The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 11, 1958

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Paris that Premier Charles de Gaulle had bluntly told the defiant insurgents in Algeria this date to stop interfering in government and had remonstrated with his military commander there, General Raoul Salan, following a Cabinet meeting devoted primarily to foreign affairs. The Premier had replied sharply to a resolution by the All-Algeria Committee of Public Safety the previous day, opposing his plan for local elections in Algeria and condemning parliamentary government in France, the Premier criticizing General Salan for letting his name be used as approving the Committee's action, even though the General had later disavowed the resolution. Premier De Gaulle reminded in the note to the General that the Committee had no other rights and no other role than to express under the General's control the opinion of its members, that regular authority, including that of the General, could not associate itself with such a subject as the Committee or any other political organization. The Cabinet in Paris had gone ahead with plans for the local elections in Algeria in the face of the Committee's criticism.

In Algiers, the junta was reported to have split into two factions this date, with one side favoring support of Premier De Gaulle and the others still demanding a political house-cleaning in Paris.

In Paris, Secretary of State Dulles had been invited to France to confer with Premier De Gaulle the following month, according to a Cabinet spokesman this date.

The White House this date said that insinuations that Bernard Goldfine had received preferred treatment from Federal agencies because of friendship with White House chief of staff Sherman Adams would be proved to be completely false. Press secretary James Hagerty had said that the matter would be quickly disposed of when Mr. Adams returned to Washington later in the day from a New England fishing trip. Mr. Hagerty added that Mr. Adams had the complete confidence of the President—something which would soon change. Mr. Hagerty refused to discuss evidence produced by House investigators the previous day that Mr. Goldfine, a Boston industrialist, had paid almost $2,000 in hotel bills during the previous four years for Mr. Adams. He declined to provide any information on the expected time of the return of Mr. Adams or to say what form his rebuttal would take. When a reporter commented that the statement of Mr. Hagerty did not amount to a denial that Mr. Adams had his hotel bills in Boston paid by Mr. Goldfine, Mr. Hagerty said that he had to refuse to elaborate on the statement he had already made.

In Nicosia, Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots had smashed and set fire to Greek shops and other establishments this date in another flare-up of violence as the death toll had risen to seven since the rioting had begun the prior Saturday.

Diplomatic officials said this date that the U.S. and Britain had agreed to supply about 50 jet fighter aircraft to Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.

In Cairo, a weekly newspaper this date had said that Soviet President Klementi Voroshilov and Premier Nikita Khrushchev would visit Cairo the following October, having been invited by Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser during his recent visit to Russia.

In Hong Kong, it was reported that Communist China this date had announced its refusal to extend an agreement permitting Japanese fishermen to operate in Communist waters.

The House, providing the President a major legislative victory, this date had passed and sent to the Senate a bill continuing the reciprocal trade program for another five years.

The Government's new Civil Rights Commission was launching a nationwide study during the month in three major fields of racial discrimination, voting, education and housing. The staff director of the Commission, Gordon Tiffany, said that the decision to concentrate on those three areas did not prevent investigation into other civil rights areas, but that at the present time, the Commission had received no certified complaints except for a few which he said were incomplete and were returned for further information. He said that for that reason, the Commission had deferred a decision on whether to investigate reports of police brutality toward blacks in the Dawson, Ga., area. The mayor of that town had denied the reports, as had two black citizens, one an undertaker and the other a principal of a high school. Mr. Tiffany said that the Commission had decided that it would not determine to hold an investigation until complaints were filed. The inquiry which was contemplated would cover nearly every state and would be undertaken in conjunction with non-salaried state advisory committees presently being set up by the Commission.

In Baton Rouge, La., a legislative committee this date questioned president Troy Middleton of LSU and five deans of that school in an effort to learn how many faculty members favored school integration, 59 members having recently signed a petition of the Louisiana Civil Liberties Union in opposition to a proposed law providing for closure of public schools which would otherwise be integrated and providing public funds to parents to send their children to private schools, among other things.

In El Dorado, Kans., it was reported that a tornado had devastated 40 square blocks of a modest new residential area of the town late the previous day, killing at least 13 persons and injuring 49 others. National Guardsmen were on the scene searching through the rubble for possible bodies or survivors. A commander of the Highway Patrol said that his men had been unable to account for the occupants of three automobiles which the twister had apparently swept off the toll road at the edge of the town. Searchers had found a 13th body this date in the rubble of the woman's home. A man who had parked his car under an overpass on the turnpike in an attempt to find refuge from the wind and heavy hail, had watched, along with his family, from outside the car as the car was swept away by the winds. He told police that he could not find his two teenage daughters who had been with them, and then shortly thereafter he had disappeared as well and had not been located. His wife was in the hospital in critical condition. Some houses had completely disappeared, leaving only their foundations and the concrete floors of the garages, with others having lost their roofs, while some brick houses only had broken windows or other minor damage.

In Bennettsville, S.C., the slayer of State Senator Paul Wallace was being held without bond this date in the State Penitentiary in Columbia. The County clerk of court, according to eyewitnesses to the killing, had walked into the sheriff's office the previous night and fired five bullets into Mr. Wallace, 57, as he listened to election returns which had given him his fourth four-year term. The witnesses said that the man had opened fire without saying a word. The Senator's family had rushed him to a local hospital, where he died in the emergency room ten minutes later. Police said that the shooting had apparently resulted from "a personal matter" between the two men, with townspeople indicating that there had been "political differences of opinion" between them. That sounds like rather an understatement.

In Badin, N.C., two men, both employees of an aluminum company, had been instantly killed when an iron rod they had been using to hold up a tree they were cutting down had come into contact with a high tension wire. The accident had occurred the previous night. The moral is not to use metal poles around high tension wires, as you are liable to become electrocuted. Then, what good is taking the tree down?

In Charlotte, the City Council had voted this date to hold a special session during the afternoon to discuss the auditor's report on the office of the clerk of Recorder's Court, and the Council had asked Police Chief Frank Littlejohn to join them in that session. The report of the special auditor's investigation of the office had been made public this date. It had determined that there was no recorded cash unaccounted for in any of the funds of the clerk. The investigation had been initiated by reports that a member of the Police Department had been cashing checks on funds being held at the clerk's office. The report found that there had been checks cashed between July, 1957 and May, 1958 by a captain of the Police Department, totaling $26,524, but that checks totaling $32,911 covering the same period of time had been deposited by the clerk of the court, with no name attached to the deposits. The captain in question was head of the Department's traffic division. He said that he was glad that the report did not show any shortage involving him, that it had confirmed his opinion that there was no shortage on his part. A lieutenant, who had for 16 years been clerk of the Recorder's Court, had been relieved of his duties and was awaiting reassignment to another post. A text of the letter from the company which performed the audit to City Manager Henry Yancey is provided, in case you might think of doing a term paper on this critical scandal which apparently never materialized.

Mr. Yancey, angry at charges by Mr. Littlejohn that he had held up the auditor's report on the clerk's office so that Recorder's Court Judge Basil Boyd could "start cleaning up his own house", had labeled the allegations as "utterly false". Mr. Yancey had phoned Chief Littlejohn to demand an explanation of the charges as published in the morning Charlotte Observer.

Jerry Reece of The News reports that a local housewife and mother of three this date wanted to thank everyone who had helped find her lost son the previous night. A four-hour search had been conducted for the two-year old boy, eventually found by members of the Derita volunteer fire departments, asleep on the tracks of the Norfolk and Southern Railway Co., about a mile from his home. His mother said that after they had found him, he had slept all the way home and that it was no trouble getting him to go to sleep the previous night. He must've been drinking.

In Louisville, a 37-year old man had been charged with strong-armed robbery in the theft of a bag. Police said that he had snatched a night deposit bag from a man, who said he had just picked up the bag at a bank. It was empty.

On the editorial page, "Once More unto the Breach, Voters" indicates that from the gasps which had followed State Representative Jack Love's request for a runoff primary in the State Senate race, one might have gathered that the ambitious young legislator had committed some unpardonable social indiscretion.