The Charlotte News
Monday, December 8, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that the U.S. and Russia had agreed this date that the ten-nation conference designed to reach an agreement to prevent surprise attacks had reached a dead-end.
The Boston Herald said this date that a million dollars worth of guns ready for illegal shipment to El Presidente Fulgencio Batista of Cuba were believed hidden on the Boston waterfront. It may be time for the citizens of Boston to engage in another tea party.
In New York, Mark Zborowski, convicted of perjury for denying that he knew confessed Soviet spy Jack Soble, was sentenced this date to the maximum term of five years in prison.
In Montgomery, Ala., the Civil Rights Commission of the President, appointed pursuant to the 1957 Civil Rights Act, had opened an historic inquiry into black voting complaints this date with an expressed disavowal of any intent to take sides in the segregation issue. It was the first public hearing for the Commission since its creation. The Commission chairman, John Hannah, and the vice-chairman, Robert Storey, had issued prepared statements at the start of the investigation, emphasizing that the hearing would be what they termed a fact-finding inquiry and nothing more. Mr. Hannah said: "The emphasis of the commission and its staff is on objectivity and as the commission views it, objectivity presupposes getting all the facts. The commission does not consider itself a protagonist for one view or another." He took note of what he called "forward strides that have been taken throughout the South in recent years in admitting Negroes to the exercise of the voting franchise." He said that he had been told that almost 1.25 million black voters were registered in the South and, he added, "that indicates that progress is being made in that direction." The Commission, meanwhile, gave defiant Alabama officials a fresh chance to answer charges of discrimination against prospective black voters. But as the hearing opened, there was no indication that subpoenaed voter registration records of six Alabama counties would be surrendered to the Commission, at least without a court order. Mr. Hannah and Mr. Storey withheld comment on what action might be taken if the witnesses persisted in their threatened refusal to produce the records. Instead, they said that the hearing afforded officials an opportunity to disprove the charges made by black voters and expressed hope that they would take advantage of that opportunity. They said that they had received a substantial number of complaints that blacks had been denied the right to vote because of race. Mr. Hannah said that he hoped that the hearing could be completed within two days, but would be prolonged if necessary. Wholesale resistance to bringing records before the Commission appeared to be building over the weekend, as the records in Barbour and Bullock Counties had been impounded by Circuit Judge George Wallace—the future segregationist Governor who had lost in the 1958 Democratic primary to State Attorney General John Patterson. The man who had, in the wake of that election, reputedly said that he would never again in an election campaign be "out-segged", or without the journalistic sanitizing, "out-niggered", said that he would defy a subpoena to produce the records and arrest any Commission agent seeking to take them from his custody—a precursor to his standing in the door at the University of Alabama to prevent admission of the first black students to that institution, in defiance of a Federal court order and the Kennedy Administration's Justice Department, in June, 1963. The files of Dallas, Lowndes and Wilcox Counties had been turned over to grand juries for what was described as State investigations of the same complaints made to the Federal Commission. The other outstanding county was Macon, where there were six times as many blacks as whites, but only half as many black voters as white voters. Governor-elect Patterson had instructed Macon County officials not to surrender voter records to the Commission.
In Little Rock, Ark., the deadlock over desegregation at Central High School, as ordered by the Supreme Court on September 12 to continue, having resulted in the closure by Governor Orval Faubus of all four of the city's high schools, including the black high school, and the attempt to privatize and reopen the three white schools on a segregated basis, remained unbroken this date following an inconclusive election in which three businessmen opposed by the Governor had won seats on the Little Rock School Board. The Governor charged that the three were integrationists who had worked against his successful bid for a third term in the previous summer's Democratic primary. Three others elected to the Board had the implied backing of the Governor. Seemingly split on the degree of resistance to integration, the new Board soon would have to cope with an uncompromising Federal order for "affirmative steps" toward racially integrated classes in public schools. All 13 candidates for the six Board seats had professed to be segregationists, with their differences being on the price. The five candidates who had been denounced by the Governor had placed great emphasis on a need to preserve the public schools, even in the midst of racial crisis. Apparently only day-by-day developments would determine what direction the new Board would take. As to the implication of the relatively light but close voting on the prior Saturday, there were as many views as viewpoints, despite the silence of the Governor, who had sought to influence the results. Ted Lamb, an advertising executive who had defeated two staunch segregationists in a three-way race, said, "This is the first crack in the Faubus edifice and I predict that his entire political empire, founded as it is upon misrepresentation and bigotry, will soon be crumbling at his feet." But Amis Guthridge, an attorney for the pro-segregationist Capital Citizens Council, said: "Our people took the election for granted and refused to run scared."
In Atlanta, a jury weighing the fate of George Bright, accused of bombing the Atlanta Jewish Temple, had returned to deliberations this date. They had been isolated in a wing of a hotel since midnight on Saturday because Georgia law prohibited deliberations or verdicts on the Sabbath.
In Washington, Secretary of State Dulles, hospitalized with an intestinal ailment, was said by doctors not to exhibit evidence of any recurrence of his previously diagnosed and treated colon cancer. He would, however, have to undergo abdominal surgery in February for obvious recurrence of the cancer, which would afterward spread into his bones, forcing his resignation in mid-April, followed by his death in late May, 1959.
In New York, a deliverymen's strike against nine New York City newspapers had been settled this date less than eight hours after it had begun. A Federal mediator said that both sides had made concessions in reaching the agreement.
In Stockholm, Sweden, winners of the 1958 Nobel Prizes had gathered this date with their wives for the ceremony, the Russians having sent the three winners for the physics prize, but, as promised, the prize winner for literature, novelist Boris Pasternak, winning for Doctor Zhivago with its anti-Bolshevik theme, stayed home.
A record snowfall hit New York this date and sub-zero temperatures gripped much of the upper Mississippi River Valley. In Oswego, N.Y., the record one-day snowfall accumulated to 33 inches, far exceeding the previous 24-hour mark of 19.1 inches occurring in 1900. The 44-inch total accumulation had immobilized the city. Schools had been closed throughout upstate New York and roads were drift-blocked by the record accumulation. The deepest snow ever recorded before had been 35 inches, measured on February 9, 1912. In Pulaski, N.Y., the 24-hour accumulation was 15 inches, bringing the total accumulation to 24 inches. Winds of between 30 and 40 mph off Lakes Erie and Ontario whipped up high drifts. At Massena on the St. Lawrence Seaway, zero temperatures thickened ice as workmen strove to clear six ships of the locks before the ice closed the lake navigation season ahead of this night's deadline. Thick snow descended over parts of seven other states from the Iowa-Nebraska border through southern portions of Wisconsin and Michigan and northern sections of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, the storm having deposited between four and seven inches over that area. At Midway Airport in Chicago, there was an accumulation of 5 inches by mid-morning and the ceiling for visibility was cut to 500 feet by falling snow, sharply restricting ground visibility. Up to that time, planes had continued to arrive and depart, but there were delays of several minutes. At O'Hare Airport, there was a 4-inch accumulation. The subzero cold extended in early morning from Montana and Wyoming to Iowa, Wisconsin and northern Michigan. In Miles City, Mont., there was a reading of 20 below zero. At International Falls, Minn., which shared the reputation as the coldest spot in the nation with Cut Bank, Mont., a temperature of 32 below was recorded, and at Lemmon, S.D., the temperature was 17 below. Lower teen temperatures extended southward into the Tennessee and Carolina Mountains and temperatures in the 20's were recorded even in the mid-portions of the Gulf states—that being, for the slow-learners, the Gulf of Mexico, not El Presidente's Golf de Amerique, no more real than his fictional "War Department" and "Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts", both of the latter attempts at new titling being quite bad luck for El Presidente, as the last President who presided for a full term over the War Department was FDR, and...
In Portland, Ore., two individuals, a 16-year old girl and a 22-year old young man, liked each other on their first date, but then found out that they had something unexpected in common. After they had been introduced by a mutual friend the previous week, the girl said: "I sort of liked Dick and we made a date for Saturday night. We were sitting in a car and talking when I just happened to say that Dorothy Manewal wasn't my real name, that it was Sara Esther Alridge. And then he said that Dick Gillett wasn't his real name either. And then he said, 'Well, I'm your brother.' We just sat there for a moment. We could hardly believe it." The high school girl said that they were adopted into separate homes after their mother had died in 1948 and had not seen each other since. The young man said that he knew of his sister's existence, but had never sought to find her. The girl said that she remembered her brother when she was a little girl but had also never attempted to locate him. The two spent the previous day helping each other make Christmas decorations and discussed old times and things they had done when they were kids. The girl said, "I think we'll be good friends."
On an inside page, the newspaper celebrated its 70th anniversary with a one-page retrospective, shorter than its 60th anniversary edition and the much more elaborate 50th anniversary edition. It would be the last decennial anniversary of the newspaper as an independent entity, as it would be bought by Knight newspapers, owner of the Charlotte Observer, the following April, though the two newspapers, aside from sharing the same printing facilities, would remain separate as to staffs and editorial policies.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further comments on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the comments will be sporadic until the we catch up.
And remember to be careful at Christmastime about starting any fires
Framed Edition
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