The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 9, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that Fidel Castro's rebels had taken over Cuba's largest radio and television stations this date, calling for a general strike. Fighting had broken out in the streets of the city and heavily armed forces of El Presidente Fulgencio Batista had sped to the troubled sections. Shooting had begun in the waterfront district during the late morning in old Havana and had spread rapidly to other sections of the city, with rebel forces having seized an arms shop. Gunfire could clearly be heard in the U.S. Embassy's chancery building on Havana's seaside boulevard, about two miles from the waterfront district. The rebels had appealed in their broadcasts to Cubans to rise in arms against El Presidente's regime, speaking for Sr. Castro and his rebel band in the mountains of Oriente Province. Soon after the broadcast, workers in the telephone company and other utilities had begun leaving their jobs, leaving communications crippled. Most banks in the city had shut down and in other businesses, employees had stopped working. There was nothing to indicate that the action would result in a full-scale showdown with the Government troops and police. Until it did, the outbreak might be marked up as another rebel fumble through lack of timing and coordination. Other uprisings in the 16-month rebel campaign against El Presidente had fizzled quickly because of the same reasons. Whether the rebel call for the general strike would be effective might be known when the time came for the shops and businesses to reopen after the long mid-day lunch period. Troops and police were ready to force them to open. Rebel leaders in Havana had gone to a secret rendezvous to decide what to do after the reopening time at 2:30 p.m. The rebels had sent out their call for the strike and armed uprising from a radio station and a radio-television station after the latter's equipment had been bombed out. Passengers in buses had forced the drivers to halt and they had hurriedly exited the buses when the first shots were fired. Most of the heart of the city appeared to be calm and there was no sign of rebel activity around the palace of El Presidente or key Government buildings. In the American-owned First National City Bank, about half the employees had walked off the job. Two heavy bomb explosions had occurred at noon.
In Bonn, West Germany, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had told Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that an East-West agreement on nuclear weapons would be more difficult if other nations received atomic weapons.
The President said this date at his press conference that he would very seriously consider calling off further U.S. nuclear testing should the upcoming Pacific series of tests produce all the needed research information. He said that at present, the scientists would first have to tell him exactly what it was necessary to discover about further development of atomic explosives and then would have to inform him of the degree to which the tests had succeeded in producing the necessary information. The President told reporters that he thought some parts of a new report by Dr. James Killian, the President's top scientific advisor, regarding a detection system for policing an international test ban agreement might be made public. Commenting on the latest unemployment figures, the President said that he believed there were real grounds to conclude that the economy was on the upswing. The Government had announced the previous day that unemployment had increased by about 25,000 during the month which had ended March 15, much lower than the increases recorded for the preceding several months. The President also said that he saw nothing in the unemployment figures which brought the situation to a critical point, requiring a decision on whether or not to cut taxes. On defense, the President said that he did not care how many in Congress might oppose his reorganization plan for the Pentagon, he intended to fight for it with every means at his command. He also said that it made no sense for anyone to fear that the reorganization plan would concentrate so much power in the hands of the Secretary of Defense that he would be made into a czar. Among the safeguards against any such development, he said, were the Joint Chiefs, Congress and the National Guard organizations. He indicated that Congress, presently at the halfway mark of the 1958 session, still had not acted on certain legislation which he regarded as vital, listing critical appropriations bills, including the defense spending measure, the extension for five years of the Reciprocal Trade Act, and the Administration's 3.9 billion dollar foreign aid program.
In Burlington, N.C., it was reported that Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina had suffered a heart attack this date and was hospitalized at Alamance General Hospital. The former Governor and State commissioner of Agriculture was not in shock, according to his attending physician, and there had been no failure of his heart. Routinely, hospital attendants had placed the tobacco-chewing and smoking patient under an oxygen tent. The Senator had driven from his Alamance County farm home during the morning into nearby Graham to renew his driver's license, then complained of feeling ill, and was examined by an individual who then called his doctor, who shortly afterward asserted that the Senator's condition was satisfactory. He said the seriousness of the attack could not immediately be determined but added that all heart attacks were serious. The Senator would be 66 on April 17 and had returned home the previous Thursday following the Easter recess. A graduate of N.C. State in the class of 1917, he had been admitted to the hospital during the morning. He had a meteoric rise in North Carolina politics, serving Alamance County between 1920 and 1930 as farm agent after a short time in the field artillery of the Army in 1918. Between 1930 and 1933, he had been master of the North Carolina Grange, and was elected commissioner of Agriculture in 1936, re-elected in 1940 and 1944. He was elected as Governor in 1948, was term-limited to one four-year term, and then remained out of politics for two years before being elected to the Senate in 1954 to fill out the unexpired term of Senator Willis Smith, who had died in office of a heart attack. He had also been elected to the full term, which would expire in 1961. The Senator would die a week hence.
In Lakeland, Ga., a veteran schoolteacher who said that she had been forced to resign over a segregation incident had been reinstated, after a vote by the County Board of Education the previous day at a meeting attended by State School Board officials, effective retroactively to February 1, the date of her resignation, meaning that she would lose no salary. The reason for her resignation had been that she had permitted a white student, whose school bus had left in inclement weather, to ride home on a black school bus after she had taken the other students home and was told by the white student, when they encountered the bus along the way, that it went by his home and he had no problem riding on it with the black students. She claimed that she had been pressured into resigning. The chairman of the County School Board said that State authorities had recommended that she be reinstated after she had appealed to the State Board the earlier refusal of the County Board to reinstate her. She said that she was glad that the ordeal was over. She had been a teacher for 18 years, had turned 65 in March, and had feared that if she retired in February, her pension benefits could be impacted.
In Sacramento, it was reported that an Air Force F-102 jet fighter had crashed and burned between two houses in suburban Rio Linda this date, killing the pilot.
In Seattle, the Seattle Times reported that the Teamsters Union had given former president Dave Beck until April 30 to return any union property.
In Lockport, N.Y., the owner of a tenement where fire had killed 18 persons, was sentenced this date to between two and five years in prison, after he had been convicted on March 17 of first-degree manslaughter. The judge stated that the man had willfully violated a state law requiring fireproof doors and partitions in such buildings.
In Miami Beach, Fla., police arrested two heavily armed ex-convicts this date and said that they had admitted a string of 20 robberies since their release from Stateville Prison in Illinois.
In Lake View, S.C., a bandit had robbed the Lake View Cash Depository of about $5,000 during the morning, and officers had arrested a man in Lumberton during the afternoon, charging him with the crime, recovering $4,478. Lumberton police and FBI agents had arrested the man at a Lumberton dwelling in the early afternoon after officers had followed a trail of discarded money and an abandoned car across the North Carolina line into Fairmont and then to Lumberton. Under the guise of cashing a check, the robber had drawn a revolver and forced two female employees to lie on the floor, then stuck the gun into the face of the wife of the depository manager and forced her to hand over all of the money in a cash box, threatening to kill her if she did not. Officers said that the robber had fled in a 1955 or 1956 two-tone Chevrolet, bearing North Carolina license plates. A short time later, two Robeson County deputy sheriffs had seen a car leave the Ashpole Swamp off Highway 41, about 5 miles from Lake View, and had found several bundles of money there. Officers said that a car, tentatively identified as the car used in the holdup, was found abandoned in Fairmont, about 13 miles from Lake View. Meanwhile in Lumberton, Robeson County Sheriff Malcolm McLeod had issued a pick-up order for the man arrested, who worked in Fayetteville for a dental laboratory but lived in West Lumberton. The sheriff said that the man was wanted for questioning based on information supplied by a Lumberton cab driver.
Also in Lake View, it was reported that a man had bragged the previous day at a whiskey store about robbing a bank, prior to the robbery of the Depository this date. The operator of the store said that a man had told him there was nothing in robbing a liquor store and bragged of having robbed plenty of them. The proprietor said that the man told of having a $50,000 business in Fayetteville, but never said the type of business. He said that the man had bought a half pint of vodka. Police said that they did not know where the man had spent the night and that he had never been seen before the previous day. No one seemed to know his name. The liquor store operator said that he thought the man, based on his talk, was "just a crackpot" and so had made no report of the boast.
In High Point, N.C., it was reported that a rebuffed lover and his girlfriend had been found shot to death this date, police indicating that a suicide note was found beside the bodies, apparently dead for two or three days when officers had entered the house, finding the woman's body on a couch in the living room with a blanket pulled over her, and the man's body crumpled on the floor beside her. Beneath him was a .22-caliber revolver. Both bodies were fully clothed and had been shot in the head, believed to have died instantly. The assistant medical examiner tentatively ruled it a murder-suicide. A note had been found scribbled on a pad and left in a basket in the room where the bodies had been discovered, signed by the man, 40, indicating that he loved the woman, 38, "better than life itself" and that she had told him she loved him, but that she had lied. "I think this is the best way out for both of us."
In Martinsville, Va., a circuit judge this date ordered a "good, sound, old-fashioned whipping" for each of six boys convicted of beating and mistreating a neighbor's mule. The judge said that the whippings were to be given by the parents and witnessed by the sheriff's deputy who had made the arrests and the county welfare director, that the boys' attorney could also watch if he so desired. Each of the boys was to be released into the custody of his parents on strict injunction of good behavior until he reached the age of 18. The boys ranged in age from 12 to 15. The parents also had to pay the owner of the mule for damages to a corn crib and fence which the boys had torn down and used for planks to beat the mule. The judge said that it was one of the worst offenses he had ever known boys to commit. The boys were black.
In New York, it was reported that the City of New York had sought this date to end the strike of technicians against CBS, with the state labor commissioner asking the network and the union to resume negotiations with the aid of that office immediately.
In Shelby, N.C., the county welfare superintendent told the Cleveland County Commission the previous day that over half of county's welfare load was comprised of wives and children who had been deserted by husbands and fathers. Shortly after his appearance, three women had come before the Commission with complaints that their husbands had deserted them. The commissioners directed the welfare superintendent to call a meeting of court officials, members of the Welfare Board, the Commission and a representative of the State Attorney General's office to discuss the problems caused by the desertions. The superintendent said that deserted families were receiving more than $150,000 per year from the Welfare Department, with about $13,000 of it being supplied from county tax sources and the remainder from state and Federal aid.
In Gastonia, N.C., a Gaston County mother of 17 children had filed suit asking for annulment of her marriage of 25 years, alleging that her husband had been married to another woman ten days before their marriage and that he had deserted his wife and family in August, 1956.
In Richmond, Va., a tax agent had sought this date to unravel a mystery on the possible disappearance of a soldier, the major clue being a receipt for one wildcat. The receipt had been found in a sea-soaked Army uniform blouse on the beach at Gwynn's Island in Chesapeake Bay, containing a room rent receipt, a laundry ticket, a small purse containing one Canadian dime, and the receipt for the wildcat, dated July 6, 1956, signed by the assistant curator of mammals. A 19-year old Richmond resident had found the items in front of the family's summer cottage, and his father, an alcohol and tobacco tax inspector, had taken the problem to the FBI, which determined that the case appeared to be one for the Army provost marshal. There had been no further clues as to whether the found items were indicative of a missing man or simply a man's missing blouse.
In Little Rock, Ark., Governor Orval Faubus believed more affection ought be shown to mothers-in-law, proclaiming April 20 as Mother-in-Law Day in Arkansas, suggesting that mothers-in-law be provided some token of love and understanding.
On the editorial page, "In the Smallest Particle of Matter, the Largest Measure of Promise" finds that the news that Charlotte businessmen planned to construct a multi-million dollar nuclear reactor in Anson County apparently had done more for the area's morale than anything since the repeal of the 18th Amendment, ending Prohibition.
It finds that the cheer had been compounded of visions of cold cash at a time when there was despondency about the economic outlook. The excitement was not about one plant which would employ a few hundred persons, but over the nature of the plant and the promise of more plants and fresh development in a new field of human endeavor—that of potentially poisoning everyone through radiation leaks.
It suggests that the infinite possibilities of nuclear energy and its capacity to revolutionize industry and agriculture alike had only been dimly appreciated in the U.S. It suggests that the atom could mean the economic emancipation of the South, offering opportunities which had to be seized immediately if the region was to realize fully its great promise. It would require the type of risk capital which the Charlotte businessmen who had formed Industrial Testing Reactors, Inc., had been willing to put forward, and would take the initiative also which Duke Power Co. had in mind. It would also take the educational pioneering such as the Consolidated University had already begun. It would likewise take imaginative enterprises such as the Research Triangle in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. But in each field, still more would have to be accomplished if significant progress was to be made.
Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida had recently stated in a speech in Alabama: "We are making great progress all over the South, but we should not let our gains lull us into any false sense of security. We are not out of the woods by any means. Industry-wise, the South is still an infant. Despite recent industrial growth, the South actually may be in serious danger of being left behind the rest of the nation. Now, however, with the advent of the atomic age, the whole picture of industrial life can be and probably will be changed… Left to chance, nuclear energy for industrial use will gravitate to the existing industrial areas, mostly in the North… The challenge to the South is to make industry follow the atom, and not stand idle and permit the atom to follow existing industry. If we are to bring the atom to the South, it will take immediate … action … on a bold and progressive scale beyond anything yet attempted."
It finds the announcement of the previous day regarding the construction of the nuclear reactor by a private company to mean that the immediate area could chalk up a handsome score—of human victims.
In any event, the plant would never be approved by the Atomic Energy Commission and plans for it would ultimately be scrapped in the summer of 1959. That, of course, turned out to be a saving grace for the region. They had been assured that nuclear energy was safe enough to promise nuclear-powered automobiles and nuclear-powered airplanes in the future. It was not. There is often a fine line between visionaries and abject fools using the populace as an experimental laboratory. Tesla's self-driving vehicles, along with all others of the type, represent a current example which happens to come to mind as the latest attractive nuisance which ought be abolished under the Learned Hand formula.
"Mischief Tiptoes in the Back Door" indicates that Senator William Jenner of Indiana, in his flimsy crusade to hogtie the Supreme Court in vital areas of appellate jurisdiction, had drawn such devastating criticism that one of his partners in the folly had produced a bill to accomplish some of the same mischief by different means.
Senator Jenner's bill would deny the Supreme Court the right and power to pass judgment on Congressional committee action, on security measures taken by the Administration, on action by state governments on alleged subversives, on an education body's ruling against subversive activities by teachers and on state rules involving the right to practice law. Because the Senator disapproved recent rulings of the Court, he wanted to strip it of jurisdiction in those areas, but the bill had been resoundingly opposed by the American Bar Association and other organizations and individuals who had recognized in the proposal a flagrant attack on the constitutional system.
As a substitute for the blanket restrictions, Senator John Butler of Maryland had introduced legislation to reverse some of the judicial decisions which the extreme right-wingers had found disagreeable, and Senator Jenner was supportive of the proposals of Senator Butler. But the latter's "compromise" was little better than Senator Jenner's original bill. The substitute would reverse some of the most important judicial opinions made in several years in the field of civil liberties, for instance overturning the Watkins decision which set reasonable and proper limits on the powers of Congressional investigating committees, would put states into the anti-sedition business, and would also play havoc with the Court's decision in the Cole case which properly limited Government dismissals of employees in security cases to those who were in genuinely sensitive jobs.
It concludes that what Senator Butler was proposing was merely a variation on an already discredited theme and was a "sad, sour tune" which ought be rejected.
"Life in America: The Star System" quotes Jackie Coogan from an article by Joel Hyams in the New York Herald Tribune of January 30:
"The world is ready to take a
new child star to its heart … and I'm convinced that Leslie
[his four-year old daughter] could be the one… I am training
her to be natural, to be herself. I don't let her associate with
other children. They only remind her that she is a child. Her mother
and I are trying to keep her on a level with us. She will not start
acting until she is five. If she becomes a star I will know how to
look after her…
"When we are ready to start production, I will form my own company and if Leslie is as big a star as I think she will be, I believe she should collect at least $400,000 on her twenty-first birthday…
"Public adoration is the greatest thing in the world."
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "Et Tu, Prince Philip?" indicates that the British Dental Association had enrolled Prince Philip as an honorary member the prior Tuesday, and after reading his subsequent comments on the subject, finds it a wonder that the organization had not moved to disenroll him.
The Prince had said: "I very seldom go to the dentist and then it very nearly takes a general anesthetic to get me in."
It assumes that British dentists were like the U.S. counterparts in the matter of urging periodic frequent visits for routine checkups, to catch tooth trouble before it went too far. But the Prince said that he seldom went and that when he did make one of his infrequent visits, it was almost necessary to knock him out to get him to submit to the ministrations of a dentist.
It finds it a blow to parents of British children, because it was already hard enough to get a child into the dentist's chair, and now they had an additional excuse, to wit: "If Prince Philip won't go, I don't see why I have to." It suggests therefore shedding a tear for the British Dental Association, as the public relations gesture had doubtless backfired.
Drew Pearson indicates that new Attorney General William Rogers was a brilliant young man who had a chance to restore the Justice Department to its one-time position of applying justice with blindfolded impartiality, whereas under President Truman and thus far under President Eisenhower, it had not been the case.
For years, the Post Office Department had been the major political patronage arm of the Government, with the Postmaster General handing out postmasterships to the party faithful. But with increasing numbers of postmasterships being placed under civil service, the real political wing of government had become the Justice Department, a situation which should not exist. For if the Attorney General could discreetly prevent someone from going to jail for income tax evasion, it could result in a heavy campaign contribution. If a major corporation, whose officers had contributed a great amount to the party, were to get into trouble over anti-trust issues, the Attorney General could relieve the corporation of the trouble.
For a long time, when Democrats had control of the Department, Mr. Pearson had sought to get them to revoke the citizenship of underworld mobster Frank Costello, pointing out that Mr. Costello had lied in his original naturalization papers by failing to admit that he had been previously convicted for carrying a concealed weapon and thus was subject to deportation. Nevertheless, Mr. Costello, being close to certain Democratic leaders in New York, had shared a hotel room with Tammany leader Hines in Chicago when FDR had been nominated originally in 1932, and the ensuing Administration did not do anything about him. Later, when Mr. Pearson had presented his evidence to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, the latter had moved against Mr. Costello, resulting in the sensational hearings which finally had resulted in Mr. Costello being sent to jail.
He says that he had gone to the press conference after Mr. Rogers had been made Attorney General to see how he would administer justice regarding both Democrats and Republicans, and found him to have made a fine start by holding press conferences, something his predecessor, Herbert Brownell, had not done for two years. Mr. Rogers had been frank and forthright in describing the Senate idea of administering separate oaths to judges as "silly", indicating his plan to clean up crime, ducking no inquiries.
When Mr. Pearson had a chance to ask a question, he inquired as to whether he would answer certain unanswered correspondence from members of Congress regarding violations of the Corrupt Practices Act, citing a letter from Congressman Jack Brooks of Texas, dated July 25, 1957, which had called attention to the violation of the Act by former RNC chairman Leonard Hall in the Nicaro Nickel contract. Mr. Rogers had appeared blank, and though Mr. Pearson knew he had been Attorney General only for a short time, he also knew that as Deputy Attorney General, he would have known about the case, as it had been thoroughly discussed inside the Justice Department. Mr. Pearson had said that Congressman Brooks had told him that Mr. Rogers had not answered his letter and he inquired as to whether he would call a grand jury to consider the matter. Mr. Rogers said that they did not disclose when they were calling a grand jury. Mr. Pearson pointed out that they had called three grand juries to indict Lamar Caudle and the secretary of former President Truman, and asked whether they would examine the activities of high-up Republicans. Mr. Rogers had then bragged about getting a final higher court affirmation in the Caudle case, which Mr. Pearson indicates he would regard further in a later column, but Mr. Rogers had never answered the question as to whether he would call a grand jury to probe extremely serious charges officially made by a Congressional committee that Mr. Hall had committed a criminal offense.
Meanwhile, Congressman Brooks, chairman of the Government Operations subcommittee, had written another letter to Mr. Rogers on April 8, asking him what he had done about the serious charge and whether he intended to do anything.
Speaking of conflicts of interest...
Arthur Johnsey of Southern School News reports on interviews conducted by three reporters of the publication regarding the views of teachers, students, parents and supervisors in schools in North Carolina which had undertaken token integration during the current school year. He indicates that after seven months of the term, ten of the eleven black students who had been taken into previously all-white schools in Greensboro, Charlotte and Winston-Salem the prior September in a simultaneous "minimum desegregation" move, had apparently overcome difficulties of adjustment and would finish the school year. The odds were that they might finish in an atmosphere less fraught with emotional tensions, especially in Charlotte, than at the beginning of the year.
There was agreement that the "token" integration was no longer a conversation piece, as well that the black pupils for the most part had found their school work more difficult in the new environment. Teachers and principals were credited with outstanding performances in handling the problems of classroom integration.
In Greensboro, where six students had integrated into two previously all-white schools, there was "less talk among parents", but most observers said there probably was little reduction of opposition by those who were previously opposed. "The opposed patrons simply are resigned to the fact that there is nothing acceptable to them that they can do about it," according to some parents. Others in the community, described as "radically opposed", had not changed their attitudes. School officials declined to provide grades of any pupil, but it was well known in the community that the only black girl in senior high school was on the honor roll for the first semester, that one student at Gillespie Junior High School, where five black students had enrolled, had not made passing grades, while another had made the honor roll and three others were in between those two extremes.
One of the white parents who had been and remained opposed to integration had stated: "As far as the children getting along in the school, I don't think they ever will, in numbers. I have three children, one in class with a Negro girl. They go to the same cafeteria but they don't associate with their classmates and I don't see how they can be happy." He also said that the black students managed to go to school with whites at Gillespie without any extreme unpleasantness, but that the "lack of fellowship, the loneliness, must be terrible. Their performance scholastically doesn't seem outstanding, although they are thought to have been chosen because they were outstanding in their own schools." He said that one effect was that people were moving out of his neighborhood.
Another white parent had not changed his opposition to integration of the same school. He had been among the parents who had proceeded under the Pearsall Plan of North Carolina to obtain transfers for six white children from Gillespie to other schools when it was known that blacks would be enrolled there. But now his daughter was back at Gillespie, overcoming her parents' opposition to attendance of school with black pupils because, according to her father, being in the eighth grade, "she was homesick for her friends there." He said that she had been brought up in the church and her feelings about being in the school were not as strong as his and her mother's. One of the black pupils was in the eighth grade, but the father noted that when his daughter had gone back to Gillespie, she did not have any class with any black student and was not in close contact with any. He said that parents did not hear as much talk as previously and were accepting reluctantly of the situation. The prospect of a new school in the area which might alleviate future school desegregation had eased the situation.
The superintendent of the Greensboro schools, Ben Smith, who was about to retire, stated that the black students were "doing about as well as their previous records would indicate" scholastically. School officials had been obtaining cooperation from parents of the black students in handling social extracurricular activities.
At Greensboro Senior High School, subsequently Grimsley, the lone black student had found herself shunned at the outset. When a group of young girls had attempted to make her feel at ease, they were threatened, but those threats were not taken seriously and a limited group had continued to eat with her in the cafeteria. School officials found it necessary to "stay on top of the situation" to reduce friction. It had not been easy, as according to one school leader, every time there was an incitement anywhere in the South, their telephones rang.
Charlotte schools remained relatively quiet since prior to Christmas when Dorothy Counts, the lone black student who had sought to enter Harding High School to which she had been assigned, had withdrawn after being harassed by fellow students. After that, most attention had been concentrated in Charlotte on Central High School, where 16-year old Gustavus Roberts was the only black student. Some of the segregationists had said that he would be next to be harassed into leaving. There had been minor incidents, including name-calling, rumors of tripping in the hall, but the school administration had maintained a tight rein and young Mr. Roberts had taken care to avoid trouble.
In October, the segregationist Mecklenburg Patriots of North Carolina, Inc., had urged parents through a direct mail campaign to request transfers for their children from Central to segregated schools, but had received no response and the effort was abandoned.
Since then, there had been no open parental opposition, and Mr. Roberts had been accepted as a part of the academic life, if not the social life, of the school. One student said: "No one takes any notice of him… As far as social functions go, you'd never know there was a Negro in the school… Most students realize what happened in Little Rock and wouldn't want it to happen here."
The student had a difficult time academically, having been an A and B student at the black Second Ward High School, but having received three C's and two F's in his first semester at Central. He had failed geometry and physics, talking freely about it, blaming it on inadequate mathematical preparation at his former school. School officials agreed that the quality of his work had improved and credited that to his own effort, often spending much of his lunch hour in the library studying.
The other two Charlotte black students had dropped from above average grades to average. A 14-year old girl was the only black student at Piedmont Junior High School, and a teacher described her as "immature", being small for her age. Early in the year, she had spent play periods with the black maid at the school but the principal had stopped that practice. ("Play periods" in junior high? No wonder...) Some pupils had been polite to her, but she was left out of most social events and rarely took part in group games. She was a member of the girls' chorus and stated that many of her classmates had been friendly to her.
A 13-year old girl in the seventh grade at Alexander Graham Junior High School had experienced the least difficulty of any of the black students in integrating. The school, located in midtown, was the one where the most trouble had been anticipated, but there had been no unpleasant incidents, not even name-calling. She had received A's in her previous school, but her first semester at the new school included B's, C's, and one D, the latter being in mathematics, in which all three of the black pupils experienced difficulty.
In Winston-Salem, the lone black student, Gwendolyn Bailey, attending R. J. Reynolds High School, had created no great stir among either students or teachers. She was an honor roll student and took part in the school's instrumental music program. Principal Claude Joyner said that he and the teachers regarded her as "just another student". Her attendance in classes had been without incident, and the principal added that no student or teacher had complained to him about her presence in the school. One teacher said that she was "absolutely by herself" during a typical school day, explaining that she had not tried to push herself forward and consequently had created no personal resentments among the faculty or students numbering 1,800. Some female students ate lunch with her, according to another student, explaining that there had been general acceptance of her presence. All of the students and teachers who were interviewed said that they had never heard any insult or slighting remark made in her presence, but said that such remarks were made occasionally out of her presence by both students and teachers.
In Winston-Salem, many persons agreed that assignment of any sizable number of black students to schools the following September would create more of a problem than had the lone student at Reynolds. In Greensboro and Charlotte, there was only uncertainty expressed regarding such a contingency.
We're having flash-forwards. They've got all kinds of things going on up there
A letter writer indicates that Secretary of State Dulles the previous week had been quoted as saying that the U.S. was taking a propaganda beating on the issue of testing of nuclear weapons. He indicates that so much had been said and written about foreign propaganda in times of war that now such propaganda was synonymous with a lie, and, he ventures, if the U.S. were to have success in the propaganda field, it would have to be able to tell lies which were at least believable. He finds as example the dropping of an unarmed nuclear bomb in the backyard of a family at Florence, S.C., recently, where the residents and reporters had been scrubbed to remove any possibility of radiation, despite there having been no possibility of nuclear poisoning in the first place. He wonders what foreigners would perceive from such an incident. He says that he had never known anyone to win a debate or argument by simply calling the opponent a liar.
A letter writer comments on a column by Julian Scheer regarding a meeting held for Spencer Bell for the State Senate, stated as having been sponsored by the Democratic Women's Club, a meeting which had been held in the writer's home, at which her friends were invited to meet Mr. Bell. She says that it had not been sponsored by any club and was simply her own meeting, that she had great admiration for State Senator Bell and believed him equipped to represent the county in a way which would make the citizens proud of his ability, character and leadership.
Framed Edition
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