The Charlotte News

Friday, December 9, 1949

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, former chairman of HUAC, who had changed his plea from not guilty to nolo contendere on the charge of arranging for salary kickbacks from several members of his staff, many of whom had only perfunctory duties, was sentenced to six to eighteen months in prison and a $10,000 fine. His wife then announced that she would seek election to his seat in the special election for his successor following his imminent resignation from Congress.

Former Major G. Racey Jordan, who had claimed that in 1943 he had found a note subscribed by "H.H." saying that the author had a hard time getting uranium products away from Maj. General Leslie Groves, head of the wartime Manhattan Project, and that the note was with some uranium materials being shipped to Russia, had been on friendly terms with the Russians at the Great Falls, Mont., air base where he was stationed. The Russian commander had in fact recommended his promotion from captain to major. At that time, Major Jordan made no references to Harry Hopkins or Vice-President Henry Wallace, both of whom he had recently implicated on the radio and before HUAC in provision of information during the war to Russia. Nor had he referenced the uranium shipments or radar equipment which he had subsequently claimed to have ripped from planes bound for Russia.

The Army confirmed that wartime detection and gunfire radar techniques were taught to a dozen Russian trainees at Fort Monmouth, N.J., in 1944 when the U.S. and Russia were allies in the war.

In Key West, Fla., Budget Director Frank Pace, following a meeting with the President, said that he saw no prospect of a balanced budget in 1951 without raising taxes.

In Bradford, Eng., the Labor Party had won its first by-election since devaluation of the pound, providing a sharp setback to the Conservative hopes to regain Parliament in the 1950 general election. The Conservatives had campaigned on the issue of devaluation.

In Rome, Ga., in the twelve-day old trial of the ten men accused of Federal civil rights violations in the flogging of seven black citizens the previous spring, a deputy admitted that he had once blackjacked a war veteran who protested a Klan parade and warned him to leave the Klan alone. He also said that even though Klan members seized prisoners from the jail, he made no effort to investigate or to track down Klansmen accused of other acts of intimidation. He had also participated in the building and placement of a cross outside the home of a black woman where the seven whipping victims were seized. But he claimed also that it was just coincidence that he and another deputy were in the area on the night of the whippings and that the cross happened to be at the home where the victims were seized. He claimed the Klansmen surrounded the Sheriff and another deputy and that the Klansmen had told the Sheriff, "Don't let us see you around here again."

Indeed, after seizure of the black prisoners at Hooker Hill, the Sheriff, he said, had raced back into town to raise a posse to regain custody of them, not the Klansmen who had taken them.

The deputy and the Sheriff were charged with conspiracy among the ten defendants.

Ashley Smith, state editor of The News, tells of Charlotte having its first KKK Klavern, opened the previous night according to Thomas Hamilton, Grand Dragon of the Carolinas Klans. He claimed that hundreds had signed up, from all walks of life. He said that Charlotte would form the nucleus for establishment of other Klaverns in the Carolinas. The former grocer operated from his home in Leesville, S.C.

What was the name of his store, "Korn, Kraut, and Koldkuts"?

Donald MacDonald of The News tells of Police Chief Frank Littlejohn calling the organization "fertilizer for Communism" and promised an attempt to prosecute the members in Charlotte should they seek to take the law into their own hands to establish "their so-called 'law and order'". The Chief said that "if a person is a good citizen, he doesn't have to go and hide himself from the law in a pillow case or a flour sack."

Hey, man, that's freedom to speech. We done seed on it at the radio.

In Raleigh, Monroe Medlin, convicted of first degree murder in September of the August 1 killing of Mrs. E. O. Anderson in her home in the Myers Park neighborhood, was executed at Central Prison. His appeal essentially had been abandoned by his attorneys who filed a no-issue brief with the State Supreme Court, which then, of course, affirmed the conviction after a cursory review of the record.

Thus, he was executed without an effective appeal, plainly a violation of Due Process and the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, a process which would never be tolerated under modern jurisprudence. As stated previously, there appeared plentiful ground for contention of error at trial, especially in the area of instructions regarding imperfect self-defense, as Mr. Medlin had contended that Mrs. Anderson had been shot in the shoulder during a mutual struggle for control of a shotgun which she had retrieved from a nearby closet when she first encountered the former employee in her bedroom. He claimed that he believed she was going to shoot him and so grabbed for the shotgun. In any event, there is always ground for contention of errors in any felony jury trial.

But he was black, the victim was a white, middle-class woman, and it was 1949.

Two other men were also executed this date, one convicted of felony murder during a robbery and the other after a conviction for first degree burglary. The Warden said that two of the men, including Mr. Medlin, admitted their guilt, but the third proclaimed his innocence to the end.

In the case of Mr. Medlin, the issue is not guilt or innocence of culpability for the killing but rather the degree of the homicide and whether it merited the death penalty.

But, if you could be sentenced to death for burglary in 1949, why not for parking violations also?

In Tokyo, a fourth grade boy told welfare officials that his goal in life was to be Emperor of Japan.

On the editorial page, "The NAM and Imports" tells of the National Association of Manufacturers applauding a speech in which they were counseled that increasing imports and consequent reduction of tariffs was the best way to stabilize the world economies, something traditionally they would have rejected for its competition to American goods.