The Charlotte News

Wednesday, October 8, 1958

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Castel Gandolfo, Italy, that Pope Pius XII, who had suffered a stroke early on Monday, but appeared to make some recovery the previous day, regaining consciousness from his post-stroke coma, had suffered a second stroke at 7:30 a.m. this date, described by his physicians as a "grave cardiac pulmonary collapse", thus both his heart and breathing giving in to his illness. One attending physician, who declined to be named, said that he was "in his death agony". A 101-degree fever and quickened pulse, from 82 the previous day to 123 this date, were symptomatic of his precipitous decline. The word from his sickroom was that he was "going fast", word sent to the Italian Government by a member of the papal household. Earlier in the day, a rumor hit Rome newspapers and the Italian news agency Italia that he had died, but Vatican radio quickly denied it, saying that his condition was "stationary" since the second stroke.

In Miami, Fla., it was reported that Hurricane Janice had become the season's most deadly storm to date, with 75 mph winds, but had veered into the open Atlantic, missing the U.S. East Coast, after leaving behind 19 dead, one boat captain in Nassau Harbor and 18 persons aboard a swamped 45-foot Haitian sloop seeking to make shore in heavy seas in the Bahamas, 200 miles southeast of Nassau. One survivor of the latter vessel had swum ashore to safety. The sloop had reportedly left Nassau October 1, bound for Haiti with a load of freight, passengers and crew, and had been hit by the full force of the storm.

U.S. officials expressed the hope this date that Communist China would convert its seven-day truce in the Formosa Strait crisis into a permanent, dependable cease-fire, the Communists having agreed not to continue their bombardment of Quemoy for the seven-day period, provided the U.S. would not continue to convoy supply ships to the three-mile international limit at the island.

Both Democrats and Republicans, campaigning in the midterm elections set for November, traded stinging criticisms of each other's approaches to handling of international Communism. No details are provided.

In Karachi, Pakistan, it was reported that President Iskander Mirza was ruling the country under martial law this date after abolishing the Government to clear the way for writing a new constitution. (Such, it appears, is the path on which the Trumpistadores are wont to tread.)

In Jakarta, it was reported that Indonesia's smoldering civil war on Sumatra appeared to have erupted again, with reports reaching Jakarta this date indicating that rebels had occupied a strategic town in the west central part of the island.

In Little Rock, Ark., Governor Orval Faubus this date prepared thousands of form letters appealing nationwide for money to fund private schools for the students displaced from the four closed high schools of the city, closed by the Governor's order to avoid continued integration of Central High School, where seven black students, of its 2,000-pupil student body, had been ordered admitted for the school year by the Supreme Court's order of September 12 and subsequent full, unanimous opinion of September 29 in Cooper v. Aaron, affirming the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis which had reversed a U.S. District Court order granting a hiatus in further integration of Central until the beginning of 1960. The letters, soliciting funding for the private schools, addressed to the thousands of people who had written urging the Governor to stand fast in the matter in favor of continued segregation in the four schools, including the lone black high school in the city, were signed by the Governor and the president of the private corporation formed to run the private schools. The form letter promised a pro rata refund of any unused portion of the funding should the use of public funding be made legal later—a legal impossibility given the Supreme Court's earlier decision indicating that the racially discriminatory use of public funding or any action by state or local officials involving discrimination by race would entail state action implicating the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, presumably also to include closure of the four public high schools by the Governor, even if done on a "free and equal basis", including the black high school, to circumvent orders to desegregate Central. The Eighth Circuit had continued a temporary restraining order against use of the public school buildings under lease to the corporation until October 15, when it would decide whether to make the order permanent. Why don't you people learn how to read the English language?

John Kilgo of The News, in the third of his series of articles on juvenile delinquency in Charlotte, reports that the city's taxpayers had spent thousands of dollars building community recreation centers for their children, wanting to give the children a place to go where they could have good, clean fun, to help cut down on juvenile crime. Park and Recreation Commission officials, led by superintendent Marion Diehl, had worked overtime to see that the centers served a good purpose. But the directors at the centers could control only the action inside, able to do nothing regarding the hoodlums who hung around outside on the public streets. If a person were to become disorderly inside the center or entered with whiskey or beer on their breath, that person was asked by the director to leave. If necessary, the director could suspend anyone from all of the centers, and sometimes had to do so. The Youth Bureau of the Police Department worked hard to help the centers maintain a nice place for the children to visit. Youth Bureau director J. R. Hall had said recently: "If the kids give the center directors a hard time, they get suspended from the center. When this happens, they go out and hang around the front of the center, on the public sidewalk and make trouble." A member of the Commission, Joe Murnick, said that the fact that a very few young "hoodlums" frightened some of the "respectable children" from coming to the centers was, in itself, a serious problem, saying: "We don't want a small portion of kids scaring the nice ones away. This is a problem we must face. You can't lick a problem by hiding it." The superintendent of the centers was very proud of the job they had been doing, stating, "We've made wonderful advancements in the last two years and we're proud of the centers and their programs." Mr. Diehl, who visited the centers every night, said also that the hoodlums had not taken over the centers and never would, stating, "We'll shut down a center before we let the hoodlums take it over." He was proud of the programs offered by the centers and was happy with the people running them. One center director had said: "The situation was pretty bad when I came here 18 months ago, but now we have the finest group of children coming to our center that we've ever had." But the fact remained that a juvenile crime report on file at police headquarters stated: "Places investigated or inspected by Youth Bureau detectives for conditions that influence or contribute to juvenile delinquency are:… Dances at Park and Recreation Centers," after listing 13 other places.

Donald MacDonald of The News reports that disagreement with an editorial and statements in Mr. Kilgo's series on juvenile delinquency had been voiced by members of the Park and Recreation Commission at a special meeting the previous day. One Commission member, Mr. Murnick, had questioned comments attributed to him by Mr. Kilgo, while other commissioners objected not so much to the series but to an accompanying editorial in the Monday edition which stated: "The community centers themselves seem to be breeding places for delinquency and the experts cannot cope with the consequences." According to superintendent Diehl, the first article by Mr. Kilgo had recounted an incident involving a boy with a knife, "an incident which took place at one of the community centers a year ago. We've had no trouble whatsoever at our centers in a long, long time. In that instance, the center director quickly took the knife away from the boy and put him out of the building. The center directors cannot control what goes on outside the centers—that's the responsibility of the Police Department." Another instance cited a fight which had begun at a football game and was brought "all the way across town" to the center. One boy had reportedly followed another into the center restrooms, but the center director had quickly ended the disturbance, which Mr. Diehl said had also happened about a year earlier. He pointed out that "one rotten apple" in a barrel of teenagers eventually turned up in a community center but that once a boy or girl misbehaved, the director of the center barred the person from the building and wrote a letter to the child's parents.

The first problem, we note, is the consistent dichotomy by officials between the "hoodlums", identifying them as the proverbial outsiders not welcome, and the "nice, respectable children", who, presumably, were above reproach and always welcome. Such a putative division by officials suggests some identifiable physical characteristics of the children which placed them in either group. Whether, as a result, some overzealous officers, using those identifiable characteristics, then proceeded to harass the "hoodlums" when they were not doing anything wrong at all at the time, is not indicated, but based on human experience, was at least possibly the case, which would have only exacerbated the problem. We make the statement only to encourage public officials to conduct themselves appropriately, treating all members of the community equally, regardless of apparent social standing, mode of dress, cut of hair, race, color, creed. Anything less is unacceptable from a public official, be he or she a police officer or otherwise.

We make the statement also with awareness that Federal officers and agents have been dispatched to Charlotte by Trump in November, 2025 for "immigration" enforcement—actually because it is a Democratic city in a Democratic state, as with all of his other targets. That which is really going on is intimidation of Democrats in an effort to get the citizenry accustomed to abusive treatment, likely to be deployed in even greater, more widespread force at the time of the midterm elections next November to "avoid fraud and disruptions at the polls" so that the nice, good people, the Trumpies, can vote, unmolested by terrorists and illegal immigrants, and other such Democrat-Socialist-Communist-Fascist Terrorists who dared support Ka-mala Harris, Bi-den and Clin-ton. All of the scheme is in furtherance of Trump's insane delusion which he persists in holding in his obviously demented state, a constant theme echoed by his Cabinet sycophants who must show obeisance to his will to hold their jobs, that he actually won the popular vote in 2016 by "millions" but for the supposed but unproved votes of illegal immigrants, a preposterous notion in the premises, and his further delusion that the 2020 election was somehow, anyway, anyhow, anywhere His Highness chose, "stolen", despite all the marshaled evidence to the contrary. What we have seen thus far from the Hominid Force is nothing short of Nazi Storm Trooper-type behavior of a species reminiscent of early-Thirties Germany, masked goon squads deployed to incite, not to enforce any actual laws against illegal immigration, any more than Hitler's Storm Troopers were conducting enforcement of "immigration laws" to provide, in that case, the New Germania populated only with pure Aryan stock, others to be either deported or, if not leaving their longstanding homes when the getting out was free and easy, exterminated in the camps.

As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or editorial page of this date, with the notes to be sporadic until we catch up.

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