The Charlotte News

Monday, September 1, 1958

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas had said on "Face the Nation" on CBS the previous day that acts of Congress were the "laws of the land" and that Congress had not yet acted on school integration. The program had highlighted during the weekend verbal charges and counter-charges in the nation's integration crisis. A questioner had pointed out to the Governor that he had stated the previous year, after conferring with the President at Newport, R.I., that he would support the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools. In response, he said that he had not really changed his mind, that he had been required to issue the statement as a basis for negotiations with the White House and that because he had said it at the time did not make it so. He said that Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas and White House chief of staff Sherman Adams had insisted that a statement be drafted saying that the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was the law of the land. The Governor did not reply directly to a question asking whether he could take it upon himself to interpret a decision of the Court, but he said, "If Congress had passed a law, it would be the law of the land and there would be no question of enforcement." In reply to another question, he said that he would close Central High School in Little Rock "if necessary for the peace and the community" should the Supreme Court order that integration of the school be continued in the current school year, as had transpired the prior year. Whether anyone on the panel asked him about the Constitution and how that fit into his understanding of the supremacy of Federal law is not indicated.

In London, it was reported that more than 500 persons had fought with knives, clubs and broken bottles the previous night in a fresh outburst of violence against London's growing black population. In Nottingham, 120 miles from the capital, 1,000 white persons had moved on the city's black quarter, clashing with police patrols, resulting in 24 arrests. Terrified black residents of London's Notting Hill district barricaded themselves in their homes as the howling mobs stormed outside, throwing rocks and bottles at their windows. Thirty squad cars had been rushed to the riot area with reinforcements and Alsatian dogs. Three men, including a black man, had been hospitalized with knife wounds. Eighteen had been arrested and charged with various offenses. The police finally cleared the streets early during the current morning and four-man riot squads patrolled the area. It was London's second consecutive night of racial violence and the worst since World War II. On Saturday night, some 200 white persons and West Indian immigrants had battled for three hours at Notting Hill. The racial violence was the result of increased immigration to Britain from overcrowded, backward parts of the Commonwealth, coupled with rising unemployment which had made the lower-class workers fearful of competition. There was no restriction on immigration into Britain from the other parts of the Commonwealth. The trouble the previous night had begun shortly after the saloons had closed for the night, with a mob of 100 youths, armed with sticks, iron bars and knives, gathering under a railroad bridge and marching noisily toward streets where many blacks lived. Soon the streets became a mass of people, as housewives in aprons joined the mob, shouting and waving their arms. Savage fights had broken out on several streets. Banner headlines and editorials reflected the shock at the new racial violence, which had begun in Nottingham a week earlier. The Daily Express said, "For many years the people of Britain have watched the color problem of the United States and South Africa with an almost aloof and somewhat superior detachment. No longer so." No matter how genteel the accent, and refined the vocabulary and syntax, racist rhetoric still came out as inherent ignorance.

In Raleigh, it was reported that a 14-year old black youth had failed this date in his effort to break segregation barriers in the Raleigh public schools, as a Federal District Court judge had ruled that he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies required under the state's Pupil Assignment Act prior to initiation of his lawsuit. After exhausting his administrative remedies, he would be permitted then to return to court should he not obtain his desired relief in the meantime.

In Charlotte, it was reported that John Kasper, self-styled segregationist and "Tennessee tick", who had recently been released from prison after a year serving a sentence for contempt of a court order to refrain from participation in stimulating racial violence in the fall of 1956 in Clinton, Tenn., interfering with the effort to integrate the high school there, was scheduled to speak this date. The 27-year old New Yorker, educated at Columbia University, would make his second Labor Day talk in the city. The previous year he had said: "I'm just like a Tennessee tick. You can't get rid of me." He promised attacks again on Charlotte-born evangelist Billy Graham, former Police Chief Frank Littlejohn and Carolina Israelite editor Harry Golden. He planned to travel then to Monroe and Greensboro later in the day, and this night would share a platform in Greensboro with Klan Wizard James Cole of Marion, S.C.—notorious for his role in and eventual criminal conviction for stimulating the Klan rally in Maxton, near Lumberton, the prior January 18, winding up in the Klan being chased away by a group of armed Lumbee Indians, against whom the rally and cross-burnings in Lumberton in the days prior to the rally had been directed. Mr. Kasper had been met in Charlotte by Joseph Bryant of the city, state chairman of the National States Rights Party. He called the Reverend Graham a fraud, President Eisenhower a "hollow pumpkin", and Governor Luther Hodges a "crawling bug"—which description perhaps forecast an omninous interchange of ideas in 1966. His attack on Reverend Graham the previous year had come on the eve of the latter's return to Charlotte following his successful New York crusade. Mr. Kasper had said at that time, "Billy Graham left here a white man, but he is coming back a nigger-lover." He said that he would expose Mr. Golden for his "Communist leanings". Former Chief Littlejohn had chased him from the courthouse grass the prior year.

In Taipei, Formosa, it was reported that only light Communist shelling of Nationalist China's offshore islands had been reported this date, while both Russia and the U.S. continued a barrage of warnings.

In London, it was reported that Britain was anxious about the situation in the Formosa Strait, the first time it had admitted concern about Communist China's intentions toward Quemoy, Matsu and other Nationalist offshore islands.

In Geneva, Switzerland, it was reported that the second World Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy had opened this date with a warning by its president, Francis Perrin of France, that secrecy in nuclear research was harmful and dangerous to all of mankind.

Traffic deaths during the Labor Day weekend, which had begun on Friday at 6:00 p.m. and would last until midnight this date, had been occurring at a greater rate than predicted by the National Safety Council, which had forecast 420 traffic deaths during the 78-hour holiday. Thus far, deaths had averaged 10 per hour from mid-afternoon the previous day until 1:00 a.m. this date, with 289 traffic deaths reported, 66 drownings and 55 miscellaneous accident deaths. The Council said that if that rate continued, the total would surpass the estimate of 420 deaths from traffic accidents, already 70 deaths more than the average of 350 on a weekend where there was no holiday. The heaviest traffic of the holiday period remained to come, with millions of motorists headed home during the afternoon and evening this date. During the previous year's three-day Labor Day holiday, traffic deaths had totaled 445, while the record for a Labor Day weekend had been 461, set in 1951. In two earlier three-day holiday periods during the year, Independence Day and Memorial Day, traffic deaths had totaled 370 and 371, respectively. In a survey for purposes of comparison, the Associated Press had counted 300 traffic fatalities for the non-holiday weekend of August 15-18, covering the same hours of the current holiday weekend. There had been 78 drownings and 94 deaths from miscellaneous types of accidents during the comparison weekend, including fires and plane crashes. One of the worst highway accidents thus far during the weekend had occurred the previous day, south of Newport, Ark., in which six persons had been killed in a head-on collision of two automobiles.

In North Carolina, 15 violent deaths had been recorded, with 18 persons having been killed in traffic accidents the previous year on Labor Day weekend.

As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or the editorial page, with the notes to be sporadic until we catch up.

Framed Edition

Links-Date — Links-Subj.