The Charlotte News

Monday, October 7, 1957

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. Navy scientists said this date that they had a good "fix" on the Russian space satellite Sputnik and could plot its path for a period of 24 hours to a week in advance. A spokesman at the Naval Research Laboratory also said that the Navy scientists now knew when they received the beeping signal from the satellite that their readings were precise to within 1/10,000th of a second. The latest information was that the satellite was following what the spokesman for the Laboratory called a "fairly circular orbit", with the exact height not determined but with a minimum altitude of 400 miles. Meanwhile, visual sightings of the satellite, moving at a speed of about 18,000 mph, had been announced in Russia and the U.S. One American specialist said that the Soviet satellite passed over the U.S. about six times every day on a north-south course. Radio Moscow, in a broadcast for domestic listeners, said the previous night that the 23-inch satellite had already yielded information which it said was "of great scientific value". The broadcast did not say what the information was. (If it cannot pick up "Hound Dog" off the radio and replay it, what the hell good is it?) Some American scientists said that the satellite apparently was sending back a coded signal, and they expressed the hope that the Russians would let them understand the code so that they could share in any obtained information. One Russian expert said that there was no special code in the signals. The satellite project was part of the program of the International Geophysical Year, aimed at learning more about the earth and the universe. Dr. John Hagen, director of the American satellite program, said that U.S. plans still called for launching small test vehicles later in the current fall, with the firing of a full-scale 20-inch satellite in the spring. The planned American satellite was to weigh about 22 pounds, compared to Sputnik at 184 pounds.

In Philadelphia, Dr. L. M. Levitt, a noted authority on outer space, said this date that the Army could have launched its large Jupiter C guided missile into outer space as a satellite the previous year had it so chosen, but that an "astonishing piece of stupidity" had prevented it, as "the Pentagon chose to ignore the fact that we had a device capable of launching a satellite and decided to develop another." He said that the Defense Department was deep in the development of the Vanguard rocket for launching a satellite during the International Geophysical Year and decided to concentrate on that rocket, whereas the Jupiter C was already capable of accomplishing the task. He said that the Pentagon explained the "stupidity" by asserting that the "Jupiter was designed as a missile, not as a satellite launcher, and that work on the missile—as a weapon—should continue." Dr. Levitt, director of Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia, said: "This, of course, retarded the satellite program. It may have speeded the missile program. I don't know. But it certainly let the Russians score an astounding propaganda victory over the United States." He said that the U.S. could have achieved a satellite just like that of Sputnik by doing little more than changing the angle of fire of the Jupiter in a test conducted at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. The Jupiter had reached a speed of 15,000 mph in the test, according to an article in Missiles and Rockets Magazine the prior December. The Army declined comment on the article, but other sources said that the information was correct. Dr. Levitt said that the Army did not fire the last stage of the three-stage rocket, and the last stage, he indicated, would have boosted the speed of the rocket to 18,000 mph, that which was required for placing a satellite into orbit. The Jupiter had been fired as a surface-to-surface missile, but even so, according to Dr. Levitt, it reached an altitude of 650 miles, higher than that of Sputnik. The Jupiter had landed off South America some 1,400 miles west of Ascension Island.

In Cambridge, Mass., it was stated that American astronomical observatories might get photographs of Sputnik within 8 to 9 days, according to Dr. J. Allen Hynek, in charge of the optical tracking program of the Astrological Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution. He indicated that radio tracking computations had pretty well determined the orbit of the satellite and that the latest radio tracking computation showed that it had passed near Boston on a northwest to southeast track at precisely 8:00 a.m. EDT. He said that the assistant director of the geophysical station at the University of Alaska had reported a visual sighting of the satellite the previous day by his aides.

In Moscow, Pravda predicted that Soviet scientific success would force the U.S. to revise some of its foreign policies. The official Communist Party newspaper said that U.S. Senators were "showing signs of hysteria." Incidentally, place no credence in anyone contemporarily who claims Americans were "terrified" of Sputnik. It wasn't so, except perhaps among a few habitues of insane asylums. It was largely treated as a curiosity, a cute little ball passing overhead every 90 minutes, something to find in the night sky, but hardly anything of which to be afraid. The little beeper came in peace. Nuclear or thermonuclear warheads atop the same rockets, however, were another thing entirely, but no one much considered that prospect, as Americans were quite inured to the idea that one night they might go to bed and not wake up, if not from bombs from afar, bombs from closer origins, placed by the robed order. We make not jest. It was so.

Associated Press reporter Relman Morin, in the first of a three-part series of articles on the crisis in Little Rock, where he had been since the beginning of the school year on September 4, finds the same deceptive calm at present in the city which accompanied the eye of a hurricane. A police car siren screamed in the street and people who ordinarily would not have noticed it a month earlier looked up anxiously now to question whether a riot might be starting. One man said he had a loaded shotgun beside his bed and if he heard a sound in the night, he would reach for it. At night, telephones began to ring with threats and warnings, with callers hanging up after phoning parents of students attending Central High School, warning them that there would be trouble at the school and that they had better keep their children at home. Such threats were even being received by the father of a boy who delivered the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, the newspaper which was fighting Governor Orval Faubus. They were even being received by legislators who favored a cooling-off period instead of closing the schools. Most of the parents were letting their children continue attending the high school while worrying over what the segregationists might do in reprisal. Some parents were keeping their children away from the school and worrying for a different reason. One woman, in tears, called the segregationist Capitol Citizens Council and indicated that her daughter wanted to return to the school as she was falling behind in her studies, wondering what she should do. "Soldiers inside a high school… Fights and muttered threats there… Business slowed to a standstill… Feeling between neighbors so deep it may never be bridged… The atmosphere heavy with menace, dark and brooding. Even seeing Little Rock today, you can't believe it." The presence of bayonets pointed at American citizens in a Southern city had disappeared 90 years earlier and was unimaginable in present times, but it had happened. Twice per day, the power of the Federal authority pushed through the massive resentment to take the nine black students into the school against the wishes of most of the people, though there was no precise estimate of the percentage. There was no end in sight in Little Rock to the crisis as nothing had been settled and a decision was postponed. People wondered what would happen when the Federal troops were finally withdrawn. Moderates hoped that people might get used to the integration, while segregationists said that they were simply waiting for the troops to leave. Mr. Morin finds that Little Rock was a good community, with a church on every other corner, nice buildings, good schools, polite people, two interesting and well-edited newspapers. Yet now, it had become in other states and nations an ugly symbol representing mob violence, unbridled passions and defiance of the Federal law. It represented the most critical clash between a sovereign state and the Federal Government since the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was bigger than Little Rock or Arkansas, bigger than the whole South, hanging over the entire nation. For it had taken Federal troops to enforce the Federal law, and now a high school had been integrated by nine black students who were sitting in classrooms with white children, with the law being obeyed at gunpoint. If the "Little Rock Nine" should be forced out of the school again, it would strengthen segregationists everywhere, whereas if they remained in the school, it was possible that segregationist opposition would collapse like dominoes. A gauntlet had been thrown down by both sides, but perhaps reasoning people on both sides would find a compromise. "And perhaps history will mark Little Rock as the turning point in the greatest social struggle of a century." Mr. Morin promises that the second installment would explore how the situation had occurred.

Meanwhile, in Little Rock this date, the nine black students entered the school again quietly, as the principal appeared on the steps at the main entrance and cleared it of about 500 lounging (malingering) white students in advance of the arrival of the black students. In contrast to the previous week's 30 or more armed escorting troops, only a half dozen federalized National Guardsmen walked beside the nine students as they entered the school. There was no heckling, although several score of white students observed from school windows or from a distance on the campus. Outwardly, the picture was one of calm.

A burning cross had been placed on the lawn of Governor Theodore McKeldin of Maryland, a critic of Governor Faubus. Representative Kenneth Keating of New York demanded the release of FBI information on the Little Rock riots and other occurrences, coupling the request with a denunciation of Governor Faubus. Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, said in Chicago that the "greatest sin" of Governor Faubus had been "arousing and fanning ugly racial hatred in the minds and hearts of impressionable white children in the North and South."

The White House reported this date that there were no negotiations or developments during the weekend which might lead to an early resolution of the Little Rock crisis.

In Monroe, N.C., Robert F. Williams, president of the Union County NAACP, said that he had sent a telegram to the President this date at the request of several black citizens, which read: "Racial violence increasing. KKK raided Negro neighborhood Friday night. Eight racial incidents. Please have Monroe, N.C., police checked as possible Klan sympathizers." He said the telegram was a direct result of a raid which Klansmen had made on black areas on Friday night. The NAACP leader said that he knew of several witnesses who had seen the Klansmen shoot from a motorcade of cars, and he indicated that police had dug bullets out of a home of a black family. The police chief, however, continued to insist that he knew of no shooting during the caravan of Klan cars. Mr. Williams said that police cars had accompanied the Klan caravan on Friday night and had made no attempt to stop shooting. He said that black citizens in Monroe had lost confidence in the police. The chief said that several patrol cars had been ordered to accompany the Klan caravan to halt it if any violations of the law occurred.

Keep your eyes on the skies. You might see a little round ball coursing across, courtesy of the Rooskies, or perhaps a cone, courtesy of the Kookies, the latter probably being earthbound, of the subterranean variety, both, however, being artificial moons.

The editorial page is here. As was typical of such paper-doll cut-out chain letters from those biased to the retrograde, the first letter of this date, claiming that Brown v. Board of Education was law made up by appointed Justices who were not elected by the people, fails to account for the fact that, first, the process of appointment and confirmation of Supreme Court Justices is as old as the Constitution, as long as not bent back on itself by the McConnells and other rule-busters of the lower regions, rending the counterpoised, counterpointed fabric for decades to the windward side of democratic will; second, was grounded solidly in the Fourteenth Amendment, not "sociology and psychology" as the naysayers were wont to have it. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the people, in the circuitous and complex due course of all amendments to the Constitution, in 1868, with South Carolina, whose fire-eaters began the thing in 1860-61, indeed, having completed the necessary three-fourths approbation to afford the amelioration of the glitch at the Founding. The only made-up law by non-elected officials was that which had sought for 90 years to nullify it in the Deep South and treat it as simply a nice adornment to hang for good fortune above the threshold of the divided house against itself to make itself feel better on such feast days as Thanksgiving, when all were invited to the table, even little Tiny Tim and the maid in the kitchen cooking the turkey.

Framed Edition

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