The Charlotte News
Monday, May 31, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Geneva at the Indo-China portion of the peace conference, the Vietminh hinted at a press conference this date that the peace conference would have to agree in principle on a political settlement before a cease-fire could be accepted. France had insisted that a cease-fire precede discussion of political issues. The Vietminh spokesman said that Vietminh military representatives would arrive in Geneva within the ensuing few days to begin direct talks with representatives of the French Union forces regarding zones of assembly for the regrouping of the rival forces after a cease-fire. The nine-party conference entered another secret session this date.
From Hanoi, it was reported that the French high command had strengthened the Red River Delta defenses this date after receiving orders from Paris to defend the entire strategic area. The command announced that the Vietminh had agreed to free 27 French medical personnel who had been captured on May 7 at the fall of the French fortress at Dien Bien Phu. The French estimated that if the Vietminh did not attack within the ensuing two or three weeks, chances were that they would not stage any major offensive before the following October, as the rebels would find it almost impossible to launch an all-out assault in July and August because of the heavy monsoon rains.
It was reported from Karachi in Pakistan that troops had jailed about 150 persons in troubled East Pakistan this date, in the wake of Karachi's ouster of the provincial Government for "disloyalty". One of the 14 members of the former provincial Cabinet was among those arrested, as was a member of the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly. Official sources said another member of the Cabinet was also likely to be arrested soon. Official censorship blacked out further news. Bitter differences had arisen between the divided sections of the country, which had come to a head when the Administration had been ordered by the Governor General ousted.
Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, one of the authors of the Congressional Reorganization Act, disputed, during a television interview this date, Senator McCarthy's claim that the Act supported his contention that the Administration was required to turn over secret information from Government workers, despite a Presidential order to the contrary. Senator Monroney also said that Senator McCarthy had been "usurping" the prerogatives of other Congressional committees by invading their fields. There was no immediate response from Senator McCarthy, who was vacationing during the Memorial Day weekend. The hearings in the dispute between Senator McCarthy and the Army, in recess since Friday afternoon, would continue the following day.
The President planned to lay a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attend Memorial Day services this date in Arlington National Cemetery Amphitheater. The Army would fire a 21-gun salute for the President when he arrived at the cemetery. Later in the day, he had plans to fly to New York to speak at the bicentennial ceremonies of Columbia University, of which he had been president prior to assuming duties in 1951 as NATO supreme commander.
Two tornadoes cut a 30-mile swath across northeast Nebraska the previous night, killing four children and injuring at least 18 other persons, about ten miles southeast of the town of Norfolk, about 130 miles northwest of Omaha.
Thus far, during the Memorial Day weekend, traffic fatalities had accounted for 258 deaths, ahead of the daily average for the year thus far, 88. In other accidents, 51 persons had drowned and 41 died from miscellaneous causes, including the four children in Nebraska.
In Fairbanks, Alaska, a rescue team of eight expert mountain climbers had side-stepped their way down the ice-covered sides of Mount McKinley this date, carrying an injured soldier from Brooklyn strapped tightly to a sled, after his hip had been broken on May 16 in a 1,000-foot fall which had killed his companion. He had been left in an improvised tent on May 23 by two other climbers who had survived the fall, and was discovered the previous morning by two of the searchers who had hurried along, outdistancing the others, reporting that the soldier was alive and well. The rescue party carried the stretcher to lower altitudes where helicopters would be able to pick up the injured climber.
From Raleigh, it was reported that former Governor Kerr Scott, who had won Saturday's Democratic primary for the Senate race against interim Senator Alton Lennon, had been strongly supported in rural areas, where many roads had been paved while he had been Governor. The issue of desegregation of public schools had also played a major role in the latter stages of the campaign, as indicated in the Friday and Saturday editions of the front page, with a reprinted advertisement from the Winston-Salem Journal, which feigned support of the Governor for the Senate, praising him for having appointed a black college president to the State Board of Education, put out at the behest of Winston-Salem Mayor Marshall Kurfees, a supporter of Senator Lennon, an ad which was then reprinted by the Lennon campaign and distributed in the eastern part of the state. Governor Scott had charged the Lennon campaign with a McCarthy-type technique in a "desperate" attempt to defeat him. Senator Lennon had received support from the metropolitan areas, carrying such counties as Mecklenburg, Gaston, Buncombe, the location of Asheville, and Guilford, the location of Greensboro. Governor Scott had tallied 297,000 votes to Senator Lennon's 271,600. As Governor Scott had received 51 percent of the total vote, spread among five other candidates, there would be no runoff primary necessary. Because it was a one-party state, winning the Democratic primary was the equivalent of winning the fall general election. Senator Lennon congratulated Governor Scott "on the very fine vote", but had not conceded defeat as of the previous night.
Senator Lennon was one of four interim Senators since 1932 who had been beaten in primary contests, starting with former Governor Cameron Morrison, defeated in 1932 by Robert Rice Reynolds and his old jalopy, served up, symbolically, as socio-economic contrast to the "caviar" of Senator Morrison, after serving two years following the death of Senator Lee Overman in 1930—Senator Reynolds eventually succeeding to the Hope Diamond through the suicide in 1946 of his young wife, Evalyn Walsh McLean II—, present Governor William B. Umstead, defeated by former Governor J. Melville Broughton after serving two years in 1947-48 in the Senate seat of deceased Senator Josiah W. Bailey, and Frank Graham, appointed by Governor Scott, beaten in the runoff primary by Willis Smith in 1950 after serving a little more than a year following the death of Senator Broughton at the beginning of his term in 1949. As pointed out previously, Senator Scott would also die in office, in 1958, succeeded by B. Everett Jordan, appointed by Governor Luther Hodges, to become Secretary of Commerce in the Kennedy Administration in 1961, after succeeding to the office of Governor, following the death of Governor Umstead in November, 1954, Governor Hodges having won re-election in 1956, making him, to that point in 1961, the longest serving Governor in state history, as there was a one-term limit in the office. Governor Scott's campaign manager in 1954, Terry Sanford, would be elected Governor in 1960, later Senator, in 1986, in the interim having served as president of Duke University.
In Rochester, N.Y., Rivets was a customer of the Union Trust Company, with his own bank account totaling $130, to which he paid nothing, but was able to draw enough each week to pay for his food. The deposits were made from the proceeds of a soft drink machine at the gas and electric company, rewarding Rivets for being a good watchman.
In London, England, burglars used a
side of pork to muffle the sound of their dynamite the previous day
when they blew open three safes in a grocery store and branch post
office, getting away with the equivalent of about $1,300. It would be
more sensible to use chamber music
On the editorial page, "Lennon Did Surprisingly Well" indicates that Senator Lennon, defeated in Saturday's primary by former Governor Scott, had, nevertheless, done surprisingly well, as the former Governor had been well-known throughout the state and had been active in state affairs for nearly 20 years, was supported by farmers and labor groups and had a substantial record of accomplishment during his single term as Governor, between 1949 and 1953. As the former Governor had predicted on Friday, he received 51 percent of the vote, having predicted 51.5 percent. Senator Lennon had received 46.5 percent.
It suggests that had Governor Umstead appointed someone in the wake of the death of Senator Willis Smith the prior June who had been better known and better qualified than Senator Lennon, the outcome might have been different. It finds that though the state had elected a Senator in former Governor Scott who was left of center, for the first time in several years, the electorate continued to provide strong support to moderate and conservative candidates, among whom it counts Senator Lennon and the late Senators Smith and Clyde Hoey, no replacement for the latter yet having been named. It finds that Senator Lennon, during his ten months in office, had proved himself to be a tireless and conscientious public servant, exerting sound judgment on many complex issues, and had come a long way in a short time. One dark spot on his record was the use of the race issue by him and his advisers during the closing days of the primary campaign. It trusts that the public's refusal to be persuaded by the "racist literature" put out at the initiation of Mayor Marshall Kurfees of Winston-Salem, as set forth in the Friday and Saturday editions of the front page, would help discourage politicians from using such "sordid tactics" in the future. (Actually, unlike the overtly racist literature put forth in the Willis Smith campaign of 1950 against Senator Graham, that literature rumored to have been directed by campaign assistant and later chief assistant to Senator Smith, Jesse Helms, the reprinted ad in question was not, of itself, "racist", in that it only praised Governor Scott for an actual appointment and was actually signed by the head of a Winston-Salem black organization, a friend of Mayor Kurfees who supported Governor Scott, the racial nature of the ad having derived from the political chicanery employed by Mayor Kurfees, a supporter of Senator Lennon, in a circuitous attempt to arouse white racial prejudice against Governor Scott.)
It indicates that Governor Scott's election to the Senate marked the beginning of a new and interesting period in the state's political history, as once again, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party would have a leader in high office, though going to Washington with little experience or grasp of foreign affairs, but with a good amount of homespun qualities, candor and common sense, which were likewise in demand in the Senate. It finds Washington needed some fresh air and it hopes that Governor Scott could "open up a few windows without tripping over the capital's fancy trappings in the process."
"A Lesson for Local Legislators" indicates that county residents who had voted the prior Saturday in the primary, in the minority as usual, had apparently been satisfied with incumbents seeking re-election, with the exception of three members of the General Assembly. It proceeds to list the successful candidates for various local and state offices. County residents had voted two to one for Senator Lennon over the victorious candidate, former Governor Scott.
It suggests that the dissension within and resulting ineffectiveness of the previous delegation from the county to the Assembly had contributed to the defeat of part of it, and hopes that the lesson would be heeded by the new delegation.
"Stay South, Young Man" lists several men, prominent in the country, who had originally hailed from North Carolina, including Frank Graham, former UNC president and Senator, presently with the U.N., Lindsay Warren, recently retired Comptroller General, Gordon Gray, current president of UNC, and Thomas Morgan, retired president of Sperry Gyroscope, the latter two serving as part of the three-person Presidential committee presently reviewing the loyalty case of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.
Top journalists from the state
included newscasters Gerald Johnson and Edward R. Murrow
Whitey Lockman and Hoyt Wilhelm were Major League baseball players, and Billy Joe Patton and Johnny Palmer were among the nation's top golfers.
Billy Graham was one of the greatest evangelists of all time.
It indicates its pride in these natives of the state, but also expresses some regret that so many of the most talented persons of the state were moving elsewhere. It ventures that while in the past, it might have seemed that the state held out little future for such persons, the state was now changing industrially and agriculturally, with mechanized farming and conservation changing rural life, and factories and offices springing up in support of industry. With those improvements came cultural growth.
It acknowledges that high school and college graduates were receiving a lot of advice in the late spring, but finds it advisable to pass on a quote from a U.S. Steel executive who expressed to the graduating class of the University of Alabama that they should not, if they could, alter the time in which they lived, and that they could find no better location to work out their destiny than in the South, that the time was now, the place was here, and that they should make the most of it, with the land they loved being theirs to shape, "according to the talents God gave you and the abilities you acquire along the way."
Rather than so much of those standard canned sentiments to a graduating class, in that particular case, he would have been giving far wiser and more propitious advice to have said something like: "Look here, you sons of bitches, get off your tails, stop being stubborn asses, and thoroughly and completely integrate this institution of higher learning, and lead the way for the rest of the South—or, nine years from now, you are going to have a Federalized National Guard unit breathing down your throats, with your little bulldog-faced Governor by that time standing in the school-house door, looking like the idiot of all time, rendering your little University here the laughing stock of the country, parked somewhere, suspended in the hazy days between 1840 and 1865." He probably would not have gotten any applause, but had they followed such advice…
A piece from the Plainview (Tex.) Evening Herald, titled "The Young in Heart", indicates that a woman had written a letter to the newspaper the previous week asking how old was old for a man's mind and why it was necessary for him to retire when reaching age 65, when such persons could still serve a useful purpose in life. She had indicated that a barber in her community, who had retired from his shop, still was going from home to home cutting the hair of persons who were ill or were shut-ins. Another retired man, she said, provided transportation for the free barber. The woman had wished that there were more persons like them.
The piece indicates that it knew people like that also and that they were among the most valuable citizens. It indicates that one woman devoted many hours to collecting old clothing to be passed to the needy, and it was aware of persons in most professions whose minds were among the most alert, with outlooks as fresh as men half their age. It had come to a philosophical conclusion therefore that age truly was largely a state of mind and that if a person made up their mind that they were through being active, then they were through, but if they thought young thoughts, they could perform young and useful deeds. It hopes that was the way it would feel when it reached latter years.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senators who had meticulously looked through Senator McCarthy's strange financial situation two years earlier were now mystified that the Senator had placed himself in the position of testifying under oath in the Army-McCarthy hearings, and regarding the shoulder holster which he now wore on the Senate floor. It was the first time in recent history that a Senator had appeared in the Senate with a gun. He had no police permit to carry a gun, but the D.C. police had ignored the fact and were supplying him two bodyguards, causing him to be better protected than Vice-President Nixon. (See? We weren't kidding about the rumor of that person resembling Frank Sinatra having set up across the way from the train station in Shelby, probably being the causal agent for the last-minute decision, suddenly, of the Senator and the Vice-President not to attend the funeral of Senator Hoey in Sunset Cemetery two weeks earlier, held in the shadow of W. J. Cash's grave, after they had been slated to do so. We never have ascertained, as the reporter for the Charlotte Observer made no note of it, whether Senator Lyndon Johnson attended, as had also been previously announced.) Senators hoped that Senator McCarthy would not become as vindictive on the Senate floor as he had been when his finances had been probed. At that time, he had been invited to attend Senate subcommittee hearings on six occasions, but had chosen not to testify, instead, according to the unanimous subcommittee report, having claimed that the allegations "were a smear and that the subcommittee was dishonest and doing the work of Communists." It went on to say that between October, 1951 and April, 1952, he refused to honor the invitations of the subcommittee to testify on the ground that its members were dishonest. Yet, when witnesses had refused to testify before his committee, Senator McCarthy had denounced them, sometimes calling them "Fifth Amendment Communists".
Mr. Pearson indicates that one of the first committee assignments of the Senator had been on the Banking and Currency Committee, where he became vice-chairman on a subcommittee on housing, in which capacity he could influence housing contracts and government loans through investigations. In spring, 1948, he got the FHA director to help him prepare a brief article on housing and then tried to sell it to various magazines, but no one was interested. In October, Lustron Corp., which had been selling prefabricated houses to the Government under a 50 million dollar RFC loan, was slated for a Senate investigation by a committee on which Senator McCarthy sat. He then approached the president of Lustron during that month, according to the Senate report, and set a price of $10,000 for his manuscript on housing, to which the president of the corporation agreed, paying him, effectively, out of public funds. The committee report on his finances had questioned whether he had induced the president of the corporation to pay a fee for his manuscript by use of his position on the committee and the corporation's need for continued Government financing.
The Senate committee had also
challenged the Senator's love for Pepsi-Cola
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that the previous two weeks had produced a new trend which was worrying the White House, as the Eisenhower Administration, for the first time, was receiving bad press. The cause for worry was not that the formerly pro-Taft group of newspapers had gone from mildly critical to open vilification of the Administration, but rather that the criticism was beginning to appear in the publications and speeches of the staunchest supporters of the Administration. The Scripps-Howard newspaper chain had warned the President to provide stronger leadership "or he will be run over by an ox-cart." An editorial by John Knight, later of Knight-Ridder, had echoed that sentiment. So had Time, as had Look publisher John Cowles, the latter not criticizing the President personally, but having delivered a speech criticizing his foreign policy. In the other cases, the criticism had been directed to the President.
The reason for the change was that the Administration had tried to get through the McCarthy problem and the Indo-China crisis by luck. But its luck had not held up in either case, as was predictable. The Alsops compare the problem to cancer, that the longer the operation was postponed, the more painful and dangerous it would become—"growing on the Presidency", to coin a phrase a few years down the pike—, as was the case in each of the two prolonged crises. Another part of the reason for the criticism was, in all probability, the President's own character, that he was not a bad man and thus had trouble achieving greatness. He would not want to be a bad man and the country would not want him to be the type of unscrupulous, ruthless and Napoleonic figure which Lord Acton had in mind, when he said, "all great men are bad men"—perhaps taken a bit too seriously by the man waiting in the wings to displace the General when his health failed. The President disliked the rough and tumble of political life.
But, they find, there was a deeper cause of the sudden bad press than the recent unfavorable turn of events or the admirable traits of the President's character, which hampered him in undertaking the job of political leadership. The Administration had a tough time explaining itself to the public, as much so as had former Secretary of State Acheson. Despite having many television experts around, they persisted in making the same mistakes which had gotten Mr. Acheson into trouble.
Marquis Childs, in Paris, asks what is news, contemplates whether it was news that Paris was so unbelievably the same, as though the previous 20 years had been "no more than a bad dream". Children were playing under the watchful eyes of their mothers and nurses in the gardens of the Tuileries, rollerskating on the uneven walks and sailing boats in the two basins. The traffic was especially dense, moving at an impetuous pace, rendering travel unsafe by motorists and pedestrians alike. At least a dozen important art exhibitions were drawing crowds, as was usual for Paris.
In the Grand Palais was an exposition, titled "L'Art Menager", which was devoted to household arts, containing washing machines, mixers, grills, refrigerators, freezers, all commonplace in America but considered the world of the future in Paris, where the household was still fixed in the traditional pattern of the past. Many doubted that the electric kitchen, commonplace in the U.S., was appropriate for France. Andres Siegfried had suggested that the standardization could destroy the graciousness and charm of French living, but housewives looking at the modern appliances would likely exchange some of the charm, which included carrying coal and wood up three or four flights of stairs to an apartment, for some of the new gadgets. (Again, we might find apparent inspiration, by the man-in-waiting, for the "kitchen debate" with Premier Khrushchev in 1959.)
On the hill of Montmartre, the same shabby artists had set up their easels in the Place du Tertre under the shadow of the spires of the Church of the Sacred Heart, and in the café of La Mere Catherine, there were the same red-and-white checked tablecloths and the same musicians.
He concludes that it was, therefore, perhaps news that "this carefully tended, somewhat frayed surface remains so much the same. Beneath the surface is the gnawing awareness of a war 10,000 miles away that is taking French lives. And there is an awareness, too, of a Germany resurgent again and ready to arm, stirring the deepest of French fears."
"You have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice."
Maj. William F. McDonnell, writing in the Marine Corps Gazette, discusses, on Memorial Day, America's Unknown Soldier, buried in Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac from Washington. No one would ever know his identity or the branch of service in which he had served, or even the state from which he had hailed. He had given his life for the entire nation.
Congressman Hamilton Fish had introduced House Joint Resolution 426 at the meeting of the third session of the 66th Congress, following World War I, providing that the body of an unidentified American killed on the battlefields of France be brought home for reinterment at Arlington. Generals John Pershing and John Lejeune had been among those supporting the proposal. Congress passed the bill on August 9, 1921, with a provision to provide the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross to the unknown soldier.
A majority of the American dead from World War I had been buried in the four French cemeteries at Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel. On October 22, 1921, two caskets had been exhumed from each cemetery and one of each pair had been transported to Chalons-sur-Marne, with the four remaining bodies maintained at the cemeteries as alternates in the event that identification could be made of any of the four initially selected. On October 24, the final selection was made, with a twice-wounded veteran of the War, Sgt. Edward Younger, accorded the honor of making the choice between the four coffins. The Sergeant had said that he was standing outside the little church with five other soldiers when their colonel had walked over to them, holding a bunch of roses, saying to them that it was his task to choose one of the six men to make the choice, eventually calling on Sergeant Younger to enter the church where the four caskets were located and to take a rose and place it on one of the caskets. The Sergeant then did so, after hearing a voice which seemed to say that the third casket he came to was a pal, but after a pause for a minute, decided to place the rose on the second casket.
At that point, the chosen unknown
soldier's casket was taken into another room, where the remains were
transferred to another casket, becoming a symbol to his countrymen.
The inscription on the casket read, "An Unknown American Who
Gave His Life in the World War". Reinterment had occurred in a
ceremony at Arlington on the third anniversary of the Armistice,
which had taken place at 11:00 a.m. on November 11
A letter writer from Maxton responds to a letter writer of May 25, finding that letter to have been the "best yet" regarding the Supreme Court decision of May 17 in Brown v. Board of Education. The previous writer had inveighed against the decision, saying that Northerners should not rule the South, and issued three cheers for teachers to whom she had talked who said they would not teach mixed classes. This writer sides with her, saying that he had one child who had not finished high school and that she would not finish if she had to finish in the same school with black students. He says that the South did wrong by using blacks as slave labor, that he did not believe in any form of slave labor, but now believes that the South was feeding and clothing the North, and advises quitting it. He finds that the North had sold blacks for slave labor to the South at a large profit, and after the South had all they needed in the way of slave labor and would not buy any more, causing the business of slave labor for the South no longer to be profitable to the North, the North had declared war on the South to free the blacks whom they had sold into slavery. He believes that it was time for the Southern people to band together and stop allowing the North to run the South's business, even if it meant splitting the country into two parts with two separate governments.
Fine, you keep your daughter home so that she can grow up and be a semi-literate, uninformed idiot like you, making up history to suit your fanciful ideas, conjured from movies such as "Birth of a Nation".
A letter writer indicates that the South had its traditions and customs well established and recognized for decades by the Supreme Court regarding segregation in the public schools, until "a political group dictated and legislated a complete reversal of itself and destroyed all of our customs and traditions." He opposes admission of blacks to the public schools and would never submit to it. He did not want a black son-in-law or daughter-in-law and expected his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be "clean-blooded whites", and would die to make it so.
Again, you little son-of-a-bitch, integration does not mean necessarily genetic integration, but rather social integration. Obviously, students in your day went to school to have sex. They do not do that anymore in a civilized country. In fact, in most places, it's against the law until they reach the age of consent, which, for your information, is over 12.
In any event, both of the two previous writers need to peruse the egg problem below as their eggs have fallen off the wall, suffering a great fall off the cliffs of Dover.
A letter writer from Whiteville says that a black person was an American citizen, a human being created by God, and everything which a white person was, that if blacks were in the majority and whites were in the minority, whites would suffer the same lot as blacks at present. England, by all reports, was ahead of the U.S. in treatment of black citizens, and integration had worked also in France. Most countries left the door open for immigration of blacks. He suggests that integration had worked out in the North and in the Army, and that the country owed it to itself and to its black citizens to open the door wide in the U.S. He also responds briefly to an earlier writer who found the Christian church not taking the lead enough in integration, indicating that Christians held the country together and should not be criticized for not having done anything with regard to race, that they would hold the South together. He urges being Christian, humble, having human kindness, to be loving and help the other man up.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., addresses the egg problem appearing on the front page of the prior Wednesday, posed by a longtime retired school teacher who said he had spent 2 1/2 months solving it for his first test to become a teacher in 1897. This writer says that he had spent the previous night working out the solution, and had found an alternate solution to the one which had been presented by the retired school teacher, as it had appeared on an inside page of the newspaper.
The editors indicate again the solution, as well the problem, and present also this letter writer's alternate solution, agreeing that it was equally valid. If you are still working on the problem, don't peek.
We think our solution, however, is
the soundest and quickest one. It is that the first boy with 10 eggs
sold all of his eggs at 10 cents per egg, that the second boy, with
his 30 eggs, sold six of the first dozen at 10 cents per egg, but
then tripped in a rut, dropped the carton and broke the other six,
not learning from his mistake, repeated the sequence twice more, the
second time, carrying only nine, breaking 8, and the third time, same number carried to the top of the column, but again breaking six. The third
boy, with 50 eggs, suffered a similar fate, only repeated his mistake
more times, such that each one sold the unbroken eggs for a dime
apiece, and received a total of one dollar for the 10 eggs which each
sold intact without being broken. It's simple. Where's our teaching
certificate?
Framed Edition
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