The Charlotte News
Friday, November 19, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a joint U.S.-Canadian announcement had stated that the U.S. had assumed the job of building a "distant early warning" network of radar stations along the Canadian-Alaskan rim of the continent, the estimated cost of which to be about a billion dollars, and that though both the U.S. and Canada would participate in the project, responsibility for the construction and installation would be vested in the U.S. Defense Department officials said that adequate money was available within the current budget for the project and that additional money would be requested in the budget for the following fiscal year. Details about the project were directed to official Air Force spokesmen, who said that they had not seen the announcement until it was handed to reporters. The announcement was similar to one which had issued on September 27, outlining two existing or building northern radar systems, indicating agreement on the need for a distant early warning system, with a statement that the relative participation by Canada and the U.S. in the construction and operation, plus the division of the cost of the system, would be subsequently determined. In September, 1953, Western Electric Co. had announced that it was starting work, under a contract with the Air Force, on the first experimental units of a distant early warning line, a project which, it was said at the time, had been started in December, 1952, with the first units having been installed on Barter Island, off the northern coast of Alaska. In response to questions, an Air Force spokesman this date had said that the first experimental units had been linked to the continental defense system.
At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. and its allies pressed for a vote this date on the compromise plan to promote the President's atoms-for-peace program, with diplomats predicting unanimous assent after Russian approval was virtually certain. The 60-nation Political Committee was in recess until late this date to allow members to consult their governments, and it was hoped that there would be a vote this night on the seven-power resolution to set up an international atomic agency. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., presented the revised proposal the previous day, asking for unanimous approval. The only objection raised by the Soviets was a Western provision to invite only members of the U.N. and its specialized agencies to the proposed scientific conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy, but that was not seen as a barrier to final agreement on the resolution, which provided that the scientific conference would be held the following summer, that as soon as the international atomic agency was established, it would negotiate an appropriate agreement with the U.N., and that negotiations on the agency continue, as recommended by Russia.
The Senate was taking an 11-day recess from the debate on the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy because the Senator was in the hospital with an elbow ailment, "traumatic bursitis", as explored further by an editorial below. The Senate had voted 76 to 2 in favor of the postponement, with only Senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Herbert Lehman of New York objecting. Senate Majority Leader William Knowland of California said that he had no doubt that the matter would be brought to a vote within the current Congress, by December 24—failing which, the resolution would die. Senator Fulbright had sought an agreement to vote no later than December 20, but Senator William Jenner of Indiana, a supporter of Senator McCarthy, had blocked that move with an objection. Senator Morse said that the public would see through the maneuver and that there would be a vote, that Senators Everett Dirksen and Jenner had "demonstrated by their tactics they head a group that wants to see this thing kept from a vote." Senator Dirksen had replied to a reporter that he had no such intention, that everyone was anxious to get through the matter. Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, chairman of the six-Senator select committee which had unanimously recommended censure, said that he believed there would be a vote. The Capitol physician had recommended the temporary postponement, indicating that permanent injury could result to Senator McCarthy's arm if the full course of prescribed treatment were not followed. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona said that he had visited Senator McCarthy in the hospital and that he was showing signs of strain and fatigue, in addition to the arm injury.
It should be recalled that President Nixon, in 1974, a month or so after his resignation, suddenly came down with a case of phlebitis
The postponement of the hearings meant that Senator-elect Kerr Scott would have his oath of office likewise delayed from November 24 until November 29.
Premier Pierre Mendes-France, visiting Washington, this date pledged, in a speech prepared for the National Press Club, that there would be quick French approval of the German rearmament agreements, regardless of new concessions which Russia might offer France to delay ratification. He said that ratification was not a matter of negotiation with the East and could not be regarded as a trading point.
In Bonn, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's Cabinet approved this date the Paris agreements, to admit West Germany to NATO and rearm the country, after rebel factions of a four-party coalition Government acquiesced to the controversial Saar agreement as well as the pacts providing West German sovereignty, ending the Big Three postwar occupation, and authorizing the raising of a 500,000-man armed force for the West European union. The agreement by the Cabinet meant that the ratification could reach the lower house of parliament for a first reading prior to Christmas, after first going before the upper house, composed of ministers of the nine states of the Federal Republic. The upper house would have three weeks to consider the bills before sending them to the lower house, where they had to receive three readings to meet final approval. The smaller parties in the coalition had objected strongly to the French-German agreement to "Europeanize" the Saar and had threatened to oppose it in parliament.
In Zürich, Hermann Field arrived this date for reunion with his wife whom he had not seen since his imprisonment in Communist Poland five years earlier for alleged spying. He had been released in Poland three weeks earlier. Newsmen and photographers were barred by police from access to his plane, with police indicating that they had been ordered by a government department to ban reporters from the area around the plane. He had flown to Zürich on his own. He had originally gone to Poland looking for his brother, who had disappeared behind the Iron Curtain in 1949, and was subsequently held as a spy for the West. It had been reported by the Hungarian Government in Budapest that his brother and sister-in-law had recently been released.
In Tupelo, Miss., an elderly couple's bodies were found charred to death among the ruins of their grocery store, and it was determined by an autopsy that they had been murdered by beating prior to the arson of the structure the previous Tuesday night, with robbery having been the probable motive.
In Cleveland, O., in the first-degree murder trial of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, accused of killing his wife, Marilyn, the prior July 4, the prosecution's case continued this date with a detective from the Cleveland homicide squad, Robert Schottke, testifying that Dr. Sheppard had denied in his initial statement to police that he had dated a woman who had worked at the hospital owned by the Sheppard family and who had since moved to California to become a medical technician there, or that he had provided to her a watch as a gift. The prosecution was contending that Dr. Sheppard had been intimate with the woman during a visit for a wedding in southern California the prior March. The young woman had admitted to the press having an affair with the doctor at that time, and the State planned to present her testimony to the jury later in the case. Dr. Sheppard had stated during the coroner's inquest on July 21 that he had paid around $50 for a wristwatch which he gave to the woman as a replacement for a watch she had lost when the two had been guests in Los Angeles the prior spring for the wedding. At the time, Mrs. Sheppard was staying in Monterey, Calif., with mutual friends of the couple, with full knowledge that her husband was attending the wedding in southern California. The detective who testified this date had been the first officer to accuse Dr. Sheppard of bludgeoning his wife to death, saying that he told the doctor that evidence pointed strongly toward his guilt and that in his opinion he had killed his wife, to which Dr. Sheppard had replied: "Don't be ridiculous. I have devoted my life to saving other lives and I loved my wife." The detective said that in that response, the tone of the doctor's voice had been the same he had used to answer all of their questions, loud enough to hear but not raised, and that he had not appeared emotional at any time during the interrogation. He said that he had also asked the doctor about reports that a house guest, also a doctor, was infatuated with Mrs. Sheppard, asking him whether he had heard such rumors, to which Dr. Sheppard had responded that he had but that he had not paid any attention to them because he knew that his wife was faithful.
Harry Shuford of The News reports that a local PTA group had listened to a panel discussion aimed at parents and then began a broadside against the educational system the previous night, criticizing and offering constructive suggestions on the new report card and conference grading system, calling it worthless. The new grading system was based on "S" for satisfactory and "N" for needs improvement. The assistant superintendent of schools led the discussion, saying that when culture changed, so must the schools, that they had sought to fit Charlotte schools to the modern situation, that teaching could not be undertaken in the same manner as in earlier times, that facts and statistics showed that children were learning to read and write better than ever before, that people trying to show the contrary did not realize that they were comparing the few top students of 30 years earlier with the entire classes of the present. The new grading system, he said, had been implemented after a study committee of teachers had looked at it three years earlier, followed by a parent-teacher evaluation committee the previous spring. Under the new program, there would be a first-quarter conference following the issuance of the first report card at the end of the first school quarter. That would enable the teacher and parent to become better acquainted and effect a better understanding between them, with the teacher also obtaining a better knowledge of the child, while the parent would glean a picture of how the child was developing in school. The new grading system measured how each child was progressing compared to expectations for that child, given his or her demonstrated ability, rather than the traditional A, B, C grading system. They explained that in that manner, each child was challenged to do their best. Did they not also have that dreaded "U" for unsatisfactory, and at the other end of the scale, the much prized "E" for excellent? They did at our school, but those letters were reserved only for such ancillary, non-academic, practical courses, measuring skill rather than ability to impart learned theory and information, as handwriting, reading, art, physical education, band, music, general conduct in class, etc. We once got an "N" in conduct, with the explanation that we did not talk enough in class, the same grade given to the disruptive chatterboxes, "U" being reserved for the developing juvenile delinquents. They get you coming and going, whether you just listen or jabberwocky.
The Carolina Motor Club this date indicated that there would be two license tags required for cars and trucks the following year, one at the front and one at the rear, with the new tags set to go on sale on December 1. You can purchase your tags at the Carolina Motor Club in Charlotte, as well as a required city tag, remembering that they are stamped out and painted black and yellow by the best prison labor available.
On the editorial page, "'Shut, Shut the Door, Good John!'" indicates that Senator McCarthy was resting comfortably at Bethesda Naval Hospital, after his elbow, according to some of his aides, had been painfully bruised when he banged it against a glass tabletop during a hearty handshake, and was reportedly responding well to treatment. Nevertheless, the Senate had taken an 11-day recess from its consideration of the censure resolution against him to permit his full recovery.
It notes that the Senator was a former boxer and had always been vigorous and robust, thus causing surprise that a mere bruised elbow would keep him from the field of battle at a time of such a crucial contest. In contrast, Senator Arthur Watkins, who had chaired the Senate select committee which had unanimously recommended censure and was a much older man, had been ailing for several days but nevertheless was still ready to continue with the fight. It suggests that it begged the question as to who had shaken the arm so hard of Senator McCarthy that he landed in the hospital, prompting recollection of the story of his receipt after the war of a Purple Heart for falling off a ladder during a hazing ritual aboard ship, traditional among neophytes passing the equator for the first time. It finds that the timing of the hospitalization was curious, that something about Washington often incapacitated men under fire, such as the case of Henry Grunewald, Washington fixer, who had refused to return to a subcommittee investigating him, after a medical report issued saying that his appearance would be unsafe, as well as involving others, of which it also provides summaries.
It indicates that the Senator's indisposition reminded of the Notre Dame versus Iowa football game of 1953, in which Iowa had been leading 7 to 0 just before halftime, with Notre Dame threatening, scoring on the last play of the half as time expired, after which one of the Notre Dame players feigned injury at the end of the game with the clock running out, permitting, after an official timeout, time for a pass play which resulted in a touchdown knotting the score at 14-all at the gun. But it was willing to give the Senator the benefit of the doubt, suggests that he possibly had the same feeling Alexander Pope had described in his "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot": "Shut, shut the door, good John!/ fatigued, I said;/ Tie up the knocker! say I'm sick, I'm/ dead."
"Hi-Fi Bull in a China Shop" indicates that a hushed hall had waited while members of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra lifted their instruments to prepare to
deliver "Poem in Cycles and Bells"
It ventures that the reason why the concertgoers were so rapt in their attention was that music listeners in the country had suddenly gone "sound-happy", becoming high fidelity enthusiasts, dedicated to all kinds of noise, some so elevated in frequency that they could only be perceived through the screen of a cathode-ray oscilloscope. To capture these sounds, the audiophiles would typically purchase expensive phonographic equipment, vaguely resembling the cluttered cockpit of a bomber.
The work presented in Los Angeles
might soon be available on a hi-fi recording
A real hi-fi fan's record collection would include everything from "Railroad Dynamics—New York Central Sounds" to a collection of bagpipes from the Hebrides, all recorded at between 50 and 18,000 cycles.
According to Gilbert Millstein of
the New York Times, who had been investigating the matter, the
hi-fi classic of all time was titled "Speed the Parting Guest or
Hi-Fi Bull in a China Shop"
It wonders where it would all end,
suggesting that perhaps Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland or Paul
Hindemith would eventually compose a "Silent Sonata"
.eninrebmun
The only way to know with total certainty whether the tree falling in the uninhabited forest makes a sound is to be there, preferably not under it. Seeking to supplant habitation with a sound recording device to try vainly to prove the point demonstrates nothing, as there is still a vibration-sensing instrument at work. As we said a couple of days ago in connection with the Charles Kuralt piece on BRAT, to which was adverted on the Yimsa-not-on-McCorkle, nothingness is.
"Don't Miss a Single Flaming Chapter" indicates that after reviewing serial fiction currently running in American newspapers, it had come up with its own story which it would title, "Passion below Stairs or Who Put the Benzedrine in Rodney Strongoak's Ovaltine?" It expects to sell the work to a syndicate for $5,617, provides a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of its serial.
It begins with high society beauty, Ophelia Hipp, falling in love with the garbageman, Rodney, after seeing him on six occasions pick up the refuse at her Fifth Avenue apartment building, while Rodney was falling in love with the scullery maid, the gay, carefree, curvaceous, headstrong Hedda Nuff, who worked in the basement of the apartment house and fed Rodney olives when he picked up the garbage. Ophelia told Hedda about her desperate love for Rodney, not knowing that Hedda was her rival. Hedda determined to lure Rodney into a compromising position and then let Ophelia step in, promising Rodney a raw oyster supper after he had collected the garbage. In the meantime, Ophelia had flung herself, clad only in a sheer nightgown, from her 17th story window into Rodney's garbage scow, seeking to attract his attention, escaping from the truck only moments before its load was dumped into the incinerator.
And on and on it goes, through chapter 8, the ending of which we don't wish to spoil for the dedicated reader, also promising that the following week, it would present the first thrilling chapter of a new serial of "love aflame in the jungle", "Nature Boy's Lost Treasure", which it would also indite.
Try to keep that one down to maybe three chapters, as it becomes too complicated after that. This, after all, is the television age, when stories are begun, reach their climax, and have their dénouement, followed by the credits, all within the course of a half hour or an hour, with 5 to 10 minutes off for commercials, and without any real work required on the part of tired eyes, as often mandated by the movies, to keep track of the action and story line in the more artfully crafted works.
Drew Pearson addresses again the debate on the the censure of Senator McCarthy, indicating that it had veered toward greater divergence and more bitterness instead of more unity. Senator Francis Case of South Dakota was leading a group of Republicans wanting to appease Senator McCarthy, while another group, comprised of both Republicans and Democrats, stood amazed at the way their colleagues ignored Senator McCarthy's roughshod trampling of the rights of other Senators. That latter group included such staid members as Senators Walter George of Georgia, Matthew Neely of West Virginia, Carl Hayden of Arizona, and Theodore Green of Rhode Island, each of whom had been in the Senate for at least 25 years and had fought to protect its dignity and decorum. Moreover, they had respect for Republican Senator Arthur Watkins, who had chaired the select committee which had unanimously recommended censure, and for his judicial temperament during the proceedings, resenting the attacks on him from Senator McCarthy and his supporters.
One such source of resentment was exampled by the Catholic clergy in New York having suggested that the motivation for the censure was that Senator McCarthy was Catholic. Senator Watkins had been a bishop in the Mormon Church and his Democratic colleagues bitterly deplored the implication that there was any motivation involved based on religious prejudice. Another source of the resentment was that Senator McCarthy had accused members of the select committee of being "handmaidens of Communism" for their recommendation of censure, when they had been chosen to do their duty on behalf of the entire Senate, and so regarded Senator McCarthy's charge as being condemnatory of all Senators.
Thus, while Senator Case was debating minor points regarding the actual charges against Senator McCarthy, other Senators were strongly supportive of Senator Watkins in his view that Senator McCarthy was being contemnacious of the entire Senate during the course of the debate on the censure, based on his statements such as the "handmaidens" comment. The latter group of Senators also pointed to the fact that there had been 46 original charges brought against Senator McCarthy by Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Wayne Morse of Oregon, and that the select committee had gone to great lengths to boil down the charges to only three counts.
Senator Charles Potter of Michigan had told his Republican colleagues privately that the election results showed that they must humanize the Republican Party, urging party leaders to "get next to the people".
The key staff job in the Federal Communications Commission had been given to a man who hardly knew a microphone from an egg beater, John Fitzgerald.
Senator McCarthy had become such a political liability to the Republicans that he had almost been deserted by one of his closest friends, Senator John Butler of Maryland, whom he had helped to elect in 1950 over incumbent Senator Millard Tydings. Senator Butler had provided only a lukewarm speech in defense of his friend during the censure debate, mindful of his needing re-election two years hence.
The two Republican Senators of Maine, Margaret Chase Smith and Frederick Payne, were not happy with the way the White House ignored their recommendations of several Maine Republicans for important jobs, while friends of Attorney General Herbert Brownell appeared to obtain the appointments in the end.
Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, who had spent almost a year holding one-sided hearings to prove that the Rockefeller Foundation, B'nai B'rith and the Ford Foundation were subversive, now could not obtain enough signatures to issue a 500-page report attacking those groups, one reason being that Congressman Angier Goodwin of Massachusetts, who had supported Mr. Reese in smearing the foundations, had been defeated for re-election, as many of his constituents had been members of the foundations being attacked.
The legal fraternity was investigating charges that the Government had used wiretapping to eavesdrop on phone calls between lawyers and clients, which were considered absolutely privileged.
Marquis Childs, in the fourth and last of a series of columns on Owen Lattimore, the former State Department adviser on the Far East, currently under indictment for perjury for denying before a Senate Internal Security subcommittee, engaged primarily in investigation of the Institute of Pacific Relations, that he had any sympathies with or belief in the Communist Party, relates in this piece of Mr. Lattimore's publishers in London having been investigated by Scotland Yard at the behest of the U.S. Embassy. The Manchester Guardian, in an editorial, had criticized the Embassy for "trying to turn Scotland Yard into a branch of the Republican campaign organization." In the same edition, the newspaper had printed one of Mr. Lattimore's 1947 articles, regarding the relationship between Communist China and Russia, an article cited four times by the second indictment of Mr. Lattimore, based on his alleged perjury in denying he was a "promoter" of Communist interests and a "follower" of the Communist line.
Mr. Childs provides the personal history of Mr. Lattimore, 54, who had spent much of his life in China, first in business and then as a writer and finally as a scholar studying the remote and inaccessible parts of China, such as Inner and Outer Mongolia. He had become the director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins, and in 1941-42 had been the political adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. During the war and immediately afterward, he had become involved in the controversy regarding U.S. policy toward China, expressing the view that corruption and feudal landlordism among those around Chiang would cause the downfall of the Nationalists to the Communists, who were winning the allegiance of the masses through land reform.
The Internal Security Committee had thoroughly reviewed his prolific writings on the subject of China, appearing in numerous mainstream publications and in scholarly journals, with an eye toward trying to ferret out a pro-Communist line within those writings. The Committee had tried to show Communist infiltration of the Institute of Pacific Affairs, with which Mr. Lattimore had become deeply involved. But there had never been adduced any evidence showing directly that Mr. Lattimore was linked to the Communist Party or any front organization, or that he was a Communist espionage agent, as Senator McCarthy had proclaimed in 1950.
From his writings, Mr. Lattimore had selected a series of excerpts to show that he had praised Chiang and urged a policy of splitting China from Russian influence.
Mr. Childs suggests that the case against Mr. Lattimore asked the jury to pass on questions of policy which even the experts hotly contested, such as those regarding Outer Mongolia.
Historian Arnold Toynbee and other distinguished scholars had praised Mr. Lattimore's scholarship, though some experts appearing before the Committee had questioned his scholarship credentials. A defense fund had been raised for Mr. Lattimore, led by a colleague at Johns Hopkins, accumulating $40,000 in small contributions from teachers and scholars all over the country.
The late Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, who had chaired the investigation by the Internal Security Committee when Democrats controlled the Senate, had, while on the Judiciary Committee, in passing on the confirmation of two Attorneys General, extracted from them a pledge to prosecute Mr. Lattimore.
Many editorials had questioned, therefore, in the wake of the challenge to U.S. District Court Judge Luther Youngdahl by the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the current case against Mr. Lattimore, based on the Judge's alleged bias in favor of the defendant, whether the pattern involved legislative interference with the executive branch, which had now extended to interference with the independence of the Federal judiciary in making decisions in a case, the alleged bias having stemmed solely from the Judge's prior order dismissing the principal counts of the first indictment for their vagueness and infringement of the First Amendment. Mr. Childs concludes that therefore the outcome of the case might have a great deal to do with American freedoms at home.
Albert Clark, writing in the Wall Street Journal, suggests that the Democrats, to take control of both houses of Congress in January, would be moving toward the political left, as evidenced by several indicators, not only in the midterm elections, but in trends also among Republicans, tending toward a moderate philosophy, embracing much of the New Deal idea that the prosperity of the citizenry was the responsibility of the Federal Government. One political observer, it recounts, had suggested that there was no longer a conservative party as it had been known a few years earlier.
Until the advent of the New Deal, the Democrats had been a moderate party, perhaps more conservative than the present Republican Party, after which President Roosevelt had led a political revolution during the 1930's. Republicans, along with many conservative Democrats, had resisted many of the reforms thus sought, but in more recent years, the Republicans were becoming more closely aligned with the Democrats.
It was reasoned that the parties were now too close together and that if the Democrats were to move toward the right, this similarity would be even greater, meaning that the only viable option for Democrats was to shift to the left. There were signs of that shift in the gradual decline of the Southern conservative faction, which only a few years earlier had been led, in terms of economy, by Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, while at present, the number of Senators siding with him was dwindling.
Former North Carolina Governor Kerr Scott was one new Senator who had the "liberal" label, taking the place of much more conservative Senator Alton Lennon, who had a tendency during his year in the Senate to side with Senator Byrd. Another such "liberal" from the South was Senator Estes Kefauver, just re-elected to a new term, as was his colleague from Tennessee, Senator Albert Gore. Senators Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama also were considered "liberal" on everything except civil rights issues.
There was also a trend among the traditionally conservative Southerners to move closer to the middle, consistently expressing the notion that the future of the Democratic Party lay in the promotion of liberal causes. The most notable exception to that drift was the write-in campaign in South Carolina which resulted in the election of former Governor Strom Thurmond, who had led the Dixiecrat movement in 1948 in his unsuccessful attempt to defeat President Truman. But despite that political comeback, the type of Southern Democrat characterized by Senator Byrd was no longer flourishing as they once had.
Another component to the drift was that outside the South, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, with a few exceptions, had obtained new levels within the party leadership as a result of the election. For instance, the gubernatorial victory of Averell Harriman in New York placed him, as a Fair Dealer, in a strong position to help shape the national policies of the party and to pick its candidates for the presidency and vice presidency in 1956, with some conservative Democrats resigned to the notion that Adlai Stevenson would again be the party's nominee. The conservatives within the party readily admitted that they had no candidate, save perhaps someone such as Governor Allan Shivers of Texas, for the nomination in 1956. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who had in 1952 been a rallying point for those Democrats opposed to President Truman and Mr. Stevenson, was now believed to be unwilling to carry the conservative banner of the South in 1956. The liberal forces within the party had also gained Senator-elect Richard Neuberger of Oregon, replacing Republican conservative Guy Cordon. And added to those two liberals within the Democratic Party were Senators Paul Douglas of Illinois and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, both re-elected.
Mr. Clark concludes that the change in direction of the Democrats would not be sudden as it had been in the early days of the New Deal in 1933, but that it appeared to be a definite trend, albeit gradual, which would be just as real, and that the resistance to it would weaken as the Byrd coalition declined.
A letter writer indicates having read an article in the newspaper of the prior Tuesday in which it was reported that the president of the Chamber of Commerce had appeared before a dinner meeting of the Men's Club of Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church, the description of which he had appreciated as a longtime resident of the city, that among the assets listed by him were the city's splendid hospitals, which the writer believes had to have been only the white hospitals, as a 1952 report on hospitalization for black patients in Charlotte showed that some facilities were "woefully lacking". In February, 1954, a prominent Charlotte physician was quoted in the press as saying that it took just as many facilities to care for black patients as white patients on the same basis. The writer says that there was a lack of facilities for black patients, but that in October, 1953, the City Council and Mayor Philip Van Every had advised that no action would be taken on the matter until after the Supreme Court ruled on segregation in the public schools, that six months had gone by since the Supreme Court had ruled that such segregation was no longer constitutionally viable, and yet nothing had been done to remedy the disparity in the hospitals of the city or to provide integration of the facilities.
A letter writer indicates that many Southerners wanted to thank Desiree Franklin for requesting that the Daughters of the Confederacy be permitted to use their influence against the "derogatory literature written about the South", and hopes that others would join them in their efforts to restore decency to literature. He finds it encouraging that Southerners were protesting against such "printed filth" as Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell, and "immoral and indecent books" such as Strange Fruit and Killers of the Dream, both by Lillian Smith, and Whisper My Name, by former News editor and associate editor Burke Davis. He believes that those books had combined to "create a national impression that those of us in Dixie are scarcely one step ahead of the Neanderthal Man." He thinks they needed a modern version of Thomas Dixon or Thomas Nelson Page to author Southern stories whose thought was based upon "the abundance of decency, goodness and culture that the South possesses."
In other words, you want to retreat into the obscurantism which characterized the Southern "literature" of the latter 19th and early 20th Centuries, to recapture your fantasies of never-never land, poised, enraptured, much as W. J. Cash had put it in The Mind of the South: "Perpetually suspended in the great haze of memory, it hung, as it were, poised, somewhere between earth and sky, colossal, shining, and incomparably lovely—a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land wherein at last everybody who had ever laid claim to the title of planter would be metamorphosed with swift precision, beyond any lingering shade of doubt, into the breathing image of Marse Chan and Squire Effingham, and wherein life would move always in stately and noble measure through scenery out of Watteau."
By the way, it is ultimately rather insulting and to boot bad manners to exclude from your examples of Southern heretical literati such a perfect exponent among them as W. J. Cash. But, of course, that would have to presume that you have an ability to read beyond about a fourth-grade level, to appreciate fully his book and realize that it was aimed at people such as yourself, hoping, through the devices of Socratic irony and persona, as in a novel or short story, to elevate your view out of the treacle into which it has been Senator Sorghum-steeped through a sentimental haze, not confirm it.
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