The Charlotte News

Friday, September 12, 1958

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Supreme Court this date had denied the Little Rock School Board any delay in integration at Central High School, affirming the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals which had reversed the District Court in granting a 2 1/2 year delay. The per curiam opinion of the Court was unanimous, relying on the Court's original 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the 1955 implementing decision. The ruling was effective immediately, ordering integration to resume forthwith. It meant that seven black students who were scheduled to attend Central during the school year would be eligible for immediate readmission when the school opened on September 15, delayed to accommodate the Supreme Court's expedited schedule of hearing of that case. Governor Orval Faubus had said repeatedly he would close the school rather than allow it to operate with forced integration. The truncated opinion of the Court was read from the bench by Chief Justice Earl Warren, and its text is provided on the front page as well as in the footnote of the published opinion. The opinion would not officially be published with detail of the Court's views until later in the month, that to which we have linked above, but the Court made its basic decision public immediately because of the imminent start of school in Little Rock. Justice Felix Frankfurter ultimately filed a concurring opinion as well, eloquently concluding: "Lincoln's appeal to 'the better angels of our nature' failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's First and Second Inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable." It is to be recalled that it was the centennial year of the Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Senate seat ultimately won by the incumbent, Senator Stephen Douglas. The upstart, Mr. Lincoln, had only served one term in Congress, 1847-49, but yet, because of his principled and ably articulated stand on slavery, would win the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1860, a party founded in 1856, nominating John C. Fremont at its first nominating convention.

In Little Rock, Governor Faubus merely nodded but said nothing when the news reached him of the Supreme Court's decision. There was little reaction either from black students who were impacted by the decision or by Federal and City officials. The Mayor of Little Rock, head of the Little Rock Board of Directors, had immediately summoned a meeting of the Board to set up plans for preserving peace in the city. The U.S. Attorney and Justice Department aides sent from Washington said that they were studying the decision, and a spokesman said that it would be "some time" before they announced their next move. The first official reaction had come from the president of the Board of Education, who said: "Naturally, we will have to try to operate under [the decision]. We of course do not know what Governor Faubus plans to do but if he orders us to close the school we will close the school." Another Board member said that the Board would probably hold an emergency meeting immediately. The Governor was presiding over a meeting of the State Election Commission when he received the news. A reporter from the Arkansas Democrat had entered the room and handed him a copy of the Associated Press bulletin carrying the story. The Governor read it in silence, nodded but made no comment, then continued with the business before the Commission. None of the black students to be admitted to Central would comment on the decision. One of the students who attended Central the previous year under the guard of Army paratroopers said that she wanted to talk with advisers first. Three other students were not at their homes.

In Richmond, Va., it was reported that Warren County's only high school had closed at the end of classes this date as the direct result of an order issued by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals chief judge the previous day, denying a stay of a District Court order to admit 22 black students to the school. The County School Board had announced the "temporary suspension" of the school at Front Royal the previous day, the Board indicating that the black students would be enrolled on Saturday and Monday. Under Virginia law, an assignment or enrollment of any black pupil in a white school automatically resulted in that school's closure. The school officials came to Richmond to talk over their problem with Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., and State legal aides. It was not known what action might come from that meeting. At a press conference, the Governor hinted, without explaining, that the state might have yet another plan which could keep the schools from either being integrated or closed during the current school year. The school superintendent said that he did not know how long the school would be suspended, but expected a formal closing order from the state by Monday. The School Board had not considered or discussed the possibility of asking the Governor to allow the school to operate on an integrated basis without state funds, according to the superintendent. He was aware of no plans anywhere in the county to establish a private school system for the pupils involved. When a school was closed under Virginia's anti-integration laws, its control passed to the Governor and he was obligated to try to reorganize and reopen it on a segregated basis. The Governor apparently would be able to transfer the white pupils to other schools, eliminate any grades in the schools which were integrated or attempt to transfer the black pupils to black schools. Should he fail to reopen the school on a segregated basis, he could, if asked by both the school board and the county board of supervisors, return the school to the county to be operated on an integrated basis. Once an integrated school was opened, all state funds to that school and to all schools of its class, elementary or secondary, would be immediately cut off. The superintendent had said previously that Warren County did not have enough money to operate its schools by itself. At Charlottesville, meanwhile, City school officials postponed the opening of a white high school and an elementary school from Monday until September 22.

In the President's speech on the Formosa Strait crisis, broadcast worldwide the night before by radio and television, he had drawn the line against Communist aggression in the western Pacific, telling Communist China to stop pushing and negotiate or be prepared to fight. Immediate bipartisan Congressional reaction to the speech had been strongly favorable. It remained to be seen whether Communist China and the Soviet Union, accused by the President of "working hand in hand" to enslave the western Pacific, would take him at his word. He had deplored the bombardment of Quemoy, calling it a tragic affair which already had killed or wounded 1,000 persons, most of whom were civilians. But the issue, he said, was not the defense of the tiny islands, but rather: "Shall we take the position that, submitting to threat, it is better to surrender pieces of free territory in the hope that this will satisfy the appetite of the aggressor and we shall have peace?" Having answered his question in the negative, he said that the free world had to fight if necessary for that principle, that the democracies had tried appeasement at Munich in 1938 and had failed to prevent World War II, that he never wanted to see that history repeated. He pledged that "no American boy will ever be asked by me to fight just for Quemoy," only for the principle that armed force would not be used for aggressive purposes, a principle which he believed the U.S. armed forces and the American people supported. He said that he preferred and believed, however, that a negotiated way out of the crisis would be found without either appeasement or war.

The following night, Senator John F. Kennedy took issue with the President's general foreign policy, finding it to entail "drift and indecision" leading to a "constant state of crisis" confronting the country around the world. Speaking in San Francisco at a dinner for Senate candidate, Representative Clair Engle of California, the Senator said that the American people had no idea why U.S. Marines were in Lebanon and why they were being asked to defend Matsu, if they were, and what it was the country hoped to accomplish in either situation. "We are constantly faced with a brush-fire war after six years of steady deterioration in our capacity to fight brush fires. We have extended our commitments around the world, without regard to the sufficiency of our military posture to fulfill those commitments." He said that no commitment was better than one which was neither politically nor militarily feasible, citing as illustration the "deliberately vague and inconsistent response to the crisis in the Formosan Strait—where the weight of military, diplomatic, political and historical judgment would dictate a contrary policy." He said that the Administration had only imitated the weapons forged by the Truman Administration without revision of the arsenal of weapons to adjust to the fact that the Soviets' chief weapon was now no longer military but rather was economic.

On the editorial page, Joseph Alsop indicates that he was about to leave for Formosa and he hoped that before the words could be printed, incipient negotiations might have resolved the crisis there, which was far more dangerous than most Americans imagined. The greatness of the danger perhaps had persuaded the Chinese Communist leaders to begin to talk about negotiations as soon as the President and Secretary Dulles had committed themselves to using U.S. troops, if needed, to defend Quemoy and the Matsus. He suggests that the great danger was not that the U.S. would be drawn into the fighting in the Formosa Strait but rather that the U.S. would first be drawn into the fighting and then into using nuclear weapons, at least what were called "tactical" nuclear weapons in that local fight.