The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 27, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Geneva, the U.S. had reportedly, according to authoritative sources at the peace conference, determined this date to stand firm against any settlement of the Indo-China war which would partition territory of the three Associated States, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The nine delegations, including the Vietminh, who were meeting on that portion of the conference, were preparing to meet again in secret session to consider the problem of defining assembly areas into which the military forces of the Communist and non-Communist sides would be regrouped after a cease-fire. Vietnamese sources said that the proposals submitted the previous day by the Vietminh would definitely result in the partition of Viet Nam and would be strongly opposed therefore by the Vietnamese. Informed sources said that the U.S. had not yet taken a definite position on the Vietminh proposals, but that the first reaction by the U.S. delegation had been that the proposals went much further than the U.S. was prepared to go. French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault was reported to be ready to oppose the zoning plan outlined by the Vietminh deputy premier, Pham Van Dong, that France wanted a series of scattered assembly areas rather than a consolidated area which could result in a permanent division of Indo-China. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had proposed that military representatives of the two military commands meet in Geneva immediately to work out the lines of the proposed assembly areas. An unidentified French general reportedly rushed to Geneva from Indo-China to represent the French Union forces, should such talks be authorized. The urgency of the situation had been stressed by M. Bidault having returned from Paris to Geneva with orders to break off discussions should the conference fail to produce results soon. A spokesman for the French Cabinet said that the Foreign Minister had reported that the Geneva conference should take a decisive turn within about eight to ten days.
Authoritative sources hinted that the U.S. might be willing to enter direct talks with the Chinese Communists at Geneva for release of about 71 Americans still held prisoner in China, that such negotiations would be strictly up to the State Department. Revised figures showed 35 American civilians imprisoned in Communist China, and at least 18 others who had sought permission to leave but had been refused. About 18 U.S. airmen shot down during the Korean War were also still held captive. The imprisoned civilians included news correspondents Richard Applegate of Oregon and Donald Dixon of New York, among others, including several missionaries. The estimated number was raised from 32 to 35 when reports were received recently that three additional priests were under arrest.
From Panama it was reported that tensions had increased in Central America this date as U.S. customs inspectors at the Atlantic mouth of the Panama Canal rifled through the cargo of a French freighter, presumably in search of contraband arms being shipped from Communist sources to Guatemala, the French freighter having Guatemala as one of its ports of call. The agent stated that there were no arms or contraband found aboard, that the ship had carried only general cargo. State Department officials said that the ship had been searched to determine whether customs regulations had been violated and that there was no suspicion regarding the French line itself, that both the line and the French Government cooperated with the inspection. U.S. authorities had received information indicating that there might be more than five boxes of "sporting arms" aboard. Reports had reached Washington late the previous week that two additional shipments of Communist arms were en route to Guatemala, after it had already received ten million dollars worth of arms from Stettin in Poland. Reports from Guatemala said that a mystery plane had dropped leaflets the previous night which called for Guatemalans to fight "Communist oppression". In Honduras, word had come that several planes had arrived with arms sent to that country under terms of U.S. defense agreements, and it had been reported that the U.S. was rushing military equipment to neighboring Nicaragua as well. The Air Force announced in Washington that three B-36 bombers would make a demonstration flight over Nicaragua this date at the request of the Nicaraguan Government.
At Quonset Point, R.I., eyewitnesses to the disaster aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Bennington, on which two explosions had occurred the previous morning during a routine training mission 75 miles offshore, resulting in the deaths of at least 91 men and injuring 201, said that the catapult room of the ship might become the object of investigation after the Navy board of inquiry met for the first time this date. The previous October, 37 men had died in an explosion on the carrier U.S.S. Leyte while it was being overhauled in Boston, an explosion which the Navy board of inquiry had concluded resulted from the accidental ignition of oil in a catapult tube. The captain of the Bennington said that the damage had occurred below the third deck, to the number one fire room, the port catapult room and the living quarters of the general service crew. He said that they had just completed launching 20 jets and were standing by to launch 40 propeller-driven planes from the deck when he spotted a puff of smoke coming from the starboard side of the flight deck, followed by a minor explosion, the shock of which had been felt only in the forward quarters, followed by a major explosion which caused the ship to shake. Scores of sailors and airmen were trapped in their sleeping quarters and many had suffocated while others perished in the flames. Secretary of the Navy Charles Thomas and the captain said that there was no indication of sabotage. Four squadrons of about 130 men each, making up Air Task Group 181, based at the Oceana Naval Air Station near Norfolk, had been aboard at the time of the explosions, having boarded the ship the previous weekend.
The Navy had announced the names of seven persons from the Carolinas who were among the known dead aboard the aircraft carrier. The names are listed, along with those from the Carolinas who were among the critically injured.
A dozen new defense plant projects, worth more than 20 million dollars, were being built in "distressed" cities through the tax benefit program of the Office of Defense Mobilization, which, when completed, would supply 1,639 jobs in ten of the cities on the ODM's list of "areas of chronic labor surplus". Some members of Congress had recently argued that the Government should do more. The Wright Machine Co., a $106,000 project to produce aircraft parts in Durham, N.C., was employing 16 persons, and receiving a 75 percent write-off rather than the usual 65 percent, and a motor freight terminal in Durham, constructed at a cost of $58,000, was employing 15 persons and receiving a write-off of 70 percent, instead of the usual 60 percent.
In Nairobi, Kenya, Mau Mau terrorists were reported the previous night to have burned a hotel where Princess Elizabeth had received word in February, 1952 that her father, King George VI, had died, making her Queen.
In Tunis, terrorists had killed five French farmers the previous night in the North African French protectorate, with officials stating that the killings had taken place in western Tunisia, an area plagued by unrest since 1952 when violent pro-independence rioting had erupted.
In the 22nd day of hearings before the Senate Investigations subcommittee regarding the dispute between the Army and Senator McCarthy, usual chief counsel for the subcommittee Roy Cohn testified that Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens and Army general counsel John G. Adams had sought to block the subcommittee's probe aimed at ferreting out Communists within the Army, quoting Mr. Adams as having said, soon after being hired as general counsel for the Army the previous October 1, that it would be "a feather in his cap" if no subcommittee hearings on the matter were held and that it would "solidify his job" if he could persuade the subcommittee not to hold public or executive session hearings on the alleged subversive activities at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. He said that it was true that the Army officials had sought to discredit the subcommittee, but that Mr. Adams had made no direct requests that the subcommittee drop its investigation, while making it clear that it would be welcome news if the subcommittee would turn the inquiry over to the Army. Mr. Cohn said that he did not favor that approach, partly because a "thoroughly alarming" security situation at the secret radar laboratories at Fort Monmouth had existed for a long time and that the Army had done nothing about it despite repeated FBI warnings during a period of years. He said further that at a luncheon in New York on October 13, Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams had raised the question of whether or not hearings had to be held and asked if there would not be some way to stop the hearings and let the Army handle the matter. Both Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams had stated earlier in their testimony that they had never sought to halt the investigation by the subcommittee, chaired by Senator McCarthy. Mr. Cohn said that Secretary Stevens said that he believed an unfair picture of the Army was being presented in the situation, that the Army was being "hammered", but had not stated at the luncheon anything regarding distortion of the facts. Special counsel for the subcommittee, Ray Jenkins, reviewed a charge that Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams had sought to bring about a discontinuance of the subcommittee's investigation of the alleged subversion in the Army, as contended by Senator McCarthy, with particular focus on Fort Monmouth, and Mr. Cohn agreed that it was true.
Senator Stuart Symington of the subcommittee indicated that Democrats would insist on the testimony from subcommittee staff director Francis Carr, who had been dropped as a witness by the Republican majority of the subcommittee, with Senator Symington contending that a "whitewash" had led Republicans to vote 4 to 3 to dispense with the allegations that Mr. Carr had engaged with Mr. Cohn and Senator McCarthy in seeking from the Army special privileges for Private G. David Schine, an unpaid aide of the subcommittee prior to being drafted the previous October.
Senator John McClellan of the subcommittee publicly suggested during the hearings this date that Senator McCarthy and an unnamed Army officer who had given him classified information, the 2 1/2 page purported letter from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, which Mr. Hoover stated he had never actually drafted, plus an 11-page, unsigned memorandum from the FBI from which the letter contained excerpts, had, because of the classified nature of the document, committed a crime. Senator McCarthy responded that if anyone wanted to indict him for obtaining information "exposing Communists" then they should go ahead. He again refused to disclose the name of the informant who gave him the documents, which, according to the Senator, contained a list of the names of persons involved in a spy ring at Fort Monmouth, formed by executed atomic spy Julius Rosenberg. Attorney General Herbert Brownell had ruled that the material in the memorandum should not be made public because it would injure the national interest.
Once again, as the previous day's afternoon session, the transcript of this date's hearing is not available online, the transcripts to continue on June 1.
In Raleigh, Governor William B. Umstead said this date at a press conference that the May 17 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that continued school segregation was unconstitutional, was a "clear and serious invasion of the rights of the sovereign states", that it had created a problem "which will require the calm, careful and thoughtful study of all of us." He said that because the implementing decision had been delayed until at least later in the year, with oral arguments set for the beginning of the fall term of the Court in October, no final conclusion as to the course and program the state would follow was immediately necessary. He said that he planned to attend a conference of Southern governors in Richmond on June 10, called by Governor Thomas Stanley of Virginia, and he hoped that the conference would be helpful in the "grave and difficult situation." He believed the problem was too big for one person to decide and would ask the advice of State Attorney General Harry McMullan, as well as the superintendent of public instruction, the State Board of Education, legislators and other citizens. He said that it was no time for rash statements or the proposal of "impossible schemes". He reviewed the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, indicating that the people of North Carolina had then been assured that it would not interfere with segregated schools.
But that was three years after the end of the Civil War. Don't you think society and the people of the state might have progressed just a little since that time?
The Governor also said this date that he had not yet started selecting successors to deceased Senator Clyde Hoey and State Labor commissioner Forrest Shuford, that he had been so busy since the two deaths that he had not reached a decision on the replacements. He said he had not yet met with state Democratic chairman B. Everett Jordan, future Senator, regarding when the state Democratic executive committee would meet, the committee being assigned the task of selecting nominees whose names would appear on the general election ballot in the fall special election. He said that he hoped the committee would agree with him on the appointments.
Near Philadelphia, a postman always had time to stop for a friendly chat with an 80-year old widow whose mansion was located on his route, his friendly smile having meant a lot to the lonely woman, from the time he had first begun delivering the mail to the $175,000, 15-room home in suburban Wayne eight years earlier. He had brought his wife to meet, chat with and read to the elderly woman, and in 1952, he and his wife had temporarily moved in with her to provide her care after she had suffered a heart attack. She had died earlier in the month and had left in her will the home to the postman and his wife.
In Michigan City, Ind., a man and
his wife started to purchase an automobile and wound up in jail with
a $500 jigsaw puzzle, both charged with disorderly conduct, the wife
charged with disfiguring currency. She had told police that her
husband had taken $800 which she had saved while working as a
housemaid and had gone to purchase a used car, whereupon she
followed, pleading for the money, then relented and asked to help
count it, at which point she grabbed $580 of the money and ran down the
street. When police caught up with her, she had torn the money into
bits and stuffed some of the pieces into the bosom of her dress,
causing a jail matron and four policemen to have to spend five hours
taping bits of the currency back together. That sounds like a bunch
of trumped-up nonsense, making for a good fish story
In New York, Paul Hoffman, chairman of Studebaker, and former administrator of the Marshall Plan, was named "Father of the Year" in honor of Father's Day, selected for his "rare statesmanship" and the fact that he was the father of seven children. The President would present Mr. Hoffman with the George Washington Medal at the White House on June 17. (We suppose the name of the medal derived from General Washington being "father of the country"—some suggesting, because of his many overnight stays across the early states, that it was as much literally as figuratively.) The named literary father of the year was former Ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, author of Ambassador's Report. The television father of the year was Herb Shriner. The sports father of the year was golfer Sam Snead. The husband and wife team of the year were Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, and the screen father of the year was cowboy star Roy Rogers, while the radio father of the year was commentator Lowell Thomas.
On the editorial page, "Of This 'Me-Tooism', Let's Have More" indicates that in several recent newspaper and radio advertisements, State Senator Fred McIntyre from Mecklenburg County had implied that his chief opponent for the Democratic nomination, Jack Blythe, had been a "me-too" State Senator when he had served in 1949. It indicates that it was not quite sure what a "me-too" Senator was, that perhaps Mr. McIntyre was seeking to leave the impression that Mr. Blythe had let himself be pushed around by the four House members from the Mecklenburg delegation to the General Assembly.
It indicates that the "unit rule" had served Mecklenburg County well before Mr. McIntyre had announced early in the 1953 General Assembly session that he would use his Senatorial prerogative to "veto" any local legislation which did not have his approval. Local attorney Robert Lassiter, Jr., had been a strong and effective member of the Mecklenburg delegation to the State House in the 1949 and 1951 sessions, and had made a speech during the week on behalf of Mr. Blythe, relating in detail how the "unit rule" worked, from which it quotes.
It indicates that the "veto" by Senator McIntyre, which he had employed so frequently in 1953, worked both ways, that if a Senator became arbitrary and dictatorial, he might find that the State House members would elect to exercise their "veto" as well. To be effective in statewide legislative battles and to enact the local legislation which such a large county so desperately needed, the Mecklenburg delegation, it ventures, had to find a way to work in harmony, the most vital issue in the present State Senatorial contest. It finds that the reasonableness and cooperation demonstrated by former State Senator Blythe, established in 1949, compared with that of Senator McIntyre's record of "obstinacy and obstructionism" in 1953, gave the voters a clear choice in the primary.
You recall what "me-tooism" meant, at least on the national stage, in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections, in which Governor Dewey was often accused by fellow Republicans of the conservative stripe of that malady, that is going along with the New Deal and Fair Deal in many respects, in some respects even outdoing the Democratic Administrations.
"Chamber of Commerce Aims High" indicates there were a good many reasons why the Chamber of Commerce membership campaign, which was starting this date, should go over the top, providing some of those reasons, that the Chamber was digging into community problems and bringing its considerable influence to bear on their proper solution, and so, with great enthusiasm, it was glad to help launch the 1954 membership campaign.
We find, however, notably absent any program toward betterment of race relations in the community as one of those projects. Maybe, they will eventually get around to it. The night is young.
"Goodbye to a Pair of Old Topics" indicates that former Charlotte Mayor, Victor Shaw, had told friends at one time that he never knew until he had become Mayor just how long it took to get things done in government. His successor, current Mayor Philip Van Every, had not been in office very long before he began learning that lesson.
It finds that progress appeared to occur painfully slowly also to some observers on the sidelines. It cites as an instance the City Council having finally gotten around the previous day to approving two proposals which had been in the works for a long time, the banning of parking on Graham Street and the adoption of a job classification system. The City traffic engineer, Herman Hoose, had started working on the Graham Street plan around 1950, just after completion of a survey of signal equipment for the downtown area. But political pressures from the affected area had been too great, causing the Council to bow to them repeatedly, until finally the increase in traffic on Graham had left the Council with no alternative but to act. The need for a job classification program for municipal employees had been discussed in the Charlotte newspapers for years, leading to a special committee from the Chamber of Commerce asking the Council to adopt the plan in September, 1952, whereupon the Council authorized the preparation of such a plan in February, 1953, completed weeks earlier, and finally adopted during the week.
It confesses to mixed emotions at the action by the Council, indicating satisfaction that the two overdue improvements had been made, but with some regret that the column would have to say goodbye to such old and familiar topics.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Of Southern Cooking and She-Crab", indicates that the uncivil war on Southern cooking was still in progress, with the latest battle having been started by a Yankee broadcaster, Henry Morgan, who took pot shots at okra, grits, etc. Mrs. Herman Talmadge of Georgia had challenged him to an old-time Southern dinner, but Mr. Morgan had declined.
The newspapers then got in on the act, and a Georgia official was quoted as saying that Mr. Morgan's remarks constituted "an insult to Southern womanhood". The Baltimore Sun had suggested that a duel take place between "hominy and ham hocks at 20 paces". The Atlanta Journal produced recipes for Southern fried chicken, which included soaking the chicken in milk, dipping it in buttermilk treated with salt and pepper, cooking it slowly in a shallow pan so that the meat would never be covered with grease, and then serving it with hot biscuits and gravy—no doubt, not foreseeing that one Atlantan, a decade hence, would be serving up his fried chicken with ax-handles as a side dish for would-be black patrons, barred from his little two-bit restaurant. But we digress…
It indicates that it sounded okay, that in contrast to the bad fried chicken one usually got, it would probably be "the good you hardly ever get". According to Mr. Morgan, okra was something Southerners ate "only because the pigs turn it down"—a sentiment with which we wholly concur, finding the prospect of broiled lizards steamed in slime from a slug about as appealing. It indicates that it was not a fan of okra, but believed it went very well in gumbo, for instance, but indicating it would hate to be ambushed in a mess of it on a dark night.
It says that it could take or leave
grits, viewing it as a bland, neutral kind of food which called for
something sharp, such as country ham
It indicates that Southern cooking was like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, that when it was good, it was very, very good, but when it was bad, it was horrid. A woman from High Point had brought to the writer recently some of the famous "she-crab soup" from Middleton Plantation in Charleston, and the writer had put some sherry wine in it and practically inhaled it, finding it wonderful. She had said that the donation was in appreciation of some of the editorials of the newspaper, and the writer indicates that they had not realized they had written anything that good. It provides it as an illustration of good Southern cooking, which had "an aristocratic rarity about it", but that it did not often find its way to roadside lunch stands or even hotel dining rooms.
We have to beg to differ on the
latter locus, as, in our experience many years ago, the old hotel
dining rooms across the Southern landscape often provided the very
last stand for the best of old Southern cooking. But we have to
qualify that by indicating that we have no very good memory of how
things were in 1954, basing our memories on roughly 1957 forward,
through about 1963, when all of those old hotels were gradually
giving way to the modern motor inns, where you got the 28 flavors
Pete Ivey of the Winston-Salem Journal tells of receiving a postcard telling him he was a "friend of Grandfather Mountain", signed by its owner Hugh Morton, and that the card would entitle him to free admission to pass over the bridge to the mountain at any time he would present it to the man at the toll road gate. He says that he had trouble being a friend to a mountain, that he had nothing against it, or any hill or rill, for its physiognomy but that he would need to get to know the mountain better before declaring it a friend, that if he liked someone, he would do anything for the person, but if he did not, "look out", that his feeling about Grandfather Mountain therefore would have to be determined initially at arm's length, that it should not become familiar, that he first wanted to rub shoulders a bit before committing to it as an irrevocable pal.
That is getting mighty involved with the mountain, kind of strange, like riding into Omaha on a horse, and we care not to examine the topic further.
Drew Pearson indicates that the huge Senate caucus room, where the Army-McCarthy hearings were taking place, had been the stage for another hearing the previous week at which the television cameras were absent, yet perhaps far more important to the average person than the dispute between Senator McCarthy and the Army. The future of the television industry was at stake before a Senate subcommittee chaired by Senator Charles Potter of Michigan, investigating the battle for control of television channels and advertising. The subcommittee was looking for answers to an alarming state of monopoly and restraint of trade affecting the VHF standard bandwidth, as contrasted with the seldom used UHF bandwidth, though the latter provided more channels and better reception. The ABC and DuMont networks, which had provided the primary television coverage of the Army-McCarthy hearings as a public service, were fighting for survival against the wealthier, more powerful NBC and CBS networks. The latter two had not participated in the broadcast of the McCarthy hearings because they encroached on valuable advertising revenue. ABC and DuMont, by contrast, did not have so much advertising to be disrupted. Unless Congress or the Justice Department, or the "weak-kneed" FCC did something about the monopoly, both ABC and DuMont would eventually fail, as neither could cope with the competition from CBS and NBC with their hit programs on weeknights and Sundays, sponsored by Ford, RCA, G.M., G.E., Colgate-Palmolive, Standard Oil, Benrus Watches, Philip Morris, Chesterfield, Lucky Strike, and Camel cigarettes, Lipton Tea and other major advertisers.
The programming favoritism by the powerful commercial sponsors was even tougher on the UHF stations, whose advertising market was limited by the fact that home viewers required special receiving sets to obtain the UHF frequencies, which did not appeal to the large advertisers. There were presently 250 VHF stations on the air, compared with 127 UHF stations. Most of the latter were either losing money or struggling to break even, while others with network affiliations in certain areas not covered by VHF stations were making a little money, after others had already succumbed economically.
The FCC had encouraged the construction of UHF stations because they were capable of improved reception and because the frequency spectrum would accommodate more channels than VHF transmitters. The FCC had estimated that the spectrum was capable of more than 1,300 UHF station assignments, against a national maximum of about 500 VHF stations. While VHF stations were limited in a given market to 12 channels, UHF stations could operate across 70 channels, from channels 14 through 83. (If we recall correctly, channel 13, eventually, by around 1961, situated next to the "U" which substituted for "1", was reserved for civil defense broadcasting in case of the Big One—which you could then watch on television until you heard the Big Buzz, meaning you had seconds to live.) But after encouraging the investment of private capital in UHF stations, the FCC had not done anything to keep UHF stations in business. In fact, the FCC appeared to have made a policy of discriminating against UHF stations in cases where there had been conflicts of interest with VHF competitors. In Atlantic City, UHF station WFPG had recently been driven out of business by VHF competition from Philadelphia, 40 miles away. The FCC simply increased the power of the big Philadelphia stations, which interfered with the Atlantic City station and put WFPG out of business. A similar occurrence had taken place in St. Louis, when KACY, operating on UHF channel 14, had to shut down because it was unable to obtain network programs.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop, in their third consecutive editorial on push-button warfare—adjustable via your tv remote control, indicate that the Soviet heavy bomber program was approximately two years ahead of the scheduled forecast for it by U.S. military intelligence, that because of that unforeseen success, the air-atomic striking power of the Soviets, now reinforced with hydrogen bombs, might soon be fairly close to catching up with the air-atomic striking power of the U.S. Approximately two years down the line, the U.S. could be gravely threatened by the Soviet Strategic Air Army, as much so as were the Soviets presently threatened by the U.S. Strategic Air Command.
That bleak prospect, combined with the equally bleak prospect in the field of intercontinental guided missiles, could be expected to have far-reaching effects on U.S. and free world defense planning and policy.
The world was aware of only one fact
regarding the Soviet airstrike capability, coming in the recent May Day
They hasten to indicate that it did not mean that all of the Soviet strategic air problems were being solved. The Tupolev-37, and perhaps the Tupolev-39, would need midair refueling to reach U.S. targets, just as the B-47s would need such refueling to reach Soviet targets, and the Soviets were not as practiced at refueling as were U.S. airmen. There was also a question regarding the efficiency of Soviet advanced air bases.
But on the other hand, the unexpected appearance of the Tupolevs meant that the U.S. had made another foolishly optimistic miscalculation, very similar to that which had been exposed by the Soviet atomic tests in August, 1949, made public the following month. With the increase in the stocks of atomic and hydrogen bombs on both sides, the power to deliver the weapons became more vital than the weapons themselves, and the Soviets would shortly have far more delivery power than U.S. planners had anticipated.
Two years had passed since the Lincoln Project had first rendered its report outlining an effective U.S. air defense for the atomic age, and nearly a year since the Bull Report had issued from a Presidential committee which was supposed to lay forth the Eisenhower Administration policy in the area. More money was presently being spent on air defense, presently at the rate of about five billion dollars per year, but the essential things were not being done, as there was no promise yet of an adequate warning system or an adequate interception system for an adequate command system. The state of work on warning systems was illustrative of the state of the whole problem. For budgetary and other reasons, the Administration had decided the previous summer to begin by trying to establish an intermediate warning line, the so-called McGill Line, crossing Canada at the 57th parallel. Negotiations for establishment of that intermediate warning line had been carried on with the Canadians for many months, but there were difficulties regarding the sending of U.S. personnel to man the radar equipment and about whether the equipment should be produced in the U.S. or in Canada, among other such problems.
Don't worry. The Soviets may have
their Tupolevs, but the U.S. soon will have on the scene its new
secret weapon out of Tupelo. It's alright, mama
Marquis Childs, in Geneva, indicates that the International Labor Organization had been created in 1919 under the Versailles Treaty, largely the brainchild of Samuel Gompers, founder of the AFL, who had been chairman at the Versailles conference of the committee which had proposed the ILO. When World War II had begun in September, 1939, ending for all intents and purposes the old League of Nations, the ILO was the only surviving organization of it. Just before the outbreak of the war, making travel across boundaries in Europe impossible, 45 of the top personnel of the ILO had escaped to Canada and set up its offices, which had functioned there until 1945 at the end of the war. At that point in San Francisco, the League was officially liquidated in favor of the U.N., and over strong objections from Russia, the ILO survived among the organizations which had operated under the auspices of the League.
In the postwar era, with so much stress on technical assistance to underdeveloped nations, the ILO had greatly expanded its work in the field of productivity. Production centers had either been set up or were being set up in India, Egypt, Libya and Brazil. In other parts of the world, the ILO was helping to cope with serious special problems, in Latin America, concentrating for the most part on Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico, where about 12 million Indians had no place in the civilization around them. The ILO was doing all of the technical work for the European coal and steel pooling arrangement, preparing the treaties which would make it possible for labor to move from one country to another and from one social security system to another. The ILO had made the only official and thoroughly documented report on slave labor, with a great deal of the report devoted to the vast slave labor camps in the Soviet Union.
It raised the question as to why Russia would suddenly decide to join the ILO, with two theories advanced by observers of the matter, the first being that it was part of the new post-Stalin era in Russia, another inexpensive gesture to demonstrate a professed desire for peaceful coexistence with the non-Communist world, and the other theory, probably closer to the truth, being that the Soviets had come into the ILO to break up a useful international body which demonstrated how practical and effective cooperation could be at certain levels. Using familiar divisive tactics, the Soviets within ILO could do great harm, including perhaps even splitting the organization.
A letter writer, responding to a letter writer who had prayed for people to stop integration, states that until reading that letter, she had been inspired by that particular letter writer, whom she knew as a kind and Christian-hearted person, but that after reading her previous letter, was now ashamed of her, believing that she had no love of God in her heart or she would never have written such a "shameful letter". She concludes that the previous writer could not judge what her grandchild wanted to do and that the grandchild should be left to decide whether he or she wanted to attend integrated schools.
Amen. You might impart to her that the point of integration was not to go to school and have sex, with Biblical knowledge exchange, leading to all that "race mixin'" down 'ere. The previous writer may have had too many memories of the Scopes trial out in Tennessee 29 years earlier, when Mr. Bryan championed the cause against the notion of the ascent of man from the apes. Soon enough, the apes would be showing the way, ultimately, to the moon. How can you deny it, with so much erection going on at the gantry, revolving around the race to perfect the intercontinental ballistic missiles? But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
A letter writer from Pittsboro indicates that according to the reactions which he had read in the press to the Brown decision of May 17, "the peak of the sentimental reasoning of the court in its recent desegregation decree" was that separation of black children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race caused self-perceptions of inferiority regarding their status in the community, which could affect their minds and hearts in a way unlikely ever to be undone. He finds that Chief Justice Earl Warren—apparently making the mistake of assuming, as with the moronic "impeach Earl Warren" advocates in years to come, that only he had been responsible for the decision on an unanimous Court—, had not been thinking through that phase of the subject which he was trying to develop, "inferiority complexes resulting from disparities, be they differences of race, color or otherwise." He finds that at present in the white schools, there were complex-producing disparities in the normal curricular aspects of school life, such as disparity in dress, inability to pay for lunches or the cost of class trips, to mention a few of the differentiating barriers which were calculated "to affect the heart and mind in a way unlikely ever to be undone." He thinks the Court had missed the boat in that line of reasoning, as there had always been and always would be complex-producing disparities at all levels in life. "Even amalgamation of the races and reduction of color to a dark brown gravy complexion would not eliminate disparities likely to produce inferiority complexes." He fears that something much worse had been created and that it would be a long time before it would become appreciably better, that mankind had, for the most part, made lasting progress "by the evolutionary, not revolutionary, method of development". He finds the matter academic to most of the nation, but that to the South, it was a part of its life and that the problem had to be lived with and solved in peace, he prays.
You appear to be another person who has a problem understanding the proper definition of "integration", that it does not mean necessarily genetic integration but only social integration, to make for a better and more integrated society moving forward, achieving much more closely the original concept of the Founders, equal opportunity and justice for all. There were no exceptions provided. Indeed, Mr. Jefferson hated slavery and, as he had during the drafting of his Declaration, advocated its abolition until the end of his life, on July 4, 1826, the same day, by spiritual coincidence, on which John Adams died in Boston, a single fact which any true American should never forget. Not everything is susceptible to scientific and rational explanation.
A letter writer says that he had read some of the insulting things about both races being mixed in the schools, brought out by other letter writers, one of whom had said that she would never let her grandchild go to school with black students. "A person who thinks like that is not intelligent enough to go to school with a Negro." He says that if a black person felt that way, that person would not let anyone know it but other black people. He was certain that blacks did not feel that way and that if the older people, among whom he counts himself, were to let the young people decide, they would get along fine in school. He indicates that most white children were wet-nursed from infancy to youth by black maids, that it was not the young people who disliked black people, but the older ones. He finds that the white people paid the black people to spread the bed, bake the bread, give the baby a bath while they were gone all day, and that when the children came home from school or played outdoors, the maids fixed their lunch because "you white mothers played bridge all day". He indicates that the hired blacks of the household did all the washing and ironing and yet, rather than see their kids together with white children, such persons as the previous letter writer hoped that the "school burns down and they teach outdoors."
He hit the nail right on the head. His name is, appropriately enough, Willie Rush.
A letter writer from Kings Mountain congratulates a previous letter writer who had urged fighting the "so-called" Supreme Court decision, as having appeared in the previous Thursday edition of the newspaper.
We'll see you up at Appomattox Courthouse when the thing which you belabor is finally over.
Now you see why we bother to
summarize, sometimes quite in detail, letters to the editor, as they
sometimes provide the most colorful content on a given day's
editorial page or in the newspaper at large, most of which is, of
course, advertising, either directly or indirectly. And, we hand it
to The News, that it never pulled punches or left off opinions
in the letters column simply because the topics were controversial or
likely to offend. Such free expression of ideas is the only way to
progress in a true democracy. The only thing they did not allow was
language stronger than what was needed to express the opinion, so
that "you white mothers
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