The Charlotte News

Tuesday, June 26, 1951

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that General Matthew Ridgway said, during a visit with South Korean President Syngman Rhee, that he did not know what was happening with regard to ceasefire proposals but that things looked "better than ever."

Chinese aggression increased anew on the ground and in the air. Enemy planes twice struck allied B-29 bombers and engaged in two battles with American Sabre jets, during which one enemy MIG-15 was shot down. Enemy fighting was more tenacious on the ground than in recent days.

Skepticism increased at the U.N. regarding the proposal of Russian chief delegate Jakob Malik that a ceasefire in Korea be negotiated by evacuation of the 38th parallel. State Department officials questioned whether the proposal was merely a ploy to buy time for Communist forces in Korea to reorganize and obtain better position. The Communist Chinese had mentioned a condition of gaining membership to the U.N., consistently rejected by the U.S., along with the question of Formosa, also mentioned by the Chinese, as any basis for negotiations on Korea.

The South Korean Cabinet said that any peace proposal resulting in division of Korea along an artificial line was unacceptable.

Secretary of State Acheson said this date to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that withdrawal of Communist forces behind the 38th parallel could produce a successful conclusion of the conflict in Korea, as aggression would have been repelled and stopped. The Secretary was present to urge passage of the President's 8.5 billion dollar foreign aid program.

The joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees appeared to have ended their inquiry, begun May 3, into the firing of General MacArthur and Far Eastern policy, but the debate on the matter continued, with members expressing varied opinions on the conclusion of the matter, Democrats, such as Senator Brien McMahon, finding General MacArthur's position to have lost, while Republicans, as Senator Owen Brewster, thought the hearings had devastated the Administration policy.

Senator Taft said that the President's speech in Tennessee the previous day had contained an "absolute untruth" when he said that the country presently had a bipartisan foreign policy and had since Pearl Harbor, which he intended to preserve. He said the President had not consulted with Republican leaders on foreign policy since the 1948 election. The President had also said that the Republicans wanted the country to play Russian roulette with foreign policy, with all of the chambers loaded.

Before HUAC, aging actor J. Edward Bromberg refused to testify as to whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party.

In Budapest, the prosecutor in the trial of Archbishop Josef Groesz demanded the death penalty for his alleged conspiracy to overthrow the Government with the aid of Yugoslavia and the U.S. The Archbishop had laid his fate before the court, saying that he repented and regretted what he had done.

In Washington, a seventeen-year old boy, who had fallen victim to narcotics, and a social worker told the Senate crime investigating committee of dope peddlers preying on school children in New York City. The teenager said that he had dropped his studies to earn money and steal to buy narcotics. He said that he had first started smoking marijuana when 13 and then shifted to heroin. The social worker said that dope peddlers stood in school doorways awaiting an opportunity to pass the narcotics to girls as they entered the schools, offering drugs to children as young as nine.

Governor Fuller Warren of Florida challenged crime investigating committee chairman Senator Herbert O'Conor to meet him in debate on gambling corruption and other vice in Florida and elsewhere, saying that while the Senator had been Governor of Maryland, gambling and other vice had flourished in Baltimore. He said that the American Mercury had charged the Senator with being backed by a corrupt, mob-ridden political machine. The investigating committee had been seeking the Florida Governor to testify before the committee but had not yet been able to serve him with a subpoena.

Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, speaking before Georgia Democrats in Atlanta, said that Southern Democrats could force repeal of the civil rights plank of the 1948 Democratic platform and restore a states' rights plank. He said that the Truman Administration was threatening national insolvency, steering the country toward socialism and sponsoring unconstitutional invasion of states' rights. He wanted restoration of the two-thirds rule for nominating a candidate for the presidency, a rule in force in the Democratic conventions from 1831 until 1936.

Newsflash: Radio station KXOK in St. Louis reported that Harold Stassen, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and candidate for president in 1948, would again be a candidate in 1952.

Ditto that for the rest of his days, every quadrennial.

On the editorial page, "Segregation—A State Responsibility" finds that the outrageous imbalance between the black and white public schools of Clarendon County, South Carolina, had not persuaded the two-judge majority in Briggs v. Elliott to side with the parents and N.A.A.C.P. who brought the case to desegregate the schools on the basis that segregation per se was violative of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause. Instead, the court majority had sustained the viability of Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal doctrine and ordered Clarendon County "promptly" to develop equal facilities for the races and issue a report on compliance in six months. They left the matter of segregation to the determination of the states under the Tenth Amendment. They concluded that it was a late day to determine segregation in violation per se of Equal Protection, 55 years after Plessy had allowed for passing muster under the Equal Protection Clause by the challenged entity establishing the fact of separate-but-equal public facilities and accommodations.

Prophetically, the piece finds that it was not clear that the Supreme Court would agree with the District Court majority, but might instead follow the reasoning of Judge J. Waites Waring in his dissent and find segregation per se violative of Equal Protection, having failed in the years since Plessy to establish separate-but-equal facilities, fallacious in the premises because of the psychological impact of segregation on the psyches of young children confronted with it.

To establish equal facilities in North Carolina, it informs, heavy capital expenditure on black schools would have to take place, as a report by the Raleigh News & Observer found that in 1949 blacks constituted 30 percent of the state's population while black schools had only 14.2 percent of school facilities. Since then, the State Board of Education had persuaded local school officials to spend more on black schools, with the result that of 37 million spent from the State 50-million dollar building fund, 15.6 million had been allocated to black schools, thus closing the gap between the schools, especially if the ratio were maintained in the allocation of the remaining 13 million.

But Governor Kerr Scott had estimated that it would take 100 million dollars to bring black school facilities to parity with the white schools.

The piece concludes that as long as the State chose "to enjoy the luxury of segregation", it would have to pay for it.

"Better Air Facilities" tells of it being a matter of grave importance for the City Council to conclude an agreement with the Civil Aeronautics Board for nearly one million dollars of improvements to the Charlotte municipal airport. The growth of air transportation in Charlotte was proof of its use to overcome the limitations in east-west rail service and absence of water transport to develop its economy. It finds that it would be foolish not to develop the airport for the potential business.

A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun, titled "Avoiding a Mistake", finds the House Ways & Means Committee to have acted sensibly in deciding not to include pipes as "jewelry" so as to impose a 20 percent excise tax, as it would have given great offense to pipe smokers for a small amount of revenue.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Looking for No Blackgum", tells of Fifth District N.C. Congressman Thurmond Chatham having no desire to run for governor, as had been rumored. It concludes that since he had never fancied himself a thunderer he had no mind to take on blackgum just for the exercise.

Drew Pearson tells of the Senate Banking Committee debating the previous week in executive session the extension of price controls. He tells which of the members were for rollbacks of prices and which were opposed. The most effective opponent of both wage and price controls was new Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who was acting as a spokesman for the Chicago Tribune. He had also sought to get an amendment passed which would allow a 61 percent increase in rents, allowing the President to re-authorize rent controls in defense areas but with provision for a 61 percent increase. Senator Homer Capehart, when Senator Dirksen's efforts had failed, sought to extend allocation controls for a year but allow price controls to expire December 1, when Congress would not be in session to renew them. Ironically, Senator Capehart had criticized the President for not implementing price controls the previous June at the outset of the Korean war.

Senator Willis Robertson of Virginia had originally been for extension of controls but then, under the apparent influence of fellow Virginian, Senator Harry Flood Byrd, changed his position.

Eventually, despite the cajoling of Congressman Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., Senator J. Allen Frear of Delaware, who had been riding the fence, changed his vote to opposition of extension of controls, leaving the vote at 7 to 6 against them.

Joseph Alsop, in Belgrade, tells of the men who ran Yugoslavia having been Soviet agents prior to the war, front fighters in the Spanish Civil War, members of the Communist underground during the war, and friends and nearly equals of the Politburo during the days immediately after the war. They understood well, therefore, Soviet tactics and intentions.

A year earlier, when Mr. Alsop had been in Belgrade, the Yugoslav leaders were still reluctant to believe that Stalin had completely abandoned the methods of Marx for those of Hitler. Tito, himself, had argued that the Soviets would never move aggressively without the support of the masses, insisting that there was no need for the West to rebuild its defenses as there was no danger of armed Soviet aggression.

But when the Korean war began, that remnant of faith vanished and Yugoslavia the previous summer began total dedication of the State to defense. It had expected by late November, with the disaster faced by the U.N. forces at the Yalu River, a Soviet-inspired attack by China on Indo-China in the winter and a satellite invasion of Yugoslavia by spring. Indeed, posits Mr. Alsop, had things gone differently and the allies had been forced to withdraw from Korea, such scenarios likely would have occurred.

For the nonce, the Soviets, according to every important man in the Yugoslav Government, were seeking to divide the allies and paralyze the Western alliance. Such a course was predicted to continue through the summer and fall. It was why the Yugoslav leaders did not fear immediate attack from Russia or the satellites. But in the longer term, they did. He promises to elucidate that reasoning in a later column.

Robert C. Ruark, now on safari in Africa, had left behind some of his better columns of recent years for re-publication, which the editors indicate they would publish from time to time during his absence.

In this one, he tells of having the "New Look" from the facts of switching to Calvert's, not smoking opium any more and having meatless days during which he consumed Red Heart Dog Food, good enough for Lassie and so for him. He tells of many other named products in his home and diet and for his appearance which contributed to the Look. And he did not care about being behind in his payments on some of the merchandise because his Philco radio went with him everywhere, even to the psychiatrist, and he had his Pepsi to hit the spot, his Mum to keep him sweet, and his Ronson lighter to keep him warm. He thus did not care that the bed clothes smoked a little.

"All these things I've got, and sometimes I wish I were dead."

Maybe the wish will come true in Africa.

Bring back Samuel Grafton....

A letter from the director of the Charlotte Mint Museum of Art thanks Samuel Lubell for his laudatory piece in the Saturday Evening Post regarding Charlotte. But he takes exception to his comments about the Mint Museum, that the exhibit was attractively housed but short on art to exhibit. He says that while the permanent collections were small, they were of good quality. Most of the exhibits were itinerant and he lists the several prominent artists represented during the previous year. He gives further details about the Museum and tells of nearly 50,000 visitors having toured it during the prior year, all on a budget of less than $12,000, except for building maintenance paid by the City. He concludes that it was not short on art but on funding, as were most of the city's cultural institutions.

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