Chicago the previous week that the President would run again, having received the impetus for that encouragement from a woman who was in charge of making arrangements for the 1956 Republican convention, advising her subcommittee that they should plan on a short convention with only one nomination, that of the President. Some committeemen did not accept the advice that the President would run again, notably former RNC chairman Guy Gabrielson and former Kansas Senator Harry Darby, both of whom had spread the word that it was ridiculous to expect that the President would run again. Privately, some had believed that the whole idea might be a holding action by the Dewey forces to stop other candidates from building up potential campaign organizations, giving Mr. Dewey more time to get his own machine rolling should the President decide at the last minute not to run.
It had been prearranged with Messrs. Adams, Brownell and Dewey as to what Mr. Hall would tell the press after his conference with the President at Gettysburg, with the plan having been to suggest that the President would run again but that any formal announcement would be delayed until March. But in actuality, Mr. Hall had not addressed the subject with the President, simply reporting on party finances, telling the President that his heart attack had stimulated Republican contributions.
Robert C. Ruark, in Port Said, Eqypt, believes that the U.S. had meddled too much in the Middle East and that the Arabs did not care too much for the U.S. at present. One of his friends had gone ashore with a group in Port Said to spend a few hours buying things and possibly to "contract dysentery if his luck held", at which time they were set upon by a tiny Arab who peddled the usual "snake-charmer-clean-sister-belly-dance routine", making a nuisance of himself, being told by his friend to scram, the reply to which was, "You don't tell me scram, damn bloody American!" The individual then beckoned to a few thousand friends and pulled himself up to his full short stature, saying: "I am man like you. I am just good man like you. You don' say me scram, bloody American!"
His friend, an Australian, who was very mild in manner and had been reading about whites being kicked to death in Morocco, did not like the look of the crowd, and asked the peddler what he wanted him to say other than "scram", to which the reply was: "You say excuse me, pardon me, please. I don't want you work for me, or…" gesturing to the encroaching crowd around him. His friend then said: "Okay, excuse me. Pardon me. Please I don't want your services. Right?" The Arab said, "Right, bloody American," and the crowd melted away.
When Mr. Ruark had been told the story by his friend, he was thinking about what would have happened on a dock in Port Said if he had followed the usual Australian path of blowing down the opposition, that there likely would have been four dead people who would have been kicked to death for nothing. He says that it was a small incident but indicative of the attitude at present by Arabs toward white people in the Middle East.
In the Cairo riots after King Farouk had been deposed, shore leave had been canceled by tourist ships and at one point, riots had been so rampant that former Ambassador Jefferson Caffery had been one of the few people who could ride or walk through the streets without being stoned or kicked to death, only because he was known and admired by the fellahin who would not have recognized King Farouk, General Naguib or Gamal Abdel Nasser, both of the latter of whom had engineered the dethroning of the King. He says that he wished there were more people like Mr. Caffery.
He indicates that from what he could understand, the U.S. was in trouble with the Arab nations regarding Palestine and arms. He offers no comment except that the U.S. needed oil, just as the Russians needed oil.
Willard Price, writing in Adventures in Paradise, indicates that the Polynesian beauties of the storybook island of Rapa wanted men, being famous as an "island of women", located just within the borders of French Oceania.
During the morning, a small sailing schooner had arrived from Rapa at Moorea, the captain of which was "a strapping Amazon measuring approximately 230 pounds by 6 feet", named Anaa, having island products to sell or exchange, but her chief concern having been to persuade men to come to Rapa.
The Rapa women wanted babies but were thwarted in that ambition by the lack of males, as there were six women to every man on the island, there being 300 women among the 350 inhabitants, and according to Anaa, the men were "tired". She had assured the men of Moorea that they would not be expected to work on the island, that the women would perform the work and that life would be pleasant for them, with their every whim satisfied, promising as a bonus that they would be fed by hand if they so desired.
The author indicates that one was reminded of the Amazons and their annual importation of males to perpetuate the race. "The only essential difference between the two tales is that the Rapa story is true."
A letter writer comments on the question of discontinuing junior high school athletics in Charlotte, says that as a parent of two boys and as both a citizen of the community and as a coach and teacher of physical education, the idea of having, instead of interscholastic competition, an intramural program for all students, while sounding ideal to the average parent and educator, would not supply the same outlet available in interscholastic competition, the need being for both programs. He says that he had always been in favor of an intramural program for the benefit of the "low-skilled boy", but not for such a program which would eliminate interscholastic competition for the more highly skilled athletes. He goes on quite a way in his defense of interscholastic competition, indicating that the average citizen of the community did not realize that all junior and senior high school teams in Charlotte paid their own expenses or went into debt, that no public school funds were allocated for support of the teams. He says that until the citizens who believed that there was educational value in competitive sports worked out a method of financing athletics, there was no reason for criticism of those confronted with the decision.
A letter writer addresses the same subject, indicating that Charlotte should continue interscholastic competition in the junior high schools to afford a "farm system" for the high school teams, comparing it to the minor leagues in baseball, as the junior high school trained athlete had years of conditioning behind him when he entered senior high school, making it easier for the student to work into the "big time". The high school teams were also effectively farm teams for the colleges and universities, part of the "gigantic sports hierarchy we are building in this country."
A letter from the executive secretary of the Printing Industry of Charlotte, Inc., indicates that the organization had voted unanimously to express its thanks to the newspaper for the editorial a few days earlier commending the action of the Public Printer in returning to the Government unused appropriations for printing, finding it a boost to the printing industry.
A letter writer indicates that she met happy people on the street because they had the spirit of Christmas in their faces, with some planning on going home to be with loved ones and grandchildren, those being the happiest days, but that one should not forget that the celebration was the birthday of Jesus Christ, and that all giving should be done with love, asserting the belief that she was sure that such people lived in Charlotte, as they were bringing much cheer and happiness into many homes. She concludes that the Christmas season should include prayer with hearts full of gratitude and joy and thoughts on the Savior, "born to bring deep peace into our souls."
A letter writer, who withholds his or her name, responds to a letter printed on December 3 regarding segregation, indicates that the writer had been speaking only for herself. This writer says that he or she had nothing against the "colored people" for the writer had worked with them a great deal in his or her work and had been invited into their homes for dinner, but had also seen those who thought they could push the white man off the sidewalk to make way for themselves. The writer says that there were some good and bad white people and some of them were in public office, "like one in particular here who sits behind a large desk and passes judgment on his fellow man." With that person, says the writer, it made no difference whether you were guilty or not, that one had better have money for a fine when the person went before him, asking whether that was justice and whether one could respect the Supreme Court and its decisions "when we have this kind of people serving us". The writer does not identify the person to whom the letter refers.
A letter writer from Lancaster, S.C., comments on an editorial concerning the audience reaction recently to the playing of "Dixie" by the Scots Guard and how one should react to it, stating that the Ford Motor Co. had appropriated the tune and was now using it as a jingle on radio commercials.
Well, the Klan drives mostly G.M. products, favoring Chevys and Oldsmobiles, we have noted. So...
Framed Edition
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