The Charlotte News
Monday, April 28, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site ed. Note: The front page reports from Augusta, Ga., that the President had called on Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev this date to join the Western allies in an Arctic region aerial inspection program against massive surprise attack. In a brief new note to Mr. Khrushchev, the President had also appealed for Soviet reconsideration of the April 8 proposal by the President for study of nuclear test ban controls by technical experts, a proposal which had been rejected by Russia the previous week. In calling on Russia to join the Western allies in the Arctic aerial inspection program, the President had pointed out that the U.S. already had announced its intention of bringing the matter up before the U.N. Security Council the following day, with a resolution to be introduced in the Council by U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. The President had written that he was sure that with "the growing capabilities in the Soviet Union and the United States of massive surprise attack, it is necessary to establish measures to allay fears." He said that agreement on such an inspection program would be a significant first step toward disarmament. The note was another move to undermine recent Soviet charges that the country was endangering peace by sending nuclear-armed bombers across the Arctic region toward the Soviet frontier. The Soviets had made that complaint before the U.N. Security Council the previous week, but the Soviet delegate, Arkady Sobolev, had withdrawn a resolution asking the Council to halt the U.S. flights, after nine of the ten members of the Council had spoken against it. The U.S. denied that the flights were in any way provocative or threatening to peace.
In Jacksonville, Fla., a Jewish synagogue and a black school had been dynamited early this date in the city's first outbreak of racial disorder. A cache of dynamite placed at the rear of the Jewish center had exploded shortly after midnight, blowing in windows and doors of the building and shattering windows in homes in the area. About 30 minutes later, a dynamite bomb had been tossed between two buildings at the James Weldon School, exploding and causing damage estimated by police at $20,000. No one had been injured in either blast and there were no fires connected with either one. No arrests had been made immediately, but the police said that they had incomplete descriptions of an automobile which was observed leaving the Jewish center about the time of the blast, indicating that two men had been seen near the rear of the building shortly before it. The bomb at the school had landed on concrete and blown a hole three inches deep in the concrete, in addition to damaging the buildings. An anonymous caller had phoned the Florida Times-Union in between the two bombings and said that there would be three bombings during the night. The caller said that he was a member of the "Confederate underground" and that everyone had disregarded the group's warnings. He said that all segregationists had to go free and that "we want no more Jews in Florida except at Miami Beach." Several years earlier, a black leader's home at Mims, in Brevard County, had been dynamited, killing the man and his wife. A rabbi who lived across town from the Jewish center said that he had received a call from someone who said: "This is the Confederate center of information. We have just blown up your Jewish center. All integration in the South must stop." The rabbi said that he knew of no reason for dynamiting the synagogue and a police captain said that he knew of no reason to blow up the school. The captain told the mayor, who had opened an investigation, that it looked more like a "scare deal" than a serious attempt to cause major damage. He said that the explosives had been placed about a foot from the wall of the school, whereas if they had been tossed inside, they would have wrecked the entire building. He said explosives at the Jewish center had been placed a few feet from the building, but that if they had been dropped down a stairwell, only a couple of feet away, they would have wrecked that entire building.
In St. Louis, dismissal of suits
brought by Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas and others against
Government actions to enforce integration at Little Rock's Central
High School had been affirmed this date by the Eighth Circuit Court of
Appeals, rejecting the Governor's appeal from an injunction against
his use of Arkansas National Guard troops to prevent black children
from attending the high school the prior September, leading to the
President federalizing the Guard and sending in the Army to enforce
the District Court's order to integrate the school. It had also
rejected parallel actions appealed by two members of the
pro-segregation League of Central High Mothers. The Court affirmed the
rulings of the District Court in each case. In the case involving the
Governor, the Court held that the State of Arkansas could not
lawfully use its forces to suppress "rights which it is the duty
of the state to defend. The use of troops or police for such purposes
would breed violence. It would constitute an assurance to those who
resort to violence to obtain their ends that if they gathered in
sufficient numbers to constitute a menace to life, the forces of law
would not only not oppose them but would actually assist them in
accomplishing their objective." One of the two parents who
brought suit had sued officers in charge of the Federal troops sent
to enforce the Federal District Court order to integrate the school.
(Those officers included Maj. General Edwin Walker, in
charge of the troops. General Walker, who would be the alleged subject of Lee Harvey Oswald's April, 1963
The Senate Judiciary Committee this date postponed for another week action on the nomination of Gordon Tiffany as executive director of the Civil Rights Commission, formed pursuant to the 1957 Civil Rights Act, signed into law the prior September.
The Senate Judiciary Committee this date approved an amendment designed to overcome a Supreme Court ruling and restore to the states the right to enforce their own anti-subversion laws.
The Supreme Court this date struck down a ruling that the Panama Canal Co. had to lower its tolls, refusing to order 27 million dollars in refunds to steamship lines for claimed excessive tolls.
The U.S. agreed this date to contribute $350,000 toward the cost of building a 4.3 million dollar nuclear research and materials testing reactor in Sweden.
Senator Paul Neuberger of Oregon renewed this date his demand for legislation to provide new controls on cigarette advertising.
AFL-CIO president George Meany this date said that he was sure that unemployment would be close to 6 million in June, unless there were a miracle.
In New York, it was reported that love letters disclosed this date by police showed an on-and-off-again romance between a Filipino physician and a Brooklyn nurse found slain in her apartment. A 15-state alarm was broadcast for the physician, 38. The nurse, 33, had broken off the romance when she discovered that the doctor had a wife and four children in the Philippines. But the affair, according to police, had waxed and waned, as they found letters in her apartment from the doctor the prior February, first accepting the breakup, and then other letters in March, expressing happiness that the romance had been renewed. Cards from the woman had been found in the doctor's apartment, but the contents were not disclosed. She had been found by her brother stabbed to death in her home on Saturday.
In Newark, N.J., as indicated in the caption of a photograph, an off-duty police officer had accidentally discharged his weapon, and the bullet had gone through a wall of an adjoining apartment, striking a ten-year old girl and paralyzing her below the waist.
In Baconton, Ga., a father of three had been killed and six other members of the family injured this date when their car left the highway and flipped into a small creek.
In Bat Cave, N.C., it was reported that a stolen truck occupied by two escaped convicts had hit head-on a small sports car on a curve and killed the wife of the head of the community hospital, about a half-hour after midnight on Route 74. Her husband was listed as the driver of the late-model MG convertible, and he was described as being in serious condition in the hospital. Ten hours later, the convicts had been captured in the area following an intense manhunt, one being a 26-year old man from Albemarle and the other, a 25-year old man from Concord. They were two of four men who had escaped from a work gang in Yancey County during the late morning on Friday. The doctor who had survived the crash said that the two men had gotten out of the truck immediately after the accident on the rain-drenched highway, walked over to his car, which was sitting partially under the larger truck, and asked him if anybody was hurt, that when he told them that he believed his wife was dead, they promised to bring help and left the scene on foot. Patrolmen said that the truck was on the wrong side of the road when it hit the sports car.
In Winston-Salem, it was reported that two AWOL sailors had related at Forsyth County Jail on Sunday that they had taken to the outdoors and cave living on Sauratown Mountain in Stokes County because they did not like distributing groceries to Navy wives at the Norfolk Naval Receiving Station. One, an airman apprentice, 24, and the other, a seaman apprentice, 20, both of Winston-Salem, were being held for military authorities, expected to arrive this date. They also faced local charges for breaking and entering. The airman apprentice said that the Navy always wanted them to do the things they did not want to do, that he had been a "bags and groceries" man at a Navy commissary. He said that before he joined the Navy about seven years earlier, he worked in a grocery store and figured that at last he had graduated from bags and groceries, but the Navy did not think so. The seaman apprentice, who had first been a mess cook, said that he ended up with the airman apprentice in the store distributing groceries to the wives of Navy men, and that the pair had decided to go AWOL. They talked about several small caves which one of them had discovered a number of years earlier while at a boys' camp near Sauratown Mountain—which, as we would soon learn whenever we stayed up long enough to see the sign-off at 1:00 a.m. on occasional Fridays or Saturdays, was the locus for the WSJS-TV transmitter, O, say, can you see? They had left on February 27 and visited at their homes until they decided it was time to leave before their families became suspicious, their parents believing they were on leave. In a sheer rock face on the north side of the mountain, they had stored their supplies in a cave which had an entrance about 12 feet high and which ran about 20 feet back into the rock. They slept in caves nearer the top of the mountain than that one. They lived in the caves for only a few days before it had become too cold and they then began living in abandoned houses scattered around the area. One night, it had gotten down to about 15 degrees in the caves, and they decided to leave. They camped out near their homes for awhile in abandoned houses and then their families discovered them and prevailed on them early the previous week to return to the base. One said that when they returned, they ended up on the same cash register in the commissary, "bags and groceries again". The other also got the same job. They sat down and had a smoke, smiled at each other, and took off again. They arrived in Winston-Salem on Thursday night and camped on a creek, were thinking about returning to the mountain caves, but were also thinking about returning to the Navy, or a better place in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Stuart, Va., and Mount Airy, N.C. They could not make up their minds. The pair had then been arrested at the Creek Camp.
Emery Wister of The News indicates that a storm in the early morning in Charlotte had caused at least one death, had flooded streets and buildings and disrupted power. A 20-year old man was killed when his car crashed into a telephone pole on Providence Road near Meadowbrook Road, after his car apparently had gone into a skid after hitting high water in the road, according to a police officer. The car had skidded 60 feet and crashed into the telephone pole, then rolled down an embankment and hit a tree. It was the second storm in four days and unleashed a torrent of rain in the early morning, with three quarters of an inch having fallen in the course of an hour, the total for the night having been 1.01 inch. From 7:30 a.m. until mid-afternoon, .92 of an inch had fallen.
Jerry Reece of The News indicates that members of the County Commission had gone on record this date as approving the consolidation of the City and County tax offices, voting unanimously to approve the plan, subject to approval by the City Council. It was pointed out that Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, Wilmington and New Hanover County and Asheville and Buncombe County had successfully implemented consolidation of their tax offices. In 1948, the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill had recommended the consolidation of the two offices. Consolidation would eliminate 56,000 tax bills each year and save $3,200 in postage.
In Okeene, Okla., the 19th annual Okeene Rattlesnake Roundup was said to have been a success by the Chief Rattler of the International Association of Rattlesnake Hunters, after a total of 3,924 rattlesnakes, weighing 4,476 pounds, had been sold at auction. The longest of the snakes was 6 feet, 1 1/8 inches.
On the editorial page, "A Dedicated Handful Saved the Day" indicates that Charlotte and Mecklenburg County voters had responded the previous Saturday to a challenge when they authorized the issuance of 10.8 million dollars in school and public improvement bonds and approved a two-cent countywide tax for the support of the two community colleges, Charlotte and Carver.
It indicates that because a handful of citizens had cared enough about the future of the metropolitan area to express an opinion, the onward march of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County would not be checked.
It wonders how so many could have shown so little interest in such an important special election. In education alone, the voting made the difference between orderly progress and almost certain decay.
It believes that the few who had voted for progress had been expressing the will of the great majority of people in the county. It had been a victory for the children, who would now get the extra physical facilities they needed desperately, a victory for all young people who would now have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a bigger and better community college system, as well as a victory for every citizen who would share the benefits and responsibilities of continued growth and progress. It indicates that it was proud of the outcome, the choice having been made for progress and not decay.
"Let the Russians Feel the Goods" tells of House Speaker Sam Rayburn having vetoed a trip to Moscow by a group of younger House members, the reason having reportedly been that if the Congressmen had gone to Russia officially, members of the Kremlin would then have to be received in Washington, which would "dignify them in their pretense that they are a democratic legislature."
It suggests, however, that the Kremlin's hirelings would benefit greatly by a quick look around capitalistic America. They had been told a great deal about the nation's terrible depression, having been regaled with stories of mass hunger, soup lines and the tottering private enterprise system. If they were to come and see for themselves the situation, they would understand that the news of such dire circumstances was untrue.
It would also not do a few Congressmen harm to get to know Russians better. "How long can two peoples go on shouting at each other over seas of misunderstanding?" It thus finds that Mr. Rayburn had erred.
"In Mental Health, Looks Are Deceiving" indicates that residents of Charlotte should not have to await the arrival of Mental Health Week between April 27 and May 3, to awaken to the agonizing realities of "America's No. 1 health problem".
Charlotte was more fortunate than most of its sister cities, at it had a fine Mental Health Clinic, headed by Dr. Marshall Fisher, an active Mental Health Association, headed by Harry Snook, and a network of social agencies which explored on occasion the darkest crevices of the mental health scene. It was also the principal city in the state, which had recently climbed from 47th to within the top 20 states in the nation in its mental health program.
But although Charlotte and North Carolina were accomplishing much in the complex field of mental health, they were not doing enough. Charlotte's Mental Health Clinic was overburdened and under-supported. The state hospitals and training schools were inadequate in number, size, staff and services to meet the growing demands on them. The police and the courts were still hampered by medieval attitudes toward the problems of the mentally unhealthy. In addition, there was widespread lack of appreciation and understanding of the problems of the many former mental patients who were being restored to their families and communities.
The enormity of the mental health problem was only dimly understood by most residents of Charlotte. It was estimated that one of every ten Americans suffered from a mental or emotional disturbance requiring psychiatric treatment. One out of ten children born each year would, sometime during their lives, need to go to a mental hospital. On any given day of the year, there were about 750,000 patients in U.S. mental institutions, as many as in all other hospitals combined. More than 300,000 people would be admitted for the first time to a mental hospital during the current year. In the course of the year, over a million patients were treated in the country's mental hospitals. In addition to those who went to hospitals, clinics or private psychiatrists, it was estimated that emotional complications were an important factor in 50 to 70 percent of the medical cases treated by general practitioners.
It indicates that somehow greater awareness of the problem of mental health had to take place in the community and others across the nation, with that awareness then mobilized such that something could be done to improve the care and treatment of mental hospital patients, expand services for early detection and cure, strengthen rehabilitation programs for recovered patients and expand research into the cause, prevention and treatment of mental illness. Mental Health Week, it suggests, was as good a time as any to begin developing that awareness.
Query whether the presence of the tv in the living room helped or complicated the bringing of such awareness of the problem, whether the fictional
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Surprise and Expectation", indicates that a veteran teacher in the elementary schools of St. Louis had left an estate of $106,283.
It finds it should not appear strange that a member of a profession requiring superior education and skill had accumulated a respectable amount of savings, presumably over a period of 40 years. The veteran teacher had directed that all except $6,000 be distributed among three homes for children, to educational institutions for underprivileged youth, a home for the elderly, a fraternal order, a local church and a local church federation, a great Bible society, and an association for retired teachers.
It suggests that the reader would not be surprised by that latter fact because it had been taken for granted that teachers were public-spirited and civic-minded. "The gap between the surprise you may have felt and expectation you doubtless entertained is an index of the gap in national thinking within which lies a great injustice."
Drew Pearson indicates that this date had begun the formal hearings before Congressman Cleveland Bailey of West Virginia for a school bill, one not supported by the Administration or by the big trucking and gasoline lobbies which had rushed through the highway bill, or by the real estate interests which had passed a housing bill, or by the banking lobby which had blocked an investigation of high interest rates. If the bill were to pass, it would be largely the work of the women of the nation, as exemplified by this date's initial witness, Agnes Meyer, sometimes called "the people's lobbyist".
For over 150 years, American women had crusaded for better education, beginning with Emma Willard of Troy, N.Y., in 1800, Mary Lyon, who had founded Mount Holyoke College, Catherine Beecher of Hartford, Grace Dodge, who had devoted her life to educating immigrant children, Ella Flagg Young, who had become the first female superintendent of schools in Chicago, and Susan Miller Dorsey, the first female superintendent in Los Angeles. In recent years, Mrs. Meyer, wife of the chairman of the Washington Post, had made it her job to interview President Eisenhower to urge better education, and to talk with Senators, members of the Cabinet, and now was the first witness in urging passage of the Murray-Metcalf bill, which would grant states $25 per year for each school-age student and permit the states to spend the money on better buildings or better teachers' salaries, as they wished.
Mrs. Meyer believed that whatever nation had the intellectual energy to win the support, respect and sympathy of the world's peoples would win the world, that unless Americans took education more seriously than they had in recent times, they would not long be able to compete with Russia for world leadership.
This date was the 200th anniversary of the birth of James Monroe, the fifth President and author of the Monroe Doctrine. For over a year, Senator Harry F. Byrd and Congressman Howard Smith, both of Virginia, had been sitting on a resolution which they had introduced to honor the founder. The Monroe Doctrine had been hailed as the first great proclamation of interdependence, to facilitate closer relations between the Americas. Mr. Monroe had also arranged the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, during the Jefferson Administration. Having been instructed to purchase only New Orleans, he exceeded his instructions and acquired the entire territory of Louisiana.
No resolution to honor him had yet been passed by Congress. Senator Byrd had introduced a resolution to that effect but had done little or nothing to pass it. Senator Byrd wielded great power in the Senate. When the insurance companies wanted a 124 million dollar tax concession passed before the tax deadline of March 15 during the current year, the Senator had led the fight to give them the concession, which had passed just prior to midnight on March 14. When Senator Byrd's office had been queried as to what he had done about the Monroe anniversary resolution, the answer had been that it was still in subcommittee, awaiting action.
Joseph Alsop indicates that the Kremlin had abruptly reversed the policy of friendship toward Yugoslavia which had been the first fruits of Nikita Khrushchev's rise to power, the most curious aspect of it being the timing. The pretext for the new Soviet excommunication of Yugoslavia was the "draft program" of the Yugoslav Communist Party, a document published at the beginning of March and now for the first time discovered by Russia to be crammed with intolerable heresies.
The question arose as to why the heresies had not been spotted much earlier, as all of March and early April had passed in peace and amity between Russia and Yugoslavia. In that time, Mr. Khrushchev had even requested Marshal Tito to accept a visit from his Hungarian stooge, Janos Kadar, and the latter had been invited for a weekend in Yugoslavia.
Then, in mid-April, the Kremlin approved a denunciation in the Soviet paper, Kommunist, on April 15 and thereafter the Soviet Party theorist, Pospelov, had delivered a stinging attack on the Yugoslavs as his contribution to the celebration of Vladimir Lenin's 88th birthday. Finally, the Soviets had organized a general boycott of the Yugoslav Party Congress by all the states of the "Socialist camp". The Yugoslavs were taken by surprise by the boycott, underlining the unexpected character of the squabble. To round out the mystery, Pravda had published a renewed and venomous attack on V. M. Molotov and his allies, who had opposed Mr. Khrushchev's pro-Yugoslav policy, at almost the same time when Mr. Pospelov had been attacking the Yugoslavs.
Among the experts there was only one point of general agreement, that the sudden Soviet-Yugoslav break was a byproduct of another inner struggle within the Kremlin. One thesis was that the neo-Stalinists, Mr. Pospelov and the doctrinaire Mikhail Suslov, had at last organized opposition to Mr. Khrushchev. Condemnation of the Yugoslavs implied condemnation of the first major Soviet policy decision made by Premier Khrushchev.
The opposing thesis was that Mr. Khrushchev was behind the new development. When Marshal Zhukov was destroyed, the Yugoslavs had at first argued that Mr. Khrushchev had been "pushed by the Stalinists", such as Mr. Suslov. But in the end, the Yugoslavs had concluded that the actual prime mover in the destruction of Marshal Zhukov was the person whom the latter had saved from destruction, Mr. Khrushchev. Mr. Khrushchev had to deal with one of the forces which had sustained him in his long and devious rise to the supreme position, Marshal Zhukov and the Communist Party apparatus. Mr. Zhukov, however had sought too much reward for his loyalty and, more recently, the party apparatus had shown signs also of getting above itself, particularly by obstructing Mr. Khrushchev's radical agricultural reforms. Thus, it was theorized that Mr. Khrushchev might be preparing to teach them their proper place as he had taught Marshal Zhukov.
The trouble with that thesis was that the condemnation of the Yugoslavs had to be pleasing to party extremists such as Messrs. Suslov and Pospelov. At best, therefore, it would be an astonishingly devious maneuver in any game by Mr. Khrushchev to defeat the party bureaucrats. But Mr. Khrushchev was the type of person who got his way by seeming to give way. Furthermore, the Yugoslavs themselves blamed Mr. Khrushchev personally for their condemnation. At the party Congress, the Yugoslavs had attacked Mr. Khrushchev personally instead of denouncing "Stalinist survivors who still cause tragic distortions," as they would otherwise have done. The Yugoslavs viewed what had occurred as another stage in the transformation of Mr. Khrushchev into a somewhat jollier version of Josef Stalin.
Mr. Alsop concludes that as between the two theses, "you can pay your money and take your choice."
Robert C. Ruark, in Seville, Spain, says he would not attempt to justify bullfighting as a sport any more than he would attempt to call a circus a sport, but that for the aficionados, the occasion of special bullfight carnivals was as heady as a camp meeting. The sounds, smells and atmosphere were all part of the carnival. Seville currently smelled of hot sun, mock orange, red dust and horse droppings, blended with the other flower smells, sweat, some blood and a few tears.
He says that anyone who could not accept the fact that a woman of title, flawless in dress and noble aspect, might still reek of horse sweat, might as well stay home. "Anybody who wants his gypsies neat is wasting his time."
The gypsy beggars bought the temporary use of babies to aid them in their alms collection. He knew an American guy sometime earlier who had rented his own baby to stave off the importunists. He was accompanying a woman clad in mink and when the baby wet the lady's mink, the guy had to sell the child back for 200 pesetas.
"It's all crazy and noisy, but the bright, golden sands of the Plaza de Toros makes Seville's bullring the most beautiful in the world, and the sweeping swallows and pigeons, wheeling and dipping against the blue skies and the ornate spire of a castle, produce a tremendous emotion."
"Half the time the bulls are lousy, and when the bulls are good, the bullfighters might be awful.
"But you don't care.
"You know you can always go to somebody's caseta for fua and music, and you might still wind up vertical at 6 a.m."
A letter writer from Matthews compliments the editorial of April 25, "The Army's 'Very Successful' Nightmare", indicating that surely the newspaper had not expected Maj. General William Westmoreland to have any strong feeling of remorse because five soldiers under his command had been killed and 137 injured in the Wednesday mass training jump of 1,400 soldiers. "To the professional military men, life is cheap—very cheap." She indicates that the military establishments of the world were operated under a driving force of hate and fear and that it was impossible to be a good soldier without hating someone. She thinks the newspaper would be on more solid ground if it came out for complete world disarmament, the abolition of all military forces, in which case the five paratroopers would not have died in vain, and in the process, would make "a lonely little group of pacifists very happy."
A letter writer indicates that a lot was heard about training oneself to be better able to serve the Lord, the writer indicating that the best way to serve the Lord was by serving one's fellow man. He says that a lot of people believed that they were helping to feed and clothe people when they wrote a large check to some "so-called" charitable organizations, but that if they knew how little of their money actually went to help the needy, they would likely cease giving that way and give their money instead directly to those whom they knew needed help. He says that he knew of needy cases who had been refused help by all charitable organizations.
A letter writer from Salisbury says that the most constructive work for peace was being done in Sweden, bestowing a small fortune in the form of the Nobel Prize on those each year who succeeded in their fields. They received great publicity and it inspired other people to want the same type of success. He suggests that the time would come when a certain part of the world's income would be set aside to pay researchers for the achievements they had accomplished.
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