The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 30, 1958
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Taipei, Formosa, that Communist Chinese fire had slackened this dated after more than 12,000 shells had been fired onto the Nationalist-held Quemoy islands during the previous 24 hours. But Communist China, according to Peiping Radio, threatened more bombardments, as its Ministry of National Defense ordered the artillery units to "redouble their attack" on the bulwark islands just off the Chinese mainland, the primary line of defense of Formosa. The Communists claimed that heavy casualties had been inflicted on the Nationalist troops in the eight-day bombardment. Most military men on Formosa concluded that the shelling was prelude to a Communist attempt to capture the Quemoys soon, but the Nationalists said that they were ready for the effort. From early Friday until 2:31 a.m. this date, the Communists had fired 12,324 shells onto the islands, according to the Nationalist Defense Ministry, until the fire was diminished, firing only 390 shells until shortly before dawn, when they switched to an occasional round carrying propaganda leaflets. The leaflets were presumably standard surrender-or-die threats. Ministry officials said that the relative lull might only be prelude to heavier bombardments, not regarding it as a sign that the Communists were letting up. Rear Admiral Liu Hoh-tu, the Ministry's official spokesman, said that there would be no question of the Nationalists abandoning the Tan islets in the Quemoy group or any other offshore islands, no matter how heavily they would be shelled. The tiny Tans, 2.5 miles south of the Communist port of Amoy, which the group helped to blockade, had been the target on Friday for a record 7,120 shells, according to the Ministry. They were considered to be the most likely point for a Communist invasion attempt. The Admiral said: "If the Reds think they are going to cow the defenders of the offshore islands by bombardments, they are mistaken. If they want the islands, they will have to come over and get them—if they can." Both Secretary of the Army Wilber Brucker and General I. D. White, commander in chief of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, had flown to Formosa for talks with President Chiang Kai-shek and other Nationalist leaders, before the two Americans would depart Monday; neither had comment on the situation. South Korea had indicated through a military emissary that it was ready to supply troops and all possible aid to the Nationalists. A pair of maps appear on the front page.
In Little Rock, Ark., the School Board considered this date the opening day for the fall term at Central High School, which would be decided Monday. Were it to open on its current schedule, September 8, it would be subject to no operative court orders to integrate, as the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision reversing the District Court's order to delay further integration by 2 ½ years had stayed its decision pending the outcome of the Board's petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. If it determined to delay the opening day to September 15, the Supreme Court might have by that point ordered the continuance of desegregation for the second year. The Supreme Court's order, handed down Thursday deferring its decision on the stay and instead setting a schedule on the petition, had erroneously assumed that the school year had already been ordered to start on September 15, leading the Court to order the Board's petition to be filed by September 8 and the briefs of both sides to be filed by September 10, with oral argument set for the 11th. Governor Orval Faubus, however, had withheld his signature on a bill passed by the Legislature in its special session, which would start the school year on September 15. The special session had adjourned the previous day after granting the Governor all of the powers he had sought to deal with the situation, including closure of any public school ordered to be integrated and enabling, under a law extant since 1875, formation of a private corporation to operate the closed schools thereafter. The new law would also mandate a public referendum within 30 days to determine whether the closed schools would remain so. (If the Governor elected not to sign the bill extending the start date to September 15, the Court could always revisit the issue of the stay and set it aside pending the outcome of the petition, as the piece does not consider.)
In Richmond, Va., it was reported that the state's Pupil Placement Board, which by law had the authority to assign students to public schools, had indicated this date that it might inject itself into the Charlottesville and Norfolk integration cases. The Board was in session the previous day when school officials in Norfolk had told a U.S. District Court judge that they were ready to assign 17 black students to white schools. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Board issued a statement saying: "The Pupil Placement Board cannot voluntarily recognize as valid any assignment of any pupil to any school in Virginia not made by it, in accordance with Virginia law. It is prepared to act promptly in every case in which it has been properly supplied the necessary information to justify its actions under the pupil placement law of Virginia." In other developments regarding school integration in the state, attorneys for 26 black students seeking admission to white schools in Warren County had asked another U.S. District Court judge for an injunction to restrain the school board from denying them admission because of race. At the same time, the Board rejected the transfer request of all black pupils seeking to enter Warren County's white schools and of six black pupils seeking transfers to white schools in Richmond. The Arlington County School Board officially requested police protection "in and around Arlington schools" during the term which would begin the following Thursday. Arlington was under Federal court orders to admit five black students to white schools. Twelve black students who had sought admission to white Alexandria schools had been turned down by the school principals. A Norfolk school official said that plans called for the use of television to help students maintain their lessons should schools be closed by the state resulting from court orders to integrate.
In Mexico City, students and oil workers with separate complaints had united for five hours of rioting the previous day before police had quelled the situation with gunfire. A bank employee had been killed accidentally when a bullet fired at a mob had gone through a bank window. Hospital authorities said that 33 persons had been hospitalized with wounds, many from gunfire. Scores of others were known to have been injured by stones, clubs and tear gas grenades. Most of the rioters had been students protesting poor bus service and workers of Pemex, the Government oil monopoly, who were involved in a union dispute which had no connection with the student complaints. More trouble was feared at a student demonstration this date, which could attract sympathizing railroad hands, telegraphers, teachers and oil workers. Student leaders predicted that 100,000 persons would show up in a downtown plaza for that demonstration. The leftist-led railway union, which had encouraged all the dissident groups, raised the threat of another strike on the nationalized railways, already paralyzed twice in recent months by wildcat walkouts. The first fight had broken out the previous day in front of Pemex headquarters when workers had sought to break into the building and accused police of cruelty and teargas attacks against dissident workers in rioting on Thursday. Two factions of oil workers had been fighting for control of their union. Police and firemen had broken up the Pemex crowd, which reportedly included students, railway workers, telegraphers and teachers. The demonstrators re-gathered, however, and students had captured a bus and set it on fire. Demonstrators had hurled bricks against the teargas from police and there was hand-to-hand fighting, with police using clubs.
In New York, it was reported that there was a new controversy this date regarding Herbert Stempel's charge that answers had been given to him beforehand while he had been a quiz show contestant on NBC's "21". The New York Post reported that three friends of Mr. Stempel had said that he had told them what the questions and answers would be, and that when they had tuned in, the program had proceeded as Mr. Stempel had predicted. The co-producer of the program the previous day had produced a statement signed by Mr. Stempel 18 months earlier, after the latter had been on the show, saying that everything was according to Hoyle. Mr. Stempel was quoted in the New York Journal-American as having said: "I signed the repudiation of my own charges 18 months ago on a promise that I would get a $250-a-week job on 'Tic-Tac-Dough'. I never got the job." The co-producer of "21" had denied repeatedly that there was any fixing of the program. He turned Mr. Stempel's signed statement over to the Manhattan district attorney.
On the editorial page, "States Rights Must Be Revived at Home" finds that a long period of "righteous blather and some sincere fear about conspiracies" had led to one good result, that a study of Federal-state-local relations, with particular reference to Federal grants-in-aid, by a House subcommittee headed by North Carolina Representative L. H. Fountain had transpired and a report produced. The subcommittee was concerned over the decline of local and state governments, and had concluded that the cause and the cure for the decline lay with the states themselves and not in something which the Federal Government might or might not do. It found that local governments had played a large part in expanding the interests and influence of the Federal Government and would continue to do so until state governments displayed more concern for urban problems.
The report stated: "This subcommittee was surprised and somewhat alarmed in its regional hearings by the extent of the animosity shown toward state government by city officials. The mayors who testified were almost uniformly critical of state restrictions on and interference with the efforts of municipalities to deal with local problems. The cities contend they suffer from many of the same handicaps of which the states complain with reference to the federal government. It was frequently contended that due to the underrepresentation of urban communities in state legislatures, urban problems did not receive a sufficiently sympathetic and understanding treatment from state government… We cannot ignore the fact that two out of every three Americans now live in urban communities, or the evidence that these population centers are allocated considerably less than a proportionate share of representation in the legislative bodies of many states. The matter of equitable legislative representation goes right to the heart of democratic government… So long as the cities are deprived by state restrictions of the opportunity to solve local problems and are denied a fair voice in the determination of state legislative policies they will continue to seek federal assistance and will attempt to bypass the states through direct federal-local arrangements."
It indicates that an affinity for the status quo by rural-dominated legislatures was not the only cause for the diminishing role of the states, that there were organizational problems, including the infrequency of legislative sessions and monetary problems caused by archaic restrictions on taxing and borrowing powers. The subcommittee also favored Federal withdrawal from tax fields, which could be utilized effectively by state and local governments. But it warned that the familiar proposal for transferring Federal grants-in-aid programs to the states along with some tax sources was not a panacea for the weaknesses of state and local governments. It asserted the belief that the interest and initiative for broadening the responsibilities of the states and localities had to come from those levels of government, that responsibilities could not be created by transfer of programs and tax sources.
Regarding Federal grants, the subcommittee had found that they were a useful method of harnessing cooperative effort in gaining national objectives, that the grant principle had been generally accepted throughout the nation and that Federal expenses in administering grant programs were not excessive, with those states which had the greatest need for Federal grant programs being the least able to support those programs on their own initiative.
It finds that the subcommittee had demonstrated a real interest in promoting the prestige and effectiveness of local and state governments, but insisted that failures and inabilities on that level, not bureaucratic conspiracies at the Federal level, had been the basic cause of the problem. It concludes that the report of the subcommittee ought be required reading for the North Carolina General Assembly.
Marquis Childs finds that the history of a year earlier promised to repeat itself with the principal characters being in the same roles in Little Rock, with no sign that anything had occurred to change or ameliorate the situation. The President would again be in Newport, R.I., as he had been the prior September. Governor Faubus would be in Little Rock, having easily won the Democratic primary for re-election. The NAACP remained determined to resist every move to delay the integration of the public schools in the South.
He finds that in that situation, the burden which had been placed on the Federal courts was one which they had never meant to carry, and in the stand imposed on the Supreme Court, history was repeating itself in a deeper and graver sense.
He cites the case of the Cherokee Indians, who had a treaty with the Federal Government, and were pitted against the State of Georgia during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson. In 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall had determined that Federal authority was paramount, angering President Jackson, a strong believer in states' rights. A doubtful rumor of the time had it that the President had stated to a Georgia Congressman: "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." In his message vetoing a charter for a national bank, President Jackson had gone so far as to say that the opinion of the judges had no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress had over the judges, and on that point, the President was independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court, he said, ought only have such influence as the force of the reasoning of the justices deserved.
To many, it seemed an invitation to nullification, and South Carolina had adopted a nullification ordinance containing a serious attack on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Marshall, who had been prevailed upon to remain in the position where he had served since 1801, had written that he had reluctantly come "to the conviction that our Constitution cannot last."
But President Jackson had quickly realized that South Carolina's action was, according to the ablest historian of the Court, Charles Warren, "rebellion or treason". The President also understood that his decisions were not automatically self-enforcing and that his own responsibility extended further than merely enforcing the law. He issued his famous proclamation holding that Federal law could not be defied without committing treason, recommending that Congress enact rigorous and radical legislation providing Federal courts and officials with power to deal with the situation. At the same time, he made his peace with Daniel Webster, the great exponent of Federal authority, and the union was preserved, until, under Presidents with less willingness to defend the Federal system, the drift toward nullification brought on the Civil War in 1861.
Constitutional struggles, suggests Mr. Childs, as the present one, had placed the judiciary, and in particular Chief Justice Warren, in the forefront of a political fight when the executive was reluctant to act. The Chief Justice had been attacked in the Congress, in the country at large, and especially in the South. The more demagogic critics called him anything from a Communist to an usurper and tyrant, while more polite critics said that he did not know the law and was expressing his political prejudices and decisions, such as that on integration.
"But, as such vigorous defenders of the American system as Andrew Jackson knew full well, no matter how hard a judge may try, he cannot even on the exalted eminence of the Supreme Court bench, entirely divorce himself from his political past."
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the editorial page or the front page this date, as notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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