The Charlotte News

Monday, November 24, 1958

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Berlin that the Western powers were reported still unable to agree this date on a policy of unified action toward the Communist challenge in Berlin, seeking to get the U.S., Britain and France to withdraw from Berlin by complicating the flow of supplies along the normal transportation routes from West Germany to West Berlin. There were many indications that the Big Three Western powers were finding it difficult to agree on a plan of action if and when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev put forth a definite proposal for dismantling the four-power occupation agreement for the city, made at the end of World War II. Mr. Khrushchev had declared on November 10 that the Soviet Union was ready unilaterally to withdraw from the four-power pact and leave the Western powers on their own in dealing with the East German government, which the West did not recognize because it did not believe it was a duly elected popular government. The West's dilemma was how far to go in dealing with the East German satellite of Russia. Despite official denials, reports persisted in Berlin, London, Washington and Bonn that the British saw less danger in such dealing than did the Americans, French or West Germans. The West German Government in Bonn was opposed to any Western dealings with the East German Communists.

At the U.N. in New York, Turkey intended to submit a resolution to the General Assembly this date urging new negotiations on the future of Cyprus to safeguard the island's Turkish minority from Greek control.

In London, it was reported that the Labor Party had called this date for an election mandate to make Britain a third force to end the cold war. A manifesto of the party stated: "It is essential that one great power should break through this deadly circle."

In Rabat, Morocco, it was reported that a new radio tower, intended to carry the voice of Morocco to all of North Africa, had been dynamited this date. The 1,111-foot tower, just completed following six months of work, had toppled in the wee hours of the morning under heavy explosive charges in Oujda in East Morocco, near the Algerian border.

North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges described this date the benefits of active local government, re-endorsing his belief in what he called the wisdom of the state's local school assignment law. He said that it seemed to him, in explaining the law to the National Association of County Officials in Asheville, "that in the two years since the adoption of these laws, our experience has demonstrated the wisdom of taking that approach which vests in the people the authority to make the basic and ultimate decisions…" The school assignment law enabled local school boards to handle assignments of pupils and had permitted limited integration in Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. The Governor told the county officers, however, that the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 still did not have the approval of the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians. Meanwhile, Virginia Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., this date placed the blame for his state's public school closings on the NAACP and the Federal judiciary, accusing both of having "no regard for public education nor for the rights of the masses of the people." He had made his remarks in a speech prepared for a convention of the Virginia Farm Bureau in Richmond, saying, "There is no easy solution" to the desegregation crisis in Virginia, which had resulted in the closure of nine white schools to avoid integration, as ordered by Federal courts. He said that the NAACP and the Federal courts had "exercised with arrogance every power at their command to force the mixing of the races in the public schools… They are counting on the lethargy, the softness and indifference of the people."

In New Orleans, FBI agents and police were reported to be seeking this date to determine whether an attempted safe-cracking at a vocational school was linked with a bomb explosion at a nearby public school medical building. The homemade but powerful device had exploded the previous night in an outside metal ventilator in front of a parking spot used by the superintendent of the New Orleans public schools. The medical building, the vocational school and the school board's central administrative office were located in the same area downtown. FBI agents, who had been called into the investigation, were asked to aid police investigating the attempted safe-cracking. The would-be safe-crackers had battered open a metal cabinet in which the school safe was located but had failed to get it open. The explosive device shattered the metal grating of an air vent beneath the building, had blown out windowpanes above and had embedded bits of metal in a wooden building 80 feet away. Chunks of brick were also blown from the building. No one had been hurt by the blast. A police lieutenant said that the bomb apparently had been made by stuffing an explosive into a lead pipe. The school superintendent had been attending a meeting of the Louisiana Teachers Association at Alexandria and his office was in another building nearby. Officers had no theory regarding a motive for the bombing. There was no indication the previous night that efforts to speed up integration of public schools in the city had been a motive for the bombing. A Federal District Court had ordered the school board to desegregate public schools "with all deliberate speed", but no definite time had been set for integration.

In Mount Pleasant, N.C., Cabarrus County sheriff's officers had emptied the Mount Pleasant High School of its 1,200 students during the morning after they had received a report that a bomb had been planted in the school. Officers had rushed into the building and found a "queer looking device" hidden in the cloakroom of a second-floor classroom. A deputy said that a man, "crying while talking and apparently hysterical," had telephoned him at the Mount Pleasant Police Department during the morning and told him that he had hidden the bomb in the school building and that it was set to explode 15 minutes after his call had been made. The deputy rushed to the school, conferred hurriedly with the principal and band director and decided to sound the fire alarm. The students marched out of the building in orderly fashion, thinking it was a fire drill. The deputy found the device and jerked off a string-type fuse, then ran to a sink where he submerged it in water. He described the object as being about the size of a wooden rolling pin with a hole about the size of a pencil in one end, with a red, string-type fuse inserted into the hole. He said that "something" was stuffed into the hole but he could not immediately determine whether it was an explosive. He had found the object after the designated time for the explosion had passed. The caller had said that if it were found before it exploded, he would turn himself in to the police. FBI agents were on the scene late during the morning as the schoolchildren frolicked in the schoolyard, still unaware of the reason for the evacuation. Even some of the teachers did not know of the bomb threat. Deputies were conducting a thorough search of the school building at noon and could not explain the reason behind the attempted bombing, indicating that there had been no recent school troubles in the town, about 9 miles east of Concord. The bomb reportedly had been taken to Charlotte shortly before noon for examination and possible dismantling.

In Chicago, it was reported that production at U.S. Steel's huge Gary, Ind., works was nearing normal this date as striking Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway Trainmen heeded the urging of union leaders to end a wildcat strike.

A strike of 7,600 Eastern Air Lines employees had stopped airline transportation in Charlotte this date. Some 600 members of the Flight Engineers Association had gone on strike during the morning at Eastern facilities in various cities, grounding all four-engine craft which had not already departed. Approximately 7,000 other employees, including mechanics who were members of the International Machinists Association, had also walked off the job after informing Eastern management that it could also be considered their strike. In New York, Eastern announced complete suspension of all flights in the interests of public safety because of the strike by flight engineers and mechanics. The flight engineers were used only on four-engine craft and no planes of that type were based in Charlotte, and thus there were no engineers at the field. But Charlotte was a base for two-engine planes and shortly after mid-morning, four placard-carrying pickets appeared, two walking on the sidewalk in front of the terminal and two near Eastern's maintenance building. Some four-engine craft had already passed through Charlotte this date.

In Aix en Provence, France, two missing portraits by Van Dyke had shown up neatly wrapped at the Beaux Art Museum this date, accompanied by a note which said that they had been taken to win a bet.

On the editorial page, "How History Points to Rocking Chairs" indicates that Shane MacCarthy, director of the President's Council on Youth Fitness, had proclaimed: "History has shown that citizens of every great nation in the past become soft and flabby when the nation got to the top, then it went downhill."