The Charlotte News

Wednesday, August 20, 1958

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the U.N. in New York that the U.S. this date had sought to rally the Western allies in the General Assembly against a move by the Asian and African nations to demand a speedy withdrawal of American and British forces from Lebanon and Jordan, respectively. The U.S. delegation was pushing hard for the Norwegian resolution which asked Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold to make arrangements to ensure the independence of Lebanon and Jordan so that the troops could be withdrawn. The resolution made no specific demand for withdrawal but cited declarations from the two Western allies, with letters from Secretary of State Dulles and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd attached to the resolution saying that they would remove the troops when the U.N. decided they were no longer necessary to protect the region. Secretary Dulles had conferred for more than an hour the previous night with representatives of about 20 Latin American nations, some of whom were reported fearful that the Norwegian resolution could be used to justify intervention to keep an unpopular Latin American government in power. Mr. Dulles had reportedly told them that those fears were groundless as far as the U.S. was concerned, also assuring them that the U.S. had no intention of maintaining its troops in Lebanon. The chairman of the Latin American group, Pacifico Montero de Vargas of Paraguay, said that Mr. Dulles had indicated that the way might be clear by September 30 to withdraw the American troops from Lebanon.

In Cairo, it was reported that the press there had angrily charged the U.S. this date with "exerting extraordinary pressure and waging a war of nerves" in the U.N. Assembly to gain passage of the Norwegian resolution.

In Beirut, a terrorist had reportedly planted a bomb this date in the central post office after walking through police lines and past a pair of tanks. The explosion in a toilet in the parcel post section had injured three persons.

Before the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of unions and management had appeared this date Robert Baker, a 300-pound ex-convict and Teamster official, who claimed that the Committee was seeking to smear Governor Averell Harriman of New York. He said that testimony the previous day by his former wife that he and Governor Harriman were close friends had been from a "vengeful woman, a woman scorned". He launched into an emotional, shouting tirade after convicted slayer Ruth Brougher, 44, who identified herself as Mr. Baker's former sweetheart, had joined his former wife in linking his name with that of Governor Harriman. He described Governor Harriman as "a man I honored and loved. Not close, close, close… He wouldn't know me if he saw me." His former wife had sworn the previous day that they were as close as any men could be. Governor Harriman had denied any close ties with the man, whom Committee investigators said had been an associate of the nation's top gangland figures. The woman who claimed to be Mr. Baker's former sweetheart had been brought before the Committee from a Florida penal institution and swore that she had known Mr. Baker to be "on the lam" from New York City to escape questioning in a waterfront killing there, adding: "I don't think he could go back until after Governor Harriman was elected." His former wife had declared similarly the previous day, saying that Mr. Baker had fled after the killing of Anthony Hintz, a pier boss. The Committee had heard testimony earlier of associations between Mr. Baker and Eddie "Cockeyed" Dunn, a mob leader who had been convicted in the Hintz case and executed. The former sweetheart of Mr. Baker, who often giggled as she spoke, laughed aloud as she testified that she had known Mr. Baker had served jail terms, one "for killing Joe Penner's duck". Mr. Penner was a famed comedian, as had been the duck which he used in his act. She said that Mr. Baker told her that he had served time for killing the duck, indicating, "I think by throwing a stink bomb on the stage of a theater." She also stated that she knew that as soon as Mr. Baker had been released from jail, he had borrowed some hoodlum's car, had gone to the waterfront and "whipped the man who had testified against him." She said that he had told her that he felt better afterward. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota asked her what connection Mr. Harriman's election would have with whether Mr. Baker could go back to New York and she responded that she had never asked him but added that his letters and conversations with her convinced her that the two men were very friendly and that he "was going back to work in handing out tickets of some sort—seats… He was helping him to get votes." Governor Harriman had said that Mr. Baker did some presidential nomination campaigning for him in 1952 and 1956, but that he had no recollection of talking to him and that they had never been friends.

In Little Rock, Ark., the School Board, challenged by Governor Orval Faubus to say how it would resist a resumption of integration the following month, had offered a three-point plan, saying that it was asking the Supreme Court to intervene, was requesting the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay its order reversing the District Court's approval of a 2 1/2 year delay of resumed integration, and was attempting to set up a meeting with the Governor to discuss several methods he had proposed to avoid integration in spite of the court orders. The school superintendent, Virgil Blossom, said that action on all three points had been planned for this date, that a petition for writ of certiorari would be sent to the Supreme Court and if the Court, presently in summer recess, approved the petition, an extraordinary session would have to be called to hear the case as the Court would not reconvene in regular session prior to the first Monday in October. An extraordinary session could effectively stay the Circuit Court's decision until after the start of the school year. School would open in Little Rock on September 2. As indicated, the Supreme Court would hear the case and affirm the Circuit Court's decision in late September.

The President, at his press conference this date, called on state governments to "suppress unlawful forces" in the school integration controversy, issuing an implied warning that he would use Federal troops again if necessary to back up Federal court orders. He said, "My feelings are exactly as they were a year ago." Without mentioning the situation in Little Rock or Governor Faubus or any other particular Southern official opposed to integration, the President said that all Americans had a solemn obligation to comply with Federal court orders. In a prepared statement at the start of the press conference, he said that every state had a responsibility to support and obey such orders. "Every American must understand that if an individual community or state is going successfully and continuously to defy the courts, then there is anarchy." In response to questions, he refused to say whether he favored school integration, saying that any expression on the issue would be wrong and would make his job more difficult in undertaking his sworn duty to enforce the law. He said, "This case, however, or any person's agreement or disagreement with its outcome, must not be confused with the solemn duty that all Americans have to comply with the final orders of the court."

On the editorial page, "Little Rock Leaves No Room for Error" finds that the six-judge majority of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, which had overturned the District Court judge's decision to delay integration at Little Rock's Central High School until the beginning of 1961, had been correct in theory, but that the dissenting Chief Judge of the appellate court had been correct in fact.

It suggests that the majority had been properly indignant in declaring that a court order ought not "be whittled away, watered-down or shamefully withdrawn in the face of violent and unlawful acts…" That would substitute mob rule for the rule of law and, by extension, would lead to anarchy. But the Chief Judge, who had supported the District Court judge's stay of integration, had been correct in saying that the paramount question was one of realities and conditions rather than theories.

It finds that the latter appeared to be asking what the use was of bold and unyielding assertions on the rule of law when no one was listening, and when the power to enforce the assertions either was absence or created more problems than it solved. It suggests that the majority had determined the law and that the dissenting judge had determined the nature of the national dilemma, that unless the Supreme Court would reconcile the consistency of law with the inconsistency of human conduct, future defiance, disorder and strife might harm judicial prestige more than making concessions at the outset to the unpleasant "conditions and realities".

It suggests that the Supreme Court, if it continued the Court of Appeals decision, as it would, would be risking a forced flight from the entire concept of Brown v. Board of Education and possibly could undo what had already occurred pursuant to that concept. It finds that at one time, the issue in Little Rock had been mob versus duly constituted authority, and but for the President's hasty and ill-advised deployment of Federal troops and federalization of the National Guard to Little Rock, the issue might have remained in that context with the victory going eventually against the mobs. "But bare bayonets, rearing the prospects of forced integration, changed all that. The people of Arkansas now stand where the mobs had stood." Governor Faubus had become their spokesman and positions had become fixed, with little room for compromise and even less disposition toward compromise.

The District Court judge had found that the education of both white and black students would be jeopardized by persisting with integration without first a cooling-off period for 2 1/2 years. It finds it inconceivable that the nation would support a policy of force under those circumstances and doubtful that the Administration would initiate such a policy after the adverse reaction to its deployment the previous fall. Without public or official support, court orders were not worth the paper on which they were printed.

It indicates that the phrase in the implementing decision of Brown in 1955, "with all deliberate speed", had been the basis for the desegregation process, and had been given a definition by the District Court judge in Arkansas, with another found by the appellate court in St. Louis, and it suggests that the Supreme Court would soon have to come up with the authoritative definition. If it was to be enforceable, it would have to give more weight to realities than the appellate court majority had done with its definition.

"In four years, the great social experiment decreed by the court has been moving into a phase in which errors of judgment and refusal to face 'conditions and realities' can lead to irreversible disasters." It finds that such a phase had now been reached.

But it fails to regard the idea that if mobs could forestall segregation now, then, in the words of the inauguration speech of Governor George Wallace in Alabama in January, 1963, there would be nothing to prevent "segregation forever", as any 2 1/2 year delay, after a delay of 90 years since the Civil War and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, could easily turn into another 2 1/2 or five or 10 or 20 or 50 years, with just enough mob action to forestall the courts. A line had to be drawn somewhere, and the Supreme Court, in 1954 and 1955, had drawn that line. There could be no turning back without encouraging the mobs to intervene in each local community where limited integration was being implemented, to try to stop it with violence. It was much better to deploy Federal troops in that scenario than to risk such calculated violence.

And to any dumb, little Trumpy-Dumpy-Doer of today, there is an obviously large gulf between deploying Federal troops and federalizing a state's National Guard to protect civil rights of individuals, and doing so to deprive certain persons of their individual rights and liberties under the Constitution, namely, in the instance at hand, due process of law, due to all persons in the United States, not just United States citizens, and the right peaceably to assemble and exercise freedom of speech in protest of any governmental action. Read the instrument, dummy. And if you are unable to read, find someone to read it to you as a nice little bedtime story. In effect, Trump has placed himself in the position of Governor Faubus the prior September, trying to use the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from enrolling at Central High School under the rationale that it was to protect the students from violence, not President Eisenhower in federalizing the Guard and deploying the military to enable them to enroll peaceably and pursue their court-declared rights to equal protection of the laws, including the right to attend public school where they desired at any school suitably proximal to their place of residence.

But, it would appear, in the present context, the bag man has received his $50,000 in bribe money to do the bidding of the far-far-far right wing in this country and impose the will of the rightist corporate state, the actual foundation for Fascist Italy in the 1920's through the end of that regime in 1944. If you do not think at this point that what you are witnessing at present across the land, at the behest of Trump, is true fascism and even neo-Nazism, then you know nothing about 20th Century history or anything of the origins of those movements. They did not start with literal monsters. They started with ordinary folk who were misled by the voices of nationalistic pride in the face of diminished national status politically and economically following World War I. Trump has studied assiduously those movements and is seeking to re-create them in the United States.

Joseph Alsop, continuing his examination from Monday of the speech of Senator John F. Kennedy on the floor of the Senate, criticizing U.S. foreign policy for becoming dangerously too turgid and not responding to changes in circumstances in the balance of nuclear power as a single deterrent to a first-strike by the Soviets, indicates that fundamental questions about the inner workings of modern human society had not often been argued in the Congress, until the previous week when the Senate had argued heatedly about what could be the largest single question confronting the democracies in the era of the hydrogen bomb, that being whether the people had a right to know the hard facts of the national situation or whether those facts ought sedulously to be concealed from all except the enemy.