The Charlotte News
Friday, January 3, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Gaffney, S.C., two of the five men charged in the bombing of a Gaffney home on November 20 said that the Klan had come to their aid, indicating that a meeting of the Klan to be held at Blacksburg on January 11 would raise funds with which to engage legal counsel for all five of the men charged with the dynamiting of the home of a doctor and his wife. One of the men, Luther Boyette, said that the Cherokee County Independent Knights of the Ku Klux Klan would stage the rally at Lonesome Pine Rodeo Grounds. Another of the five, Robert Martin, Jr., said that the meeting was called for the specific purpose of raising funds to engage a lawyer for the group. Both men said that they were Klan members. The other three men charged in the matter could not be reached for comment. Mr. Boyette said that he spoke for all five men in asserting their innocence and that they were only requesting an opportunity to prove it to the people through representation by counsel. The owner of the Rodeo Grounds said that he would rent to the Klan for the event and that it had been used by the Klan previously. He said the rent was determined by the turnout for the meeting. The County sheriff said the previous night that he had not heard of the planned meeting but said he would patrol it, as he had previous meetings. The Klan in that county was affiliated with the South Carolina Independent Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, according to Mr. Boyette, but operated as a separate unit. The local solicitor in Spartanburg said that he would ask a Cherokee County grand jury to issue indictments in the case at the opening of the next general sessions term of court the following March. The five men had until March 7 to request a preliminary hearing. A magistrate of Gaffney, before whom the hearing would be held, said that he had not been approached on the issue of their representation. The other three men named in the warrants were John Painter, James McCullough and Cletus Sparks.
The new six-man Civil Rights Commission, formed pursuant to the 1957 Civil Rights Act signed into law the prior September, had been sworn into office this date in the presence of the President.
In Detroit, Jimmy Hoffa, president-elect of the Teamsters Union, said this date that local Teamsters unions had been instructed to demand inclusion of "hot cargo clauses" in their contracts, despite an Interstate Commerce Commission ruling prohibiting them.
In Berlin, special Soviet guards had failed to reappear in East Berlin this date, apparently having been assigned to be on the lookout for Russian soldiers who might desert during the holidays.
In Auckland, New Zealand, it was
reported that Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man, along with his
sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, to conquer Mount Everest, had reached this
date the South Pole at the bottom of the world, completing a
1,200-mile journey
In Rome, prima donna Maria Callas
had walked out
In London, it was reported by the Daily Express this date that Ava Gardner had damaged her beautiful face in an accident in a private Spanish bullring the previous autumn and now required an operation before she could make another movie. The columnist, William Hickey, provided no source for the story, indicating that the actress was terrified of undergoing the surgery and had thus far refused to do so. The accident purportedly had taken place when she fell from a horse during a visit to a private bullring of the leading Spanish horseback bullfighter. The prior October 29, she had made a sudden mysterious trip from Madrid to London, arriving at the airport with her face hidden by a scarf. She went at once to her hotel and remained there, not visiting any of the nightspots of London, a friend having insisted at the time that she had Asian flu. The columnist claimed that the wound had never healed and that in December, she had flown to New York to see a prominent American surgeon about it.
In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a 22-year
old female drug addict this date admitted the rifle slaying of a
24-year old man formerly from Asheville, N.C., which had taken place
on December 26 on a lonely Everglades road. The assistant county
solicitor said that the woman had given a signed statement to
investigators saying that she had committed the crime. Earlier, she
had accompanied investigators to the scene of the murder and
reenacted it. The solicitor said that she would be charged either
with second-degree murder or manslaughter, as there was no
premeditation involved. The victim, a graduate of N.C. State and a
student engineer with Florida Power & Light Co. in Miami, had
been killed while returning from a Christmas Day visit with his
fiancée in Belle Glade, Fla. The accused woman said that she
had hitchhiked a ride with the man from Belle Glade on Christmas
night, said that he had stopped the car about 34 miles north of
Miami, got out to stretch his legs, and while he was doing so, she
observed his .22-caliber rifle lying on the back seat. She told
officers that she decided to rob the victim and pointed the gun at
him when he returned to the car, that he had told her to give him the
gun and she refused, at which point a scuffle ensued, during which
she could recall grabbing him by the shirt and then hitting him twice
with the gun, each time accompanied by a loud bang. She said she then
became very frightened and fell down, knelt down to shake him, then
ran away. She said she hitched a ride with another driver to West
Palm Beach where she was picked up by police on New Year's Eve and
questioned. The solicitor said that a first-degree murder charge
would not be sought because her motive had been robbery and the
struggle over the gun led him to believe that it was not premeditated
murder. (We do not know what the Florida statutes or case law may
have said at the time, but premeditation generally can be implied
from the picking up of the gun from the back seat and aiming it at
the victim, and then refusing to provide it to him when he asked for
it, the struggle over it being only incidental as she was the initial
aggressor. Moreover, felony-murder, that is a killing committed
during the commission of a felony, in this case an intended robbery,
usually can be charged under state statutes as first-degree murder.
We so indicate, just in case you might be taking too much from the
red-headed hitchhiker's experience and maybe get some untoward ideas,
thinking that you might escape with second-degree murder or
manslaughter—maybe, including Charlie and Caril out in Lincoln,
Neb.
In Okeechobee, Fla., a native of Burlington, N.C., and his four small children had been burned to death the previous night when fire destroyed their home. The man, whose birthday had been the previous day, had moved from Burlington only seven months earlier and was employed as an electrician in West Palm Beach. His wife was hospitalized from shock. The cause of the fire had not yet been determined.
Near Key West, Fla., three fishermen from North Carolina, who had swum a mile through raging seas, had been picked up from Cottrell Key, about 8 miles northwest of Key West by a Navy helicopter this date, having been fishing aboard a shrimp boat, Miss Jan, which had become disabled in foul weather and had sunk.
In Toledo, O., a late-running Trailways bus had crossed an overpass and sideswiped a disabled tractor-trailer truck on the Toledo Expressway this date, killing two persons and injuring 14.
In Kokomo, Ind., a booster station valve had stuck in near-zero cold early this date, and the resulting gas pressure was blamed for an explosion which had wrecked one home and caused fires which damaged three others.
In Rabat, Morocco, U.S. and French planes and helicopters this date joined a rescue team bound for a hamlet at Riff Mountain, where 50 European tourists were reported snowbound.
Dick Young of The News reports that a North Carolina farm boy, who previously had sought to eradicate his fingerprints and, in consequence, had become the most distinctive "wanted man" in the nation, had come to Charlotte this date from his South Carolina prison cell to assist authorities in locating $10,000 from the robbery accomplished eight years earlier, which had resulted in the taking of a total of $41,500 from a crossroads grocer in Fairfield County in South Carolina on August 13, 1949, for which he was sentenced to 21 years in the South Carolina penitentiary at Columbia. The man had notified Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn that he was ready to talk, would disclose the hiding place of the missing $10,000 and so was brought to Charlotte for the purpose. After nearly 3 hours of discussion, including a visit with his eight-year old daughter, he said he was ready to disclose the location, and the group then left the police station for an undisclosed destination, with it not yet immediately known whether the money had been found. The South Carolina officers had said that if it was not there, their name would be mud. The convicted man said that if the money was not there, he knew the persons who had gotten it and that the officers could get them. He was dressed in a blue-gray suit, a Christmas gift from Chief Littlejohn.
Two brothers and a companion had been arrested near Edenton, N.C., in connection with an alleged extortion attempt involving threats to kill two minor children, according to a Charlotte FBI special agent. A total of $5,000 had been involved in the alleged attempts. Letters had been written requesting $2,500 each and threatening the lives of the minor daughters of a woman of Edenton and another woman of Roper, with the former having been directed to leave $2,500 in cash beneath an oak tree in a field near Roper the previous day, threatening otherwise that her daughter would die, while the other woman had been ordered likewise to leave $2,500 under a bridge at the Albemarle Sound, also threatened with the death of her daughter if she did not.
In Santa Monica, Calif., Red Skelton felt well enough to joke with his nurses, his physician reported, after he was stricken at home on Monday night with cardiac asthma and was taken to a hospital by firemen summoned to administer oxygen to him. The doctor said the previous day that it was just a matter now of his continued convalescence. God bless…
As indicated, an inside page reports of the late Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel having been adapted for the Broadway stage.
On the editorial page, "Education: A Time for Hard Truths" finds that as mild as it was, the Administration's four-year emergency program for education provided a needed antidote to those states' righters who favored full local support for bad schools.
While education was properly a local function, with control of its operation needing to remain in local hands, as close to the people concerned as possible, that basic American freedom did not need to be seriously impaired by refusing to introduce equitable uniformities and minimum standards in the interest of common survival, and if that meant through Federal aid, that would have to be the case.
HEW Secretary Marion Folsom, it finds, was to be commended for recognizing that "the present critical situation requires the American people to improve the quality of their schools." The program he had proposed did not pretend to be the whole answer, but was one practical part of the solution, geared to the demands of "long-term national security", setting up a system of grants to states to spur greater school activity, especially regarding scientific training. It would also provide scholarships for talented students and funds for colleges to expand their facilities.
The plan was designed to strengthen and stimulate state and local programs, not to supplant them. There were those who were saying already that the program was too modest, and it finds them correct. But it suggests that they probably lacked the political acumen of Secretary Folsom, who had already had one bad experience with unswerving states' righters in Congress and was willing to take half a loaf rather than none at all. The legislation he proposed was designed to frustrate the attacks of those who feared Federal impact on education, avoiding, for the present, the issue of Federal aid for school construction which had stirred up the segregation issue the previous year.
It indicates that details of the program could and should be carefully scrutinized and discussed, and it was possible that certain aspects could be judiciously improved without causing the perturbation of hard-core conservatives. It was a program to help education become good enough to ensure the nation's survival and represented one method of doing so in an age of peril.
"More Victims for the Cross-Arms" indicates that the lack of warning at the Seaboard Railway crossing on Sharon Amity Road was ridiculous, having taken the lives of two Marines during the week, with no warning lights to show that the road was blocked by a freight train while wooden stop signs posted 250 yards from the tracks were so weather-worn as to be unreadable. At night, the cross-arms at the tracks were visible only too late.
The same old cry of railroad responsibility had followed in the wake of the accident, the same cry heard after six automobile accidents had occurred during a five-year period at the West Fifth Street crossing in Charlotte. After some prodding by the City Council, Southern Railway had finally installed lighted safety gates at that crossing.
It indicates that the railroads bore partial responsibility for warning facilities, but it was incumbent also on the City, County and State governments to see that the railroads lived up to that responsibility. It advocates immediate installation of warning lights at the Sharon Amity crossing and also inspection of other crossings in the city and county, plus demand for proper warnings at those which lacked adequate signals.
"What's the Best Answer to Tyranny?" indicates that although the French Government was more stable than it would appear from its rapid succession of cabinets and premiers, it was not stable enough in times of peril. The French merry-go-round in government did not allow any premier to remain in office very long, though some came back for a second time, the revolving door being the result of French fear of a strong central government. (Little Trumpies, take heed. While on your cock-sure way to making America "great again", you are severely debilitating the image of a strong America around the world, in fact, except in other authoritarian countries and dictatorships, making it a virtual laughingstock, while busy trying to undermine the current Administration, all for some sort of perverted personal spite against the world. Dumb is as dumb does.)
David Schoenbrun, a CBS correspondent in Paris, had remarked during a cabinet crisis some years earlier that it was no way to run a railroad but that it was the way the French ran that one. It indicates that it had wondered recently if Mr. Schoenbrun might have a fuller explanation, and in a closed circuit preview of the CBS annual "Years of Crisis" program, he had responded to that query which the newspaper had submitted by indicating: "The French believe the best answer to tyranny is anarchy." (Attention, Trumpies.)
It indicates that the anarchy was not in administration of the government, for behind the scenes of the shakeups, an expert bureaucracy kept the wheels of government turning. (Atencion, mein Trumpies and Fox propagandists.) The anarchy was in policy, with the powerful Parliament being able and often willing to change cabinets in any sort of a stream. A cabinet could be deposed on one issue through a no-confidence vote of various parties whose real complaints against the government were based on unrelated issues.
The French currently were discussing ways and means of giving their governments a longer lease on life, but the results were not likely to achieve the stability present in the U.S. and Britain. "Nor will it be wise for quiz show contestants to undertake to answer questions on France without first checking the late bulletins from Paris." (Ditto for the present Republican-controlled House, Trumpies.)
It concludes that perhaps the constant threat from the Soviets of imposition of foreign tyranny was beginning to moderate the French fear of domestic tyranny. "Meantime, Americans who become exasperated with the rudderless French might remember that Congress still has done nothing about the problem of presidential disability in the U.S." (As indicated, that would be addressed by the 26th Amendment, ratified in 1967.)
"A Thought for Things Underground" indicates that "deep in a winter of assorted discontent", there could be some pleasure in thinking of things under the ground. It considers that the tulip and the daffodil were there, engaged in their taken-for-granted miracles, fashioning perfume, sturdy stems and beautiful flowers from the previous spring's sunshine and the present winter's water. "They care not a whit for marvelous man's attention and do very well indeed without the aid of his fertilizers, poisons, soil conditioners, cultivators and devoted care."
It finds it a pity in a way that natural miracles occupied less of man's concern than did those such as Sputniks, which he conceived to be of his own creation. "There might be a lot less progress but assuredly there would be a lot more peace."
It does not suggest the need for a generation of nature worshipers, but for "resumption of a mood that man is capable of achieving in contemplation." The daffodils cared not a whit for man's concern. "The daffodil is, and that is all." But man had determined that it was beautiful and no one could deny it.
"Couldn't man maybe look at himself, declare he is peaceful and make himself and all of his heirs believe it?"
Atticus, writing in the London Times, in a piece titled "Gold-Nibbed Pen", indicates that he had recently told Somerset Maugham that he admired his handwriting, and Mr. Maugham had said that the first rule was to write with a gold nib. He said that he had a whole battery of good old-fashioned fountain pens and that many years earlier, a journalist had asked him what he was writing and he had said: "Nothing, because my fountain pen has broken." When he had cabled off the news, fountain pens began pouring in from manufacturers all over the world and since then he had no excuse to stop writing.
Atticus had asked him therefore what he was writing at present, and his reply was, "Nothing."
Drew Pearson indicates that Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, conducting a leisurely probe of the country's missile snafu, ought take a look at the President's own personal reports on the nation's failure to educate scientists, a problem of which the latter had known long earlier but had procrastinated on it. As early as 1951, when General Eisenhower was still president of Columbia University, his advisers had pointed to the grave danger of American failure to educate scientists and technicians, resulting in the Ford Foundation providing a grant to establish the National Manpower Council at Columbia.
Subsequently, on May 18, 1953, after the start of the Eisenhower Administration, the Council appointed by Mr. Eisenhower gave him a blunt warning: "Progress is retarded and even national security is weakened by failure to provide proper education and training for a vast reservoir of highly intelligent young people." That report was presented to the President personally by James D. Zellerbach, the San Francisco paper mogul whose company was presently being investigated for a possible monopoly on newsprint and who had then been chairman of the Manpower Council. Mr. Zellerbach was a good friend of the President and since had been appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Italy. When Mr. Zellerbach had made his report, Rowan Gaither, then president of the Ford Foundation and the recent author of the top-secret report on the nation's defenses, had been present. Both men had warned the President that the U.S. had only 155,000 scientists and of that number, only 15,000 were working on basic scientific research, causing them to urge better institutions for teaching science and engineering, better opportunities for making certain that talented youngsters received college educations and better primary and high school educations. That report was now four years old. The recommendations had been discussed at the Cabinet level and then another committee was appointed, comprised of members from different departments of the Government, which in turn led to the appointment of yet another committee, consuming three years of time.
Despite the appointment of three committees between 1951 and 1956, the President had done nothing regarding the encouragement of scientific study until the present week. Just three months before Russia had launched its two Sputniks, the President had turned his back on his own bill to provide aid to education when the Democrats tried to pass it in Congress, resulting in its defeat.
On October 4, when Russia launched Sputnik I, causing the average American to become aware of how badly the U.S. was slipping behind Russia in production of scientists and engineers, the President finally got to work on the matter.
Washington salesladies paid tribute to First Lady Mamie Eisenhower as an efficient Christmas shopper, indicating that she knew what she wanted, did not waste their time by asking for a lot of superfluous items.
Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, an elder in the Mormon Church, had put his religion to work even with respect to his critics. At Christmas time, he had written some of his most consistent newspaper critics to thank them for their "good work". "We do appreciate your friendship. May you and your family at this Christmas time and throughout the New Year enjoy the spirit of Him whose birth we celebrate."
Marquis Childs tells of the new Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, having impressed Washington like no other figure in a long time, despite his initial appointment to succeed Charles E. Wilson having been greeted with skepticism for his background having been as head of Proctor & Gamble, leading to questions as to what a soap manufacturer would know about the nation's defense. But so impressive had he been that he was now being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for the Republicans in 1960, though he laughed off the suggestion.
Being a realist, Mr. McElroy was aware of the great issues with which he had to deal and when he made a crucial decision, he was aware that the honeymoon might abruptly end.
Among his most important impending decisions would be whether to use manned bombers for the ensuing 5 to 10 years or whether to switch primarily to missiles. U.S. intelligence sources reported that the Soviet Union had cut back its bomber production by 40 percent and cynics were saying that a new 2,200 mph bomber, which had just been authorized by the Pentagon, had been intended to save a segment of the aircraft industry and check unemployment in one community dependent on that segment. The defense budget would not support long-range bombers for much more than another decade.
Another major decision would be whether to modernize the Army with nuclear weapons, authorized, but not yet available. If the number of men in the Army were to be reduced, nuclear arms were even more important, and the Soviets had made rapid progress in distributing such arms throughout their forces.
A third major decision would be to determine whether the Navy's aircraft carrier program should be terminated, with many observers believing that building carriers and the failure to build submarines in sufficient numbers could prove to be a major blunder of the previous five years, with both coasts open to nuclear attack by Soviet submarines.
A fourth area of decision-making would entail whether to provide missiles to the nation's allies, when they would become available and determining where they could be placed without causing too much political upheaval. Secretary McElroy probably would have to go to Europe early in the new year to help work out that issue.
A fifth area was the organization and functioning of the Department of Defense, immersed in dense bureaucracy, with assistant secretaries, committees and consultants which would need to be cut back if decisions were to be made.
A sixth area was the overhaul of the roles and missions of the armed services. There had been no revision of the roles and missions assigned to the three services since they were united under the Department of Defense in 1947. The decisions taken at that earlier time were now outmoded by the advent of rockets and missiles.
A seventh area would be the overhaul of the Joint Chiefs, touching on sensitive political and military issues. Nothing had angered Mr. McElroy as much in his first three months on the job as the continuing evidence of interservice rivalry between the Army, Navy and Air Force, each contending for control and operation of the new weapons. On several occasions, Mr. McElroy had used violent language to rebuke the Chiefs, but when it came to doing something about them, he would run up against powerful vested interests as each service had in Congress its own champions who would resist any important changes.
In a campaign speech in Baltimore in October, 1952, General Eisenhower had spoken of the need for a complete overhaul of the Defense Department to end waste and duplication, indicating that only the first faltering steps had been undertaken in that regard. Yet in the five years of his Presidency, nothing had been done toward that end and the President was reported to be indignant about the continuing feuds.
If Secretary McElroy could carry through even half of what the list of decisions required, he would be rated very high and yet none of those decisions could be blinked if the defense establishment was going to be put in order with a fair chance to recover the lead over the Soviets.
A letter writer from Great Falls, S.C., indicates that the most important topic for discussion at the present appeared to be the Russian peace proposal, with many people believing that it was merely another propaganda trick while others thought that even if an agreement with the Russians could be reached, they would violate it. The writer agrees with both thoughts and also asserts that the only agreement the Russians would accept would have to be on their terms or not at all. He nevertheless favors a meeting with the Soviets to satisfy the U.S. and other nations. It indicates that the only thing he could see which had come from the recent NATO summit conference in Paris was that the President was present, as it amounted only to friendly talk with nothing creative coming from it. He says that most NATO nations wanted a meeting between the U.S. and the Russians but it was not clear as to who would represent the U.S. and its allies at such a conference. He favors such persons as Bernard Baruch, Frank Porter Graham, or others like them. He also favors replacement of Secretary of State Dulles by someone more efficient and levelheaded, as well as changes in the scientific branch of the Defense Department, indicating that the appointment of Dr. James Killian without executive powers would not produce results.
A letter writer wonders why the ACC and the press had picked Duke to play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. Oklahoma had only one loss during the season and had none in the prior season, thus having been one of the most powerful teams in the nation. The ACC, he suggests, had no team of sufficient quality to face Oklahoma, but he asserts that UNC, despite its bad year under Jim Tatum, would have performed better against them than had Duke.
Duke, ranked 16th in the final Associated Press poll, got clobbered 48 to 21 by number four Oklahoma the prior Wednesday. The next time an ACC team would play in the Orange Bowl would be 24 years later, in 1982, when Clemson would win the national championship by beating number four Nebraska, 22 to 15. Duke had finished the regular season 6-2-2, while UNC had finished 6-4. UNC had beaten Duke at Duke 21 to 13, but finished tied for third with Clemson in the league behind Duke's second-place finish. Even had UNC won its season finale against Virginia in Chapel Hill, lost by a touchdown, they would still have finished a half-game behind Duke in the conference standings. N.C. State, ranked number 15 in the final AP poll, had been the best team in the conference that year, finishing 7-1-2, and winning the conference championship, but was ineligible for post-season play.
A letter writer indicates that his brother, a frequent writer to the newspaper, had recently addressed a letter concerning Christmas and the birth of Christ, a letter which had been criticized by A. W. Black, who had been trying to prove "through his seemingly superfluous knowledge of all facts" that December 25 was not Christ's birthday. He indicates that the New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia stated: "Christmas, in the Christian Church, is an annual festival, held on December 25 to celebrate the Nativity, or birth of Christ." He says that was all one needed to know, that while Christ might not have actually been born on that date, no one could say for sure that he was not. As Christians everywhere celebrated December 25 as the birthday, that was what his brother had meant in his letter.
Let no one ever question Funk & Wagnalls, as it is on sale in all the best supermarkets—or at least was until it was supplanted by Wicked-pedia, the new unquestionably authoritative source for all knowledge, at least down at the supermarket, where all the best historians gather on a regular basis to confer about historical minutiae of extraordinary importance, such as the true birth date of Elvis, the King, or where he was staying when he picked his feet in Poughkeepsie because someone had stolen his guitar.
By the way, December, as indicated by its Latin prefix, was originally the tenth month of the year, before they added the first two. Hence, September, October and November, originally the seventh, eighth and ninth months, respectively, begging the question as to why July was not Pentember and August, Hexember. Consult the Caesars on that one.
A letter writer comments on a December 26 article in the newspaper, titled "Critical Shortage of Leaders Hampering Work of Religious Groups", finding it unique in that it covered practically every denomination in the community as well as the schools and colleges, emphasizing the need for preparing the community's young men for the military. He says that he had also enjoyed Dr. Shuford Pegler's comment on December 30. He hopes that the community would come together to offer themselves in service in any way they could to bring the matter to reality. "May we realize that time waits on no man and also to remember that today is yesterday's tomorrow."
Ding, dong. Ding, dong… Plant a tree and grow.
Tenth day of Christmas
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.