The Charlotte News
Friday, February 8, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from New York that a distraught Brooklyn couple had clasped hands and plunged 15 stories to their deaths early this date, about three hours after their five-year old daughter had died under mysterious circumstances, with police indicating that they could not determine until an autopsy later this date whether the little girl had died of illness, a mishap, or had been killed. They did not, however, find any marks of violence on her body. The couple, who had been married nine years earlier, had been plagued for years by illness and perhaps financial troubles, with the husband not having worked since 1952, when he had been employed in some type of civilian defense. It was reported that he had received an inheritance upon the death of his parents, but it was believed not to be very much. He was also said to have received money from relatives occasionally. The family lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the 15th floor of a stylish building on Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn, but their furnishings appeared well-worn. The couple had impressed neighbors as being cheerful, but the family physician described the husband as being a hypochondriac over a long-term stomach ailment, and the wife as suffering from asthma. The doctor did not know of any ailment affecting the child. During the wee hours of the morning, the couple had climbed a flight of stairs to the roof of the building, where they linked hands and jumped 150 feet to a concrete courtyard in front of the building. When their bodies had been discovered, police officers had gone to their apartment and found the daughter lying dead on the bed in the bedroom. The apartment had been in some disarray, with articles of clothing and papers scattered around. A bloodstained shirt of the husband was found lying on a television set, and there was also blood on a divan pillow in the living room, a broken glass in the kitchen and specks of blood on the sink and wall nearby, but not on the glass. The condition of the daughter's body indicated that she had died at around midnight, with a brownish liquid appearing to have flowed from her mouth and nostrils, the police medical examiner saying that he could not determine whether it was blood or chocolate from a bar found in the refrigerator. Because of the blood on the pillow, police believed that the girl had died in the living room and was carried to the bedroom. Police said that it was possible she could have been smothered, fed something dangerous or had choked on something. The husband's body bore slight slashes on the wrist and throat, suggesting to investigators, in combination with the bloodstains, that he might have sought to commit suicide in the apartment but failed. His brother was the executive of a large New York trucking firm, of which an aunt was one of the owners. He said that he had no idea why his brother and sister-in-law had committed suicide.
In Detroit, a phantom gunman whose
nighttime sniping had terrorized women in northern suburbs of the
city since the previous Christmas, had undertaken a wild shooting
spree the previous night through four communities. Prowling the area
in a car, the sniper had wounded two girls, fired on women standing
at a bus stop and fired on cars and homes with a .22-caliber rifle.
Two hours after the first shot had been fired, police had arrested a
20-year old man of a suburban township, cornered after a wild police
car chase which had led down side streets and alleys. An assistant
prosecutor said that the arrested man told him that he was the
phantom sniper, that he had said, "I just had an urge to shoot
at women." (He may have gone to one too many second-run drive-in
In Taylorsville, N.C., the sheriff
said this date that a black cotton picker would be charged with
assaulting a white woman in the locality, before the State of Georgia
could press murder charges against him. The 39-year old man, from
Meridian, Miss., was being held in an undisclosed jail and was being
questioned by officers from four cities, after Taylorsville officers
had arrested him at the home of a girlfriend shortly after an attack
on the 17-year old bride at her home in Taylorsville the previous
Friday night. The sheriff said that the man admitted the attack,
waived a preliminary hearing and was scheduled for trial during the
week of March 11. The previous day, officers from Atlanta had
questioned him and said that he had signed a statement admitting the
October 21 slaying of a 79-year old woman, whose battered body had
been found in a well at her home near Fairburn, Ga. Officers from
Charlotte and Graham, N.C., had also questioned the man, finding that
the attack on the 17-year old bore resemblance to attacks on women in
their jurisdictions, a 1951 stabbing murder of a white woman in Charlotte and an assault on a white woman in Graham, a Meckleneburg County Police captain, brother-in-law of the latter woman, finding "plenty of similarities" between the two assault cases, though expressing doubt of the arrested man's involvement in the earlier murder case. If you have an unsolved assault or murder case
regarding a white female, just come on over to Taylorsville and have
at it, and probably by nightfall, you, too, will obtain a signed
confession. For he is just a cotton picker
At Parris Island, S.C., the father of an 18-year old Marine private, who had accused a drill instructor of mistreating him, had conferred today with Brig. General Wallace Greene, director of recruit training at the base. The father of the Marine, from Hartford, Vt., said in a brief telephone interview from General Greene's office, that he could not discuss details of his conference at the moment. The public information office at the base said that the father of the Marine also would talk to his son, and possibly to a major who had come to the base as depot commander the previous year from Camp Lejeune, following the fatal night march the previous March, in which six recruits had drowned after their drill instructor had ordered them into the tidal stream adjacent to the base, eventually convicted of negligent homicide in a court-martial. The private told a reporter the previous night that it looked like he had started something he did not want to start, that he was up to his neck in it and he wished he were not. He declined to elaborate on the accusations he and several other recruits had leveled against the drill instructors, indicating that he would not discuss the matter until he had talked it over with his father. They had charged that they were mistreated by the drill instructors, in the latest outbreak of such charges at the base. Marine authorities announced that a preliminary investigation into the charges had been underway for a month and that a formal probe was taking place. The base did not list the other recruits who had filed the charges, but announced that four drill instructors of a particular platoon had been relieved of instruction duty pending the outcome of the probe. No charges had yet been filed and the names of the instructors had not been released. The Marine private in question had written a letter to his parents saying that he had been struck with an iron bar and was "forced to march with sand in his mouth." The father had written to the base commander about the charges, prompting the preliminary inquiry, resulting in the four drill instructors being relieved of duty pending the outcome of the formal probe.
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Raleigh of the State House and Senate having convened during the morning for an abbreviated session, following the inauguration of Governor Luther Hodges the previous day. A few new bills were expected to be tossed into the hopper this date and State Secretary of State Thad Eure's office was busy drafting others for members of the General Assembly. The big event of the session would be the introduction of bills to implement the recommendations of various study groups, there being no indication yet as to when those bills would be introduced. The previous day, the House had adopted as its permanent rules the rules of the 1955 House, with two changes, one being to provide for a new standing committee on State Government and the other to authorize a clerk for the new committee. It also ratified two Senate bills to raise salaries for members of the Council of State and to set terms of retirement of the State Attorney General.
In Los Angeles, a woman was making the Union Passenger Terminal her home until they found Sugar Ray. She was accompanied by her husband, a boiler man in the Navy, as well as Peanuts and Baby. The husband said that he had 30 days leave and if Sugar Ray did not show up in the meantime, they intended to spend the entire time in the terminal. Sugar Ray was four years old and was insured for $1,000. She had been in a box with Peanuts on a train bringing the family from Oakland to Los Angeles on Tuesday night, and when the train had slowed down in Berkeley to take on mail, she had gotten out of the box and jumped out of the door. The woman said that she would wait at the station, not to spite the railroad, but because when they found Sugar Ray, that was where they would bring her. When she had discovered on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles that Sugar Ray was missing, she had fainted. They had come to California when her husband was transferred from Pearl Harbor to Long Beach, where he was to report on March 9. He said that he had an infected kidney and was supposed to have checked into the Navy hospital as soon as he got to Los Angeles, as they said his infection would spread if he did not get it taken care of. He said: "But let it spread. I want her found before I check into the hospital." The surname of the couple, of course, was Newcomer. Wait about 64 years, and they might give the Newcomers an Academy Award for most persistent couple. You won't even have to leave the Terminal to accept it. They would be about as deserving as most of the recipients of the awards by then.
In Charlotte, Donald MacDonald of The News reports that police had tangled with killers, burglars, hit-and-run drivers, runaway cattle and even the famous runaway elephant, Vicki, but the previous day, they had met their match, a runaway billy goat, encountered by patrolmen in the middle of Beatty's Ford Road at the city limits. They led the goat to a nearby grocery store and asked the grocer to whom the animal belonged, but he could give no information, as was the case with neighbors subsequently contacted. They all wanted to get rid of the animal, one housewife saying that he butted her every time she hung out the clothes in the yard, the grocer complaining that the goat butted his customers. When one officer opened the patrol car door, the goat suddenly jumped inside the cruiser and seated himself on the back seat, whereupon the officers continued to patrol the neighborhood looking for its owner. Once during the ride, the goat jumped over and settled on the front seat, snuggling beside one of the officers. As they turned down Holly Street off Beatty's Ford Road, the goat took another leap, scrambling through the open window of the car and headed for the backyard of a residence, which it turned out was his home.
In Santa Fe, a bill which made false statements to a peace officer unlawful, had been passed by the State Senate the previous day, with only two dissenting votes, with one State Senator having stated his opposition, indicating that it struck at the "very foundation of human rights. I say you should have the right to lie to whomever you please."
On the editorial page, "The Status Quo Is Not Good Enough", a bylined piece by News editor Cecil Prince, writing from Raleigh regarding the new biennial session of the General Assembly, says that the state's economy was not sick by any means, but there were a few spots which needed treatment. The segregation issue had been declared dead by many, but might not be, "just shamming". The Assembly's refusal to apportion its seats according to the State Constitution every ten years based on the most recent decennial census, had not destroyed legislative democracy in the state, but had tarnished the body's honor. Resistance to state minimum wage legislation, reforms in the State Highway and Public Works Commission, expansion of community colleges, sensible traffic safety measures, independent status for the prison system, teacher pay increases and improvements in mental care had not stifled the state's progress completely, but it would limit its capacity to achieve the full fruits of its manifold destiny.
He finds those to be opportunities and responsibilities which some of the Assembly's sincerest partisans had begun to ponder this date in the wake of the inauguration of Governor Hodges the previous day. Some of the most respected legislators shrugged their shoulders and asked what they could do about it, and the old problems thus remained.
Governor Hodges had urged in his inaugural address to the Assembly the previous day that they respect the past but should not live in it, urging that while progress had been made in the state, so had been the case in states and it must not stand still. Mr. Prince finds that he had touched on the greatest need of the state, "to rekindle a bonfire beneath the state's aged-in-molasses conservatism." Progress, he ventures, would require hospitality to new ideas and a firm grip on reality, as the state would have to prove its capacity for adjustment to new ideas and to reality far beyond what had been true in the past—Mr. Prince appearing to echo the expressly non-prophesying closing passages of The Mind of the South by W. J. Cash, from 1941, regarding the South generally in times then to come.
He finds that the Assembly had "lurched about its business this week with the same old immutability, the same old obstinance. From both sides of the aisle, in both houses, came a flurry of windy evocations of the past." The Governor had said that it was only natural to expect that any plans to meet the demands of the future might run into well established and accepted policies and practices designed to answer the needs of the past. But he had exhorted that North Carolinians ought be glad, while fully appreciating the past and their many blessings and resources, that they could still evaluate the shortcomings and have the courage to speak out on matters which ought be corrected.
Mr. Prince urges that the state could no longer afford to live in the glow of past triumphs, or adopt an attitude of terrified truculence toward new ideas, common in certain other neighboring states, a disposition to reject every innovation out of hand while guarding the status quo with fanatical resolution. He finds that the status quo was not good enough for the state, leading only to complacency and delusion. The state needed leaders who were willing to scale the barriers of the past, "men of judgment and character who will not cower before tradition, men of imagination, dedication and, above all, energy." He finds that there were such men in the Legislature at present, and that they needed only to rise to the occasion, as they must.
"Spencer Bell: Able Man for a Big Job" tells of about 50 Mecklenburg citizens this night to make a major decision for almost 100,000 registered voters, the privilege of choosing Mecklenburg's new State Senator, which would fall to the members of the Mecklenburg Democratic executive committee, choosing the person most willing and able to serve the broad interests of all Mecklenburg residents rather than the narrow interests of factional politics.
It says that the newspaper was bound to no candidate for the post, but as between the two reported leading candidates, it unhesitatingly favors J. Spencer Bell over Jack Love. Mr. Bell's long record of public service had been marked by a sympathetic and studious concern for a wide range of community problems. He also had marked accomplishments, with enactment of the perimeter zoning ordinance and moves to enlarge Charlotte's inadequate hospital facilities being the result in large part of his vigorous and articulate leadership. It finds that he had a well-developed social conscience and a keen sense of individual responsibility to the community.
Regarding State Representative Love, he had reacted to the recent resignation of State Senator Jack Blythe by getting his "crowd" together to dictate selection of Mr. Love or his alternative choice, former State Senator Fred McIntyre, whom Mecklenburg voters had already tested and found wanting. In the process, he had pronounced a negative verdict on annexation even before receiving the City's formal proposal on it. It finds that his political reach exceeded his grasp regarding the serious problems of Charlotte and Mecklenburg awaiting action in the current legislative session. "A noted dexterity in precinct politics is no substitute for a primary interest in the proper discharge of public affairs."
While there were other citizens with proven qualifications for the State Senate seat, Mr. Bell was willing and eminently able to do the job.
"Lift the Gloom from Annexation Issue" finds that eagerly in some quarters and reluctantly in others, the annexation issue in Charlotte was being politically postponed. Charlotte Mayor Philip Van Every had correctly appealed to supporters of annexation to make their views known to the Mecklenburg legislative delegation to Raleigh. The legislators, while listening, could not be guided solely by the incoherent pattern of a pitched propaganda battle. The City had made its proposal and gone to the perimeter area to explain to all who cared to listen and question regarding the benefits of annexation. The legislators would now bring their own judgment to bear.
It finds that if they discovered the program to be defective, they should specify the faults and allow the City an opportunity to remedy them, to say that it had "not been sold" to one segment of concerned citizens was to make an issue which was very complex and far-reaching, too simple.
It posits that the legislation to enable a vote on the issue ought be passed at the current session of the Legislature and that postponement would only avoid critical problems facing the metropolitan community as well as large opportunities for early benefits to both the city and the perimeter to be annexed.
Drew Pearson indicates that there was good reason for U.S. interest in Saudi Arabia, with American oil reserves limited and Saudi Arabia representing the richest remaining oil reserves in the world, though the areas around it, largely developed by the British, were also important. The importance of the oilfields, however, was no justification in the opinion of many Senators for permitting the oil companies holding the area to get away with overcharging the Navy, with violation of the antitrust act, or with possible criminal violations. It was also no reason for permitting them to dictate Middle East policy.
The Arabian-American Oil Co. had been sued by the Justice Department for 67 million dollars for overcharging the Government, but the lawsuit had fallen through the cracks, without explanation forthcoming from the Justice Department. The column had spent a whole day inquiring about it and failed to obtain any information on the status of the lawsuit, whether it still existed or not and whether it had ever been settled. At the time the overcharge had been reported by a Republican-dominated Senate investigating committee, former Senator Owen Brewster of Maine, the chairman of that committee, had charged that there was a criminal conspiracy by the oil companies in the Aramco combine. The then-Democratic-controlled Justice Department, however, under Attorney General James McGranery, had let the statute of limitations run until it was too late to bring a criminal case, and so the civil suit was instituted to collect the overcharge.
The heads of some of the oil companies which presently owned Aramco had been honored guests the previous week at a state dinner given by President Eisenhower for King Saud. They included the chairman of Aramco, the chairman of Socony Mobil, the latter having contributed, with his family, $7,000 to the Eisenhower campaign in 1956, the chairman of Texaco, and the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, who had contributed $1,000 to the Eisenhower campaign.
He proceeds to explain the manner in which the Aramco overcharge to the Navy had occurred, with a Navy contract for Arabian oil having been signed in June, 1945 following the end of the war in Europe, at a time when the Navy was getting ready for the big push against Japan in the Pacific theater. It was considered cheaper to obtain the oil from Saudi Arabia than hauling it halfway around the world from the Gulf of Mexico. The two Navy officers who had signed the contract had been Lt. John Walsh, later with Standard of New Jersey, and Lt. D. E. Bodenschatz, later with General Petroleum. When Aramco had sought six cents per gallon for gasoline, $1.05 per barrel for fuel oil, and $1.68 per barrel for diesel oil, the two lieutenants had balked.
In 1941, a former representative of Standard of New Jersey, then representing Aramco, had written a letter to the Navy offering gas at three cents per gallon, fuel oil at 40 cents per barrel, and diesel oil at 75 cents. The two Navy lieutenants in 1945 knew that the prices asked by Aramco were identical with the prices quoted at the Gulf of Mexico, meaning that Aramco was refusing to give the Navy any reduction for picking up the oil in Saudi Arabia instead of having to haul it halfway around the world from Texas. Nor was the Navy obtaining any reduction as promised by Aramco in 1941 in return for loans and lend-lease advanced to King Ibn Saud, the father of the current King, in lieu of increased oil royalties. So the two young Navy officers refused to accept the higher prices. The negotiations had dragged on, and one of the two negotiators for Aramco, who was no longer with that company, had informed Mr. Pearson that he considered the price sought by his company far out of line, even disregarding the loans and grants to the elder King Saud. He had said that the Government had paid Aramco in excess of 33 million dollars, resulting in an estimated profit to the company over and above production, royalty, and manufacturing costs, of approximately 15.5 million.
Mr. Pearson reports that despite those facts, the superiors in the Navy had overruled the two lieutenants and entered into the contract with Aramco for the high-cost oil and gasoline.
Doris Fleeson indicates that with the retirement of Justice Stanley Reed after 19 years of service on the Supreme Court, the President would have his fourth appointment, with the likelihood, she suggests, that before his term of office was complete, he would appoint a fifth member to constitute a majority of the Court—as would be the case in 1958, belying, incidentally, the virtual mantra of the right-wingers in the country through the 1960's and into the early 1970's, who bemoaned loudly the notion of the "Warren Court", supposedly appointed by Democratic Liberals, when in fact throughout that period of time, until President Nixon would add to the Court four appointees to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren, after President Johnson's elevation of Justice Abe Fortas in 1968 was filibustered to death by Senator Strom Thurmond and others, Justice Fortas then resigning the following year in disgust over his treatment in the nominating process, and retiring Justices Hugo Black and John Harlan, it had been a majority Eisenhower-appointed Court from 1958 through 1962, when Justice Charles Whittaker would resign, though replaced by conservative Justice Byron White, who would, for instance, join three of the four-Justice dissents in the bellwether "Warren liberal" Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, the dummies who typically speak for the far right never bothering to check their facts, primarily because they do not have to do so for the fact that those who listen to them are too dumb or too lazy to look up facts but accept whatever they are spoon-fed just like the little bah-bah sheep they are.
She finds that the character of the appointments made thus far by the President, not including the not yet appointed replacement for Justice Reed, had not been much different from the appointees constituting the Democratic majority under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, beginning with the appointment of Justice Black in 1937 by FDR, his first appointment. She states correctly at the time that the Court which had existed during the first Roosevelt term, from 1933 to 1937, had been the "last bastion of confirmed conservatism in the federal government." Beginning with the appointment of Justice Black, President Roosevelt had set out firmly to change the character of the Court, following the failure of his so-called Court-packing plan of 1937, in which he sought to have Congress provide the President with authority to appoint "assistant justices" for every Justice who reached age 70, up to six additional "assistant justices", for which he was roundly criticized, the plan ultimately being rejected by Congress. As a result, he had to await the death or retirement of the "nine old men", as the Court headed by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was dubbed during FDR's first term, blamed by liberals with holding up the progress of the New Deal, regularly striking down as unconstitutional major portions of the domestic legislation passed to deal with the Depression.
She finds that the modern-minded lawyers appointed by FDR to the Court had completely changed its philosophy and direction, culminating eventually in the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision holding that the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause was satisfied by the doctrine of "separate but equal" public facilities when involving some level of state action. (Of course, in her overview, she neglects to indicate that the appointment in October, 1953 of Chief Justice Warren, between the first round of oral arguments in Brown in December, 1952, and the second ordered round of oral arguments in December, 1953, which had already been ordered prior to the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson, regarding five particular questions the Court had, had led to the unanimous decision in Brown, with the Court having been badly splintered prior to that time, some favoring granting the sought relief while upholding the Plessy standard, others favoring overruling Plessy and still others on the fence, according to the autobiography of Justice William O. Douglas, The Court Years.)
She ventures that a decade earlier, there might have remained sufficient strength among Republican ultra-conservatives to attempt a counter-revolution on the Court, had they come to power at that time. But that time had past. Party labels among the Justices meant little if anything at present, making it easy, for example, for President Eisenhower to appoint Justice William Brennan the previous year, a New Jersey Democrat. She says that since the previous two appointees by President Eisenhower, including Justice Harlan, had been from the East and Chief Justice Warren, his other appointee, came from the Far West, speculation was that the new Justice would be from the Midwest, someone with judicial experience and likely to be a modern-minded Republican. It was unlikely that a Southerner would be appointed as long as Justice Black, originally from Alabama, remained on the Court.
Since Justice Reed, appointed by FDR, had been a member of the Court's conservative wing, a new appointee by President Eisenhower could conceivably give the Court a more pronounced liberal bent, as the appointment of Justice Brennan was expected to do. It was unlikely that the President would make an appointment without the approval of Chief Justice Warren.
Justice Brennan had been a recess appointment and had not yet been confirmed by the Senate, and so there might be some hesitancy to appoint a new member before the confirmation of Justice Brennan was assured. He would have to be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman of which was Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, an avowedly conservative segregationist who had not yet announced any hearings on the appointment.
Senator McCarthy, however, had given notice that he wanted to question Justice Brennan about a couple of speeches he had once made on the investigative powers of Congress, with the Senator believing that they may have been critical of him. She indicates that Justice Brennan might elect not to appear personally at the hearings, as there was sufficient precedent for a sitting Justice not to do so.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, finds that the only perfect piece of head wear for men was the beret and urges plugging it. The British armed forces had found that out a long time earlier, as had the French and Spanish peasants. But somehow in America, the beret had always been viewed as sissified. "Even though the hale Scotsman, who lives off oatmeal and neat whisky, adopted the tam-o-shanter, we have turned it down."
He says that he was hunting in Africa recently and got tired of hats. He was wearing a large Stetson stolen from Ralph Johnston of Houston, and girdled with a leopard tail. He found it very pretty, but it had blown off all the time in the open jeep and kept getting tangled in thorn trees when he was running away from things. So he bought a beret when he got back to Spain, discovering that it was the only hat which would keep a bald spot on the head from broiling in the sun while allowing one's face to be sunburned, also keeping the hair out of one's eyes and not blowing off, regardless of the speed of travel, did not snag in the bushes, weighed nothing and could be stuffed in the pocket.
He goes on at some length extolling the virtues of the beret, much in the same manner.
"Mind you, I don't mind a little extra adornment in male plumage, but I find a workable flannel shirt, a pair of washed-out corduroys, a couple pair of shorts and some decent boots will take you nearly anywhere in the world you want to go, unless it's to a big charity ball. For me, a big charity ball seems highly unlikely.
"But don't forget the beret, gents. Even if it's a costume party, you can put on one of the old ladies' dirtier smocks, cock the beret at a rakish angle, steal a paint brush and show up very cheaply as Picasso, Dali or Gauguin, especially if your face is dirty."
A letter writer says that he had recently had his first opportunity to observe the operation of one of the county volunteer fire departments, when there had been a fire at his residence, having been impressed with the efficiency and courtesy of the volunteer firefighters, and thanks them for their service.
A letter writer, who says that she was a participant in much of the musical life of Charlotte, was very glad to agree and add her bravo to another letter writer who had endeavored to interest musically-minded citizens in the need and desire for a radio station willing to further the culture with good music. She urges others to plan, program and announce such an endeavor, by writing of their desire.
A letter from the vice-president of the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte expresses her thanks on behalf of the organization for the publicity accorded them by the newspaper and its staff, especially Helen Parks, for her help and interest, and Mr. Walters, for his "wonderful picture".
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