The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 8, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President and Republican Congressional leaders had formally decided this date to seek a continuance of about 3 billion dollars in excise and corporate taxes beyond the April 1 scheduled expiration date, the decision having been announced at the White House by Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California, underscoring what Administration leaders had previously said were dim prospects for any major tax reduction during the current year. Senator Knowland and other Republican leaders in Congress had conferred with the President this date, the first regular Tuesday session with them since the beginning of the 85th Congress the prior week. At a press conference, Senator Knowland and House Republican leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts indicated that the President and the leaders had drawn up a proposed priority list of legislation, with Senator Knowland emphasizing that a final decision on the sequence of the legislation would be up to the Democrats, in the majority in both houses. Republicans had given top priority to speedy action on the Administration's anti-Communist program for the Middle East, which the President had outlined in a message to Congress the previous Saturday. Senator Knowland noted that the House Foreign Affairs Committee had already begun hearings on the program proposed by the President, and estimated that it might be two or three weeks before joint hearings planned by the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees would be completed on the proposed program. Next in Republican priority would be the legislation to extend the excise and corporate taxes beyond the April 1 scheduled deadline, the excise taxes being on such items as liquor and cigarettes. The Minority Leader also indicated that the Administration planned to ask for about 3 million dollars to finance a study of juvenile delinquency, but that details had not yet been worked out, probably to be a joint undertaking between Federal, state and local governments.
Representative Thomas Gordon of Illinois, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Representative John Vorys of Ohio, both expressed the opinion that the President's proposed Middle East program would pass and do so quickly. But Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he would not be stampeded into action on the matter. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Dulles appeared for a second day of closed-session hearings, telling members that there was no plan for stepping up the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East, that despite manpower cuts in the armed forces, the military "effectiveness" had increased and that he was satisfied that the U.S. had enough strength to commit itself against possible small wars in addition to its other commitments, for instance that it had the power to protect Syria. He also had said that American military actions might not be confined to the country where a potential Communist attack would occur, but it could involve strikes in other areas where the aggressor was staging its operations and along its communication lines. He did not envision an all-out attack on the Soviet Union unless it was determined that a Communist invasion constituted the beginning of a third world war. Generally, the Secretary had portrayed the resolution proposed by the President as a "declaration of peace" which would deter war by serving notice of the willingness of the U.S. to fight a Communist aggressor and by bolstering the military and economic strength of independent countries in the Middle East, that by making the region more resistant to subversion, the plan would also counter any Communist move to take over a particular country by other than open aggression. Mr. Gordon had said that Mr. Dulles had made a "pretty good" presentation to the Committee.
In Port Said, Egypt, 13 ships, stranded in the Suez Canal for more than two months, had begun steaming out of the port harbor this date into the open sea. The vessels of seven nations had been caught in the canal at the time of the British-French invasion and Egyptian countermeasures. They moved on their own power from a point 29.5 miles south of Port Said, the canal's northern terminus, with the southern portion of the canal still blocked by wrecked ships and other debris, with the now moving ships having been turned around by tugboats for the trip back north. The stranded ships had been in a southbound convoy which had departed Port Said on October 30 and had become trapped about 7 miles north of the midway point of the canal at Ismailia. Most of the crews had stayed in Cairo until their ships had been freed.
The President this date appointed retired Representative James Richards of South Carolina, who had been chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as a special assistant to the President regarding his Middle East program. Mr. Richards would have a team which would visit the troubled region and then report back to the Administration. Mr. Richards said that he agreed basically with the proposed resolution authorizing economic aid to the Middle East and, if necessary, the use of U.S. forces to combat Communist aggression. He predicted that Congress would approve the proposal overwhelmingly. Earlier, the President had picked Senator Walter George of Georgia as a special ambassador to deal with NATO problems, the Senator having been the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before his retirement at the end of the prior session.
In Atlanta, it was reported that plans for an accelerated campaign to integrate buses across the South would be discussed during the week by black leaders encouraged by a report of the NAACP that it had received more than a million dollars during 1956. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., of Montgomery, Ala.—who had led the successful 381-day boycott of municipal buses after Rosa Parks had refused to surrender her seat to a white person at the direction of a bus driver in December, 1955, and had been arrested under challenged State and City laws forbidding integrated seating on public transportation, finally struck down recently by the Supreme Court, summarily affirming a U.S. District Court ruling of the prior June—, had the previous night called on Southern black leaders to attend a strategy meeting in Atlanta the coming Thursday and Friday "in an effort to coordinate and spur the campaign for integrated transportation in the South." He said that there was no moral choice before God other than to delve deeper into the struggle. He said that they were convinced that most white Southerners were prepared to accept integration as the law of the land, but that "a small but willful minority, dedicated to violence, is resorting to threats, shootings, cross burnings and bombings." He did not mention that his own home had been bombed, albeit with no one hurt, the previous January 30. Reverend C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Fla., and Reverend F. L. Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, both active in campaigns to integrate the buses in their respective cities, had joined Dr. King in urging black leaders "from troubled areas all over the South" to attend the Atlanta meeting. Dr. King said that the meeting would be closed to the public but that a statement would be issued after its conclusion. Special counsel for the NAACP and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said that the organization would continue to support legal efforts in the South while at the same time concentrating "on breaking down segregation in the North."
In Tallahassee, the City Commission approved a plan for bus drivers to issue tickets to riders assigning them seats in an effort to get the buses running again on a segregated basis, after Governor Leroy Collins had suspended bus service in the city by executive order on January 1 following an outbreak of violence.
In Pine Bluff, Ark., a black foundry worker had made an unsuccessful attempt to enroll his five children in a white school, with the school superintendent having told him that the school had not planned for integration during the current year and that she was anxious to avoid incidents.
In Knoxville, Tenn., 14 black children filed a petition in Federal court through their parents, seeking admission to two all-white secondary and two all-white elementary schools, indicating that the 11 girls and three boys had been turned away from the schools the prior September.
In Nashville, Governor Frank Clement's legislative leaders in the General Assembly introduced resolutions criticizing Brown v. Board of Education, but no immediate action was taken on the resolutions.
Dick Young of The News reports that the local park board, after years of legal maneuvers, had this date formally opened Bonnie Brae municipal golf course to black golfers. It had been long resisted by the board but had now been made mandatory by recent court decisions. Osmond Barringer had donated 40 acres of the present park many years earlier, stipulating that the property should be returned if it were ever used except as a park for white people. The action by the board followed confirmation by it of an agreement under which Mr. Barringer would surrender reverter rights to Revolution Park property, with the purchase by the board of the reverter rights removing the possibility of loss of any park property because of blacks being allowed to use the golf course. The purchase of the rights would be for $17,500. In addition, a provision in the deed that in the event the reverter rights were ever exercised, Mr. Barringer would pay $3,500, was suspended and payment canceled. A member of the Park & Recreation Commission, J. B. Clark, had made the motion to open the course to black golfers, to enable compliance with a ruling by Superior Court Judge Susie Sharp, future Justice and eventually Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, that Charlotte would have to eliminate any existing barriers against use of the municipal golf course by blacks. Judge Sharp had indicated her intention to sign such a court order in early December, but had agreed to withhold it for 90 days to allow the park board officials time to conclude negotiations on the Barringer reverter clauses. The board's action this date, however, immediately opened the course for use by black players. (The matter calls to mind, vaguely, a moot court argument we were assigned in law school, back in ancient times and times, regarding a charitable trust with a racially restrictive covenant on the use of dedicated park land and whether the testamentary gift of the land to the hypothetical municipality could survive without the covenant, able to be read out under the cy pres doctrine, or whether the unconstitutional restriction of the covenant completely defeated the devise, regarding real property law and the law of wills rather than constitutional law, per se, and the holding of Shelley v. Kraemer, as we remember it. We shall have to delve into the memory banks further on that one, as, candidly, we cannot now recall which side of the argument we were assigned, that of the plaintiff or the defendant, that is, in the appellate context, appellant or appellee, though we recall arguing in favor of the applicability of cy pres, albeit possibly the product of some wishful thinking of assignment to the other side, one to which we could join in spirit as well as the luck of the draw via "client" representation. There was no outcome, of course, which is why they call it "moot court", an exercise in learning advocacy skills, even those in defense of positions contrary to one's own subjectively maintained principles, to be distinguished from the exercise of legal ethics while zealously representing a party whom one regards as morally repugnant.)
In Encino, Calif., Marie "The
Body" McDonald, could, according to the report, claim some kind
of award this date for her performance in the police movie of the
year, in which she had reenacted, in color
In Woodbridge, N.J., a cable had been threaded through a twisting 730-foot pipe the previous night, ending a two-week effort to string a fire alarm cable under the New Jersey Turnpike to a new housing development. An electrical contractor had sent in rats with strings taped to their tails, trying to coax or threaten them out the other end of the pipe, resulting in some dying, some biting the string and others cowering inside. He had then sought to use mongooses, one having made it through on a stringless test run but none carrying the string the distance, even when a female had been placed in the pipe ahead of a burdened male. An underground cable-laying firm had then begun threading plumbers' snakes end to end through the pipe from either end, consisting of thin flexible cables used to clean or carry wires inside pipes. The snakes were redundantly welded onto each other until two sections met in the middle of the pipe, where they were fastened by a ball and magnet mechanism, and either this date or the following day, the snake would pull through a stout wire which in turn would pull through the alarm cable. Only a solitary spectator remained when the successful effort was finally achieved, as everyone else had gone home despondent, and the lethargic rats had gone back to the city dump. The firehouse to which the alarm was linked expressed a sigh of relief.
On the editorial page, "Rep. Richards: The Moon Can Wait" indicates that Congressman James Richards of South Carolina had indicated the previous September that he had come home to Lancaster County to "drink spring water, look at the moon and help my son practice a little law." He had served in Congress for 24 years as a statesman in foreign affairs and had been the most popular member in the history of South Carolina, having served longer than any other member.
It indicates that happily for the Administration and the proper conduct of foreign policy in the Middle East, Mr. Richards was not yet retiring, as he would be a special assistant to the President and Secretary of State Dulles on the Middle East, which it considers to be a wise appointment by the President, now to have on his team the top Democratic foreign affairs leader of the previous Congress and many prior to that. He would also have on his team retired Senator Walter George of Georgia, the Senate's foreign affairs expert who had been chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In a time of increasing Congressional irritability with the Secretary of State and of a reawakened spirit of isolationism in the country, the services of the two men would be invaluable to the President in dealing with the Congress. As Mr. Richards on occasion had been a critic of the Administration's policy, the appointment met the bipartisanship test very well.
It finds a less obvious but equally important fact of political life underscored by the appointment on the basis that too much wisdom and experience was wasted on "contemplation of the moon and the drinking of spring water by political leaders retired voluntarily or by defeat at the polls." It suggests that whenever men of caliber, as Mr. Richards, were returned to policy-making and legislative positions, the country profited.
"Banish the Draft's Clumsy Inequities" finds that any study of the roots of discontent among present youth would have to include a lengthy part on military service, as the draft had become an inadequate and unjust system of meeting the nation's military demands, finding it no wonder that youth in their late teens and early twenties were bothered and bewildered by the whole subject, that what was true in Charlotte apparently held elsewhere, not the fault of local draft boards but rather of national draft policy.
According to the Washington Post & Times-Herald during the week, the draft was the subject of sharp debate within the Administration. Draft eligible youth had grown from 710,000 in 1954 to 1.3 million at present, while monthly inductions still ranged between 14,000 and 17,000, with the pool of potential draftees becoming larger every day. The result was that the armed forces were rejecting many men for flimsy reasons, for relatively minor physical defects or as simply "unsuitable", with some draft boards able to be more liberal regarding college and occupational deferments. In consequence, many youths were living under clouds of uncertainty as to whether they might or might not be called up for military service.
Assistant Defense Secretary Carter Burgess, retiring Pentagon personnel chief, had warned that it was "not unreasonable to assume" that if the manpower pool reached 1.8 million men, some might "completely escape military service by passing their 26th birthdays", at which point they became ineligible for the draft.
Meanwhile, complaints of youth and their parents, and even some military officials, were mounting, to the effect that there were too many rejections and deferments, inductions at too late of an age, too much of a backlog of fit but untrained men in their late teens and early twenties, and too few trained reservists who were not veterans of World War II or Korea, placing the latter group in "triple jeopardy". Some of the manpower experts argued that the true test of the draft was not whether it was completely fair but whether it did the job of maintaining the security of the country.
It finds it an unnecessarily ruthless attitude when the ideals of fairness and effectiveness could both be served by a reasonable system of universal military training, in which all healthy males would devote at least a brief time in their lives to active duty training, a system which it finds would, if properly administered, leave virtually no doubt or uncertainty, as training would be automatic and an expected necessity at a particular age, enabling youths to plan educational programs and vocational careers accordingly, eliminating the clumsiness and inequities of the draft. It concludes that the need was clear and it would become clearer as the time approached to renew the present draft law in 1959.
"To Carl Sandburg on His 79th Birthday" begins with a quote from Mr. Sandburg's "Chicago", circa 1914: "Hog Butcher for the World/ Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat/ Player with Railroads and the/ Nation's Freight Handler/ Stormy, husky, brawling./ City of the Big Shoulders…"
Now, Mr. Sandburg resided in western North Carolina, and was an aficionado of goat breeding at Flat Rock in Henderson County. But the captains of culture in the country were not calling him the "old man of the Blue Ridge", rather referring to him as a spokesman for the Midwest, as he had written of prairies, steelworkers, Abraham Lincoln and the Chicago Loop, concluding that it was ludicrous to associate him culturally with North Carolina.
It finds them all right and all
wrong, that Mr. Sandburg
He had written at the beginning of his career: "I am the people, the mob..." And, it finds, he had been from the beginning "a clear voice in a babble of cynicism, irrationality and superficiality, the clear voice of a democrat, an equalitarian, a humanitarian, an optimist, an idealist." He might never write of Tar Heels per se, but he had written of men as men, farmers, day laborers, soldiers, blacks, hobos, bums, coal miners.
He had said: "Man is a long time coming,/ Man will yet win./ Brother may yet line up with brother./ This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers…/ In the darkness with a great bundle of grief the people march."
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Winter Light", indicates that no matter whether the temperature was unseasonably high or low, the season's change was present when dawn and dusk were "times of slanting winter light, when the sunrise and sunset are far off to the south and the midday sun sweeps into the south windows."
And it goes on, poetically rendering the change of the fall now into winter. You can have the icy mornings and, except for basketball and an occasional snowy blanket, let us get it over with and move on to sunny spring. Besides, in New York, more typically than not, one would have to huddle over the sidewalk grates emitting steam from deep and mysterious commercial caverns below, where they regularly to this day cook up all the conspiracies of the various melting-pot nationalities to overthrow the established order, to stay warm if not properly bundled.
Anyway, the piece concludes: "We can see it coming now, the slanting winter light, the icy green at evening, the short days, winter itself."
We know it is there. You do not have to remind us. We can feel the icicles forming on our brows.
Drew Pearson tells of a brief, pointed exchange between Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon and Vice-President Nixon, who had gone to Oregon twice during the preceding campaign to speak against re-election of the Senator and in favor of his opponent, Douglas McKay, former Secretary of the Interior. When the Senator had come to the rostrum to take the oath and shake hands with Mr. Nixon, he had said that he wanted to thank the Vice-President for the speeches in Oregon as they had helped to elect him, to which Mr. Nixon had gulped and then said, smiling, "Well, I'm glad they helped." He added that Senator Morse had rolled with the punches, to which the Senator said that Mr. Nixon had thrown a few, himself. It had all occurred in a short period of time and no one except the two men had known what had occurred. Mr. Pearson notes that there had been a slight note of sarcasm in Senator Morse's voice, halfway having meant what he had said, as when Mr. Nixon had come to Oregon, he had provided a pep talk to Republican leaders at Salem, urging them to get the Senator and not to pay any attention to issues, rather to get out the vote. Later, Mr. McKay had said that issues were not important, that it was the votes which counted. Senator Morse had used that line against Mr. McKay, telling his audiences that the issues were not important to his opponent, but that on election night, he would discover that they were and that Mr. McKay would be returning to his automobile dealership in Salem to sell Cadillacs again.
Democratic Senators were assailing Secretary of State Dulles regarding his Middle Eastern policy. Shortly before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had met with Mr. Dulles the previous week, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had phoned four members of the Committee, Senators Mike Mansfield of Montana, John Sparkman of Alabama, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, advising them not to pull punches. They had not. Senator Johnson had also attended the closed-door session himself and had written notes to the Senators, suggesting questions for the Secretary. Democrats were angry at the way the Administration was forcing them to take a stand on the proposed "Eisenhower doctrine", whereby the Administration was requesting advance authority to commit the armed forces, if necessary, to the Middle East to thwart Soviet aggression in the region and requesting authority to provide up to 20 million dollars in aid. There had been published leaks to the press in advance of the release of that proposal to Congress, for which the Secretary had been responsible. The Senators had given the Secretary such a rough time that at one point he had stated that only the President was responsible for the foreign policy, leading the Senators to ask him why, then, he was coming to them with the resolution, that the President could simply exercise the authority to deploy the armed forces without their authority.
Vice-President Nixon had made a surprise statement that he believed the present filibuster rule was "unconstitutional", a statement which had been worked out carefully in advance with Democratic Senators, led by Senator Humphrey, who had gone to the Vice-President in advance of the showdown vote on the rule, asking him to answer a "point of order" if he posed it during the debate on the amendment to Rule 22, requiring for cloture of a filibuster a two-thirds vote of all Senators. Senator Humphrey had said to Mr. Nixon that they were not trying to put him on the spot, but that if he gave the correct answer, it could make of him another Abraham Lincoln, influencing several Republican votes, which was why Senator Humphrey and the other Democratic liberals were asking him to do so. Mr. Nixon had discussed the matter carefully and indicated that he would probably give the correct answer, which he later had, his statement probably to have far-reaching effects on black voters should Mr. Nixon run for the presidency in 1960.
So much for predictions so far in advance… Intervening events and the Democratic nominee would neutralize any such positive effect for Mr. Nixon. While he would never be perceived as being opposed to civil rights, he was also far from being a positive advocate, considered by most to be a moderate on the subject in 1960, then subsequently tending, as the "new Nixon", toward the conservative side, running on "law and order" in the "burning cities" by 1968, when he would run successfully against Vice-President Humphrey, to contrast himself with the liberal policies of the Johnson Administration. But we digress…
Stewart Alsop indicates that when the new Senate met the previous week, there had been a moment of suspense when newly elected Senator Frank Lausche of Ohio had wavered on whether to vote with the Democrats or Republicans to organize the body after he had been elected as a Democrat, ultimately deciding to vote with his party. Mr. Alsop finds, however, that instead of cheering the result, the Democrats should have wept because, being in control of both houses, they were in a desperate situation since the President, wishing to make the Republicans the majority party, would steal all of the Democratic issues.
He was presently working hard on two major documents, one being the State of the Union message, which, according to a reliable source, would voice "modern Republicanism", with emphasis on such New Deal-type issues as Social Security expansion, health care legislation, school construction, farm aid and civil rights legislation. The other address was his second inaugural, which would be themed the "price of peace", with emphasis on the tone of the Administration for the four years to come, unlikely to appeal to conservative-isolationist Republicans in Congress.
Thus far, conservative Republicans were remaining mum, in consideration of the landslide victory of the President. But had they been able to organize the Senate, they would have no doubt in time given the President trouble, as they had when in control of both houses in the 83rd Congress between 1953 and 1955, driving the President to talk seriously of organizing a third party. But under the present Democratic Senate, they would be unable to hold key committee chairmanships and thus the means to make trouble for the President.
But the Democrats also were not in a position to make trouble for him, as they were aware that their majority was at stake for 1958, with the Northerners aware that the coalition formed by FDR in urban areas was in decline. Many Democrats were disturbed about the direction of defense and foreign policy, and the Middle East crisis would be actively debated. But no one believed there was political hay to be made by contesting the President's foreign and defense policy so soon after the election.
As to most domestic issues, the best the Democrats could do was to say "me too, only more so", especially with regard to civil rights legislation, where the Administration, to try to capitalize further on the trend away from Democrats on the part of black voters in the North, would seek to put forth a moderate bill to accelerate the shift of the minority vote to the Republicans. If the Administration could muster enough Republican moderate votes behind such a bill, it would be able to take most of the credit for it, taking away potentially the only issue to which Northern Democrats could turn for an issue to stir voters. He concludes that as a result, the session might prove crucial for both parties and could involve great danger for Democrats and a great opportunity for Republicans.
Marquis Childs also finds a remarkable opportunity opening for Republicans in Congress, as they had made gains in both houses in the election, controlling both Senate seats from New York for the first time in many years and holding 23 of 47 seats in the New York Congressional delegation, the highest percentage in awhile.
The meeting of the Democratic advisory committee the prior week showed the party quite divided into three parts, first with only the national party responding to the call of DNC chairman Paul Butler for unity, second being the South, moving in recent years toward greater isolation from the national party, with Southern governors refusing to join the committee, and the third being Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, both of whom had not only refused to have any part of the committee but also had discouraged others in the Senate and House from taking part.
The Republican opportunity was to take advantage of the shift in the black vote in most of the large cities toward the Republicans, both in the North and the South, with Republican chances of holding that ten percent of the electorate being good, potentially giving the Republicans the base for a new national party. Republican chances were good because of the opposition from Senator Johnson and Speaker Rayburn, speaking with respect for the past. The Republicans had been more often than not weak and timid, even false, on the issue of civil rights, and yet stood nevertheless with the future.
RNC public relations director L. Richard Guylay had compiled statistical differences between the voters in 1952 and 1956, finding that Louisiana had the greatest gain in Republican vote with 9.7 percent, followed by Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island, each with a gain of seven percent or more. Alabama was fifth with a 6.2 percent gain, followed by New York, with 5.2 percent, and Massachusetts, Illinois and Ohio having nearly twice the national average in gain.
He suggests that the explanation might be prosperity in the country, with Republican losses having been greatest in the Northwest where prosperity had been minimal or nonexistent, with Oregon having a drop of 9.1 percent in Republican vote, and the Dakotas having losses of 10.6 and 12.9 percent, respectively, while Iowa had a loss of 4.9 percent, with Missouri at 1.4. The losses demonstrated the areas of opportunity. The Administration needed to push positive and constructive measures to win allies in the parts of the country where Senate and House Republicans had suffered their major defeats. If the "new Republicanism" was unable to achieve the positive steps needed, then opportunity would seem in two or three years "hardly more than a mirage."
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