The Charlotte News

Monday, September 15, 1958

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the U.N. in New York that Secretary of State Dulles had set up strategy conferences this date for the 13th U.N. General Assembly, which he said might be the most important in years. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was also in New York, preparing for the session, which would begin the following day. He and Mr. Dulles were expected to clash in the debate beginning Thursday regarding such issues as the crisis in the Formosa Strait, the struggle between Communist and Nationalist Chinese. Mr. Dulles was scheduled to speak the following day. He had said upon his arrival: "There will be vital problems of consolidating peace which are brought to the fore by the Soviet backing of Chinese Communist aggression." He had mentioned as other subjects, disarmament, economic development and parts of the President's Middle Eastern program, which could not be set forth at the emergency session which had occurred between August 8 and 21. Before he had departed Washington, Mr. Dulles had said that he would not be surprised if the Russians sought to get the Assembly to put on its agenda alleged U.S. aggression in the Formosa Strait, where the U.S. was pledged by a 1955 treaty to defend the Nationalists on Formosa and the Pescadores Islands. Mr. Gromyko had made no statement when he arrived with a 14-member delegation, but in a recent letter to the President, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had asked whether the U.N. ought not forbid any country to send its air or naval fleets to the Far East or elsewhere "for the purpose of blackmail." Assistant Secretary of State Francis Wilcox had told a New York audience at the American Association for the United Nations: "Each member of the United Nations obviously has a strong interest in the situation in the Taiwan Strait areas since Communist activities there are fraught with danger to all of us and to world peace." He also said that he hoped that the General Assembly would make a beginning toward establishing a standby U.N. force ready to meet quickly "a wide range of situations." The President's August 13 speech on the Middle East had called for creation of such a force and Mr. Wilcox said that the first step ought be a "permanent staff in the United Nations Secretariat to act as a planning center."

In Taipei, Formosa, the Chinese Nationalists, heartened by their first success at piercing the Communist artillery curtain around Quemoy, had assembled another convoy this date to supply the besieged island fortress, where 100,000 Nationalist Army personnel were garrisoned. The Nationalists announced that the first sizable amounts of supplies in a week had gotten through to Quemoy the previous day by sea and air, with U.S. escorts. U.S. and Nationalist spokesmen had announced that U.S. Air Force planes had flown protective cover. Nationalist transports also parachuted supplies to the island complex for the first time since the Communists had tightened their blockade early in the month. Newsmen were barred from visiting the Pescadores, Matsu and Quemoy, a hint that some major operation might be in the offing as a new sea convoy was forming at the Pescadores Island supply base 30 miles from Formosa and 70 miles from Quemoy. The previous day, the successful convoy had been directed by U.S. amphibious experts, who apparently showed the Nationalists some new techniques. As usual, escort ships from the U.S. 7th Fleet had stopped at the three-mile international limit and remained offshore. U.S. jets covering the operation were believed under similar orders. The supply ship which had gotten through was an old World War II LST, a much larger vessel than the LSM's which had failed on four convoys the previous week. The LST could carry about 1,200 tons of cargo, compared with 350 on the LSM.

In Washington, Russian trade chief Anastas Mikoyan had renewed the Soviet Union's offer to work out a trade agreement with the U.S., and even to sell the country some military equipment.

In Beirut, Lebanon, two more U.S. Marine battalions were departing the country and returning home, most of the men to be aboard ship this date.

In London, it was reported that a British judge had cracked down on racial rioting this date in the Notting Hill section of the city by sending nine youths to jail for four years each for attacks on black citizens.

In Newport, R.I., it was reported that the President would hold his first formal political conference this date since the Republicans had been trounced in the Maine elections a week earlier.

In Paris, it was reported that Algerian assassins had sought to kill the French Information Minister, Jacques Soustelle, in the heart of the city this date, but had missed him. M. Soustelle, a former Governor General of Algeria, had been cut above the eyes and under his chin by shattered glass in bursts of gunfire at his car, with one bullet having whizzed through his coat as he dove to the floor. In the gunfight which followed, one Algerian had been killed and another wounded. Stray bullets killed a French subway worker and wounded three others. The shooting had occurred near the Arc de Triomphe as American tourists and French passers-by raced for cover. Next to Premier Charles de Gaulle, M. Soustelle was the most major Government figure whom the Algerian Nationalists could attack in France to underscore their determination to win independence for the North African territory. He sat at Premier De Gaulle's right hand in the French Cabinet and was the Premier's chief propagandist. At a press conference after the shooting, he blamed the attack on the Algerian Nationalist Liberation Front. Police initially had said the attackers were members of the Nationalist Algerian Movement, which rivaled the Liberation Front for leadership in the Algerian rebellion. The attack had come as M. Soustelle, with his usual police escort, pulled to a stop near his office, after which a sudden burst of gunfire shattered the rear window of the car and peppered its sides. Two American tourists from Duluth, Minn., were in a nearby hotel and came running out when they heard the shooting at which point a French detective pointed his gun to stop them from taking pictures. M. Soustelle told reporters that after the terrorists had stopped firing at his car, he got out to head into a building and then another Algerian, standing nearby, pulled a weapon from under his raincoat and opened fire again, at which point he had thrown himself to the ground as police and bodyguards seized the Algerian when he attempted to flee into a nearby subway station. M. Soustelle had long been a supporter of General De Gaulle and was an exponent of a hard French policy for Algeria. He had been Minister of Information in General De Gaulle's World War II Free French Government in exile in London, and was known for a personal determination which bordered on truculence. The attack would presage an attack on Premier De Gaulle in Paris on August 22, 1962, attributed to another Algerian movement, the Secret Army Organization, which had as its goal preventing independence of Algeria from France. The obvious solution to the dilemma, at least to avoid assassination attempts by radical Algerian organizations, was both to grant independence and not grant it at the same time. On the other hand, perhaps the radical organizations had, for some strange reason, a revulsive distaste for the Government's use of Citroens and thus it ought switch to those Renault Dope Fiends, or American Buicks, as its means of transport.

In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that a few spectators had gathered near Central High School this date at the time when it normally would have opened for classes for the fall term. Police radio cars circled the grounds. Automobiles carrying both whites and blacks cruised slowly in front of the school, but there were no disturbances. The school remained closed on orders of Governor Orval Faubus. A group of white girls, in gymnasium uniforms, had gone into the school, telling reporters that they were not going to attend classes, that they were drum majorettes practicing for appearances at the football games. Special armed guards, employed by the School Board, were on duty at the school. U.S. marshals, also in cars, appeared occasionally but stayed in their cars. State troopers, also armed, were on duty at the official residence of the Governor. A reporter who passed through the gate and approached the mansion had been ordered to leave. The areas around the city's other three senior high schools had been quiet. The regional director of the NAACP, Mrs. L. C. Bates, had said previously that she did not intend to bring seven black pupils to Central High in the formality of trying to enroll them, those pupils having attended the high school the previous year and having been ordered to be admitted to the school by the Supreme Court in its decision of the prior Friday, affirming the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision reversing the District Court's order to delay by 2 1/2 years further integration of the school, resulting in the Governor's order, pursuant to new powers provided by the special session recently of the Legislature, to close the school. Reports persisted this date that the Department of Justice was preparing some legal action against the Governor, but the Department's spokesman had refused to reveal how it planned to employ the small army of U.S. marshals it had in Little Rock.

In Richmond, Va., the closed Warren County High School symbolized this date the intensity of Virginia's battle to prevent integration of the public schools. Under the state's anti-integration laws, Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., had taken control of the county's only high school, which previously had been all-white. A District Court judge had ordered 22 black pupils to be admitted to the high school the prior week and the chief judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had refused to impose a stay of that order, resulting in the Governor closing the school under the state's laws forbidding integration. Residents of the county, in northwest Virginia, were silent and calm as they prepared for the impact of a closed high school. A group of clergymen in the county had urged reopening of the high school in a statement adopted by 13 of the 14 members of the local ministerial association, expressing the belief in "the vital necessity" of keeping the public schools open, the statement also indicating that the ministers could not countenance the use of Christian churches as private schools to evade desegregation. In Charlottesville, where a District Court judge had ordered the admission of two black pupils to its only white high school and ten black students to one of its white elementary schools, the school board would seek the following day to obtain a stay of the ruling from the Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit in Baltimore, Simon Sobeloff. In Norfolk, the school board, under pressure of a Federal Court order to desegregate the public schools, had announced the intention to enroll 17 black students in white schools.

Perry Morgan, on leave as Associate Editor of The News while studying as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, reports that on the night of July 23, 1957, the Charlotte City School Board had been accused of "an outrage and a crime" for having assigned five black students to previously all-white schools. The speaker, a leader of the segregationist "Patriots of North Carolina, Inc.," had received some cheers from the audience while from the Board, there had been no response. By that night, more than three years following the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Board had made up its mind, after consulting lawyers, teachers, parents and its own knowledge of the community and its own conscience, to seek to deal with the facts and develop a solution. The Board had proposed a policy and what would follow would be up to the people, that policy having been, first, that the public schools had to be preserved, and, second, that the law of the land had to be respected. The Board would thus demonstrate its good faith to the law by assigning to all-white schools five black applicants who, had they been white, would have been so assigned without question. Long before that point, requests from the NAACP that the Board undertake to bring about general integration of white and black students had been rejected. Rather than a positive order for integration, the Supreme Court decision, in the view of the Board, had been a ban against refusing to assign black applicants to a particular school based on race or color. Thus, the Board would keep faith with that view of the decision, the view of the late Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John J. Parker, and would stay out of court. To a large extent, keeping out of court and keeping the schools open might mean the same thing. The Board would have to use its own judgment if the time would come when assignment of a legally qualified black applicant to a school would pose the probability that its patrons would close that school under the state's Pupil Assignment Law. The Board had only the power of discretion to determine what might be achieved where and when, in an effort to bridge the gap between a new and unpopular decision and a contrary custom rooted in the centuries. The Board would use its discretion, hoping that the community would trust it and that the courts, if the Board should be forced into them, would understand the necessity of local discretion. The editors note at the head of the piece that the Board had been charged with being "segregationist" and with being "integrationist", when, in fact, it was neither, its concern being with the education of Charlotte children and the operation of the Charlotte public schools within the framework of Brown and in keeping with community attitudes. It notes that members of the Board were Dr. Herbert Spaugh, chairman, Ben Horack, R. H. Brown, A. L. Bechtold, J. P. Hobson, G. Douglas Aitken and Ben F. Huntley.

On the editorial page, "One Day Soon: A Puppetless Theatre" finds that "in the dank and musty cellar of our China policy, not a fresh wind has stirred in years", that it had hoped for one in the President's address the prior Thursday regarding the offshore islands, one to succeed "containment" or even the "mania about territorial balance of power", but instead there had been "the same weary, windy bromides and slogans which have lulled us for years."