The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 16, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dulles was expected to reject again the request of an American couple to visit with their airman son in a Communist Chinese prison. The mother had indicated the previous night that she and her husband would renew their request, despite receiving a letter from U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold advising against a trip to Communist China at the present time. Mr. Hammarskjold was seeking the release of their son and 14 other American fliers being held by the Communists in China. The couple said that they had received promises of cooperation from the Chinese Red Cross after Secretary Dulles had turned down their first request for passports the previous January to visit their son, Air Force Captain Harold Fischer, Jr. The State Department was withholding public comment on the couple's statement that they planned to renew their request, but officials said informally that neither the situation nor the Department's attitude had changed since January and that the answer would still be no. Captain Fischer, a double jet ace, had been held by the Communists since his plane had been shot down near the Yalu River during the Korean War. The imprisonment of the 15 American airmen would be the subject of an inquiry, starting the following Monday, by the Senate Investigations subcommittee. Eleven of the airmen were being held on espionage charges, which the State Department had labeled as false.
In Washington, Democrats were seeking party harmony this date as they prepared to honor House Speaker Sam Rayburn at a $100 per plate dinner. An advisory group to the party was seeking to bury the problematic "loyalty oath" which had split the nominating convention in 1952, requiring delegates to pledge support of the party nominee. Former DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell had called the advisory group together to pass on recommendations for adoption of new rules under which most Democrats could bolt the party presidential nominee without the threat of party discipline. Present DNC chairman Paul Butler said that he expected the advisory group to reach a final decision on the proposed new rules and that the group's report would be submitted to the DNC at its next meeting, scheduled tentatively for the following September in Chicago. The proposed rules changes were generally interpreted as a bid to avoid another possible Southern rebellion as had occurred in 1948 and to a lesser extent in 1952, and would assign state organizations the primary responsibility for getting names of the party nominees on their respective state ballots. The Truman-Barkley ticket had been kept off the Alabama ballot in 1948, leading to the demands for loyalty pledges in 1952, which had caused a furious convention row, ending in a compromise statement that delegates should work toward getting the national ticket on state ballots.
In New York, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis stated that the Salk polio vaccine orders would be filled starting in the South and working northward, following the same geographic distribution schedule used in the field trials the previous summer. The medical director of the Foundation said that early closing dates for schools and an earlier beginning of the polio season in the South were the primary reasons for the planning. In Pittsburgh, where Dr. Jonas Salk had conducted his research in developing the vaccine, a huge welcome was planned for him when he returned, while in other parts of the country, spontaneously formed groups had rallied to express their thanks to him. He would receive no royalties for his work as his discovery was not patented, being the property of the American people whose dimes had made it possible through the March of Dimes campaign. Several towns, however, were developing "Funds for Salk" throughout the country. In Richmond, Va., a sales engineer had proposed to establish a fund of thanks for the doctor and had immediately sent a dollar to him for each of the three members of his family. That idea was picked up by the New York Daily Mirror, with the newspaper proposing editorially a three-month campaign asking readers to mail one-dollar contributions to a Salk fund. Such efforts were also being undertaken elsewhere. Members of Congress and various state legislatures had called for measures to commemorate the doctor and his discovery, and organizations and foreign countries had announced awards of medals to him.
In Houston, customs officials had ordered a 6,000-cubic centimeter shipment of the Salk vaccine returned to Houston from Mexico City, as a customs spokesman said that Pan American Airways officials had been instructed to impound the vaccine and return it because the Houston Customs Office had not been advised until Wednesday that foreign shipment of the vaccine had been banned on Tuesday.
In Birmingham, Ala., it was reported that new strike violence and unrest in the deep South had occurred the previous night, with the derailment of a passenger train near Nashville, Tenn., which a rail official labeled as sabotage. Thirty passengers were shaken up when nine cars of the northbound Dixie Flyer of the strike-crippled Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad were derailed, with none being injured. The general superintendent of the railroad had said that joints had been removed from the track and that angle bars and other track appliances had been found adjacent to the track on the right-of-way, indicative of sabotage. The vice-chairman of a non-operating strike team said that until someone proved that some of their people had been involved, he would never agree that they were. Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee called on State law enforcement agencies to assist in the investigation, and the general superintendent of the railroad had asked the FBI to investigate as well.
Meanwhile, a sympathy strike of nearly 25,000 Birmingham steel workers had ended the previous day, but a strike of about 4,000 additional Louisville & Nashville Railroad workers had been called for the following Monday. The steel workers, members of the United Steel Workers, had begun their strike Thursday night when picket lines had been formed at the largest steel mill in the South at Fairfield, Ala., and other plants had been affected by the walkout. The steel workers had struck in sympathy with the Communications Workers of America who had been striking against Southern Bell Telephone Co. in nine Southeastern states. Some damage had been reported in the latter strike, with a 70-pair cable between Atlanta and Birmingham and also a cable between Atlanta and Rome, Ga., having been cut, as well as the shooting out of a long distance cable connecting Miami with Key West, Fla., and Havana, Cuba.
In Boston, it was reported that some 25,000 workers, members of the Textile Workers Union, in 23 New England cotton textile mills, had struck this date to back up their refusal to accept as much as a ten-cents per hour cut in wages and fringe benefits, with mills owned by six firms in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont having been affected. The workers were seeking renewal of a contract which had expired at midnight on Friday. Some 37 other mills had agreed to renew the contracts and many had signed the new contract as the deadline neared. The firms refusing to renew the contracts contended that a cut in wages was necessary to meet competition from Southern mills, contending that there was a 23-cents per hour pay differential which placed Northern mills at a disadvantage. Workers presently received an average of $1.30 per hour, and the minimum wage was $1.09.5. The strike had occurred despite an appeal the previous day by Catholic Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston, who had urged a weekend resumption of negotiations. The union said that it would continue negotiating with any employers who wished to meet with them and discuss renewals of the present contract.
In Greensboro, N.C., the Federal District Court trial of Junius Scales, accused under the Smith Act of teaching and advocating overthrow of the Government by force or violence by the fact of his admitted membership in the Communist Party, recessed for the weekend this date, with the Government not having yet reached the heart of its charges, that in the three years prior to the indictment the prior November 18, Mr. Scales had broken the law by belonging to the party, knowing that its aim was violent revolution and working to accomplish that aim. The Government had to prove violation within that three-year period to accommodate the statute of limitations. The Government's star witness, an attorney from Charlotte, who had acted as an undercover FBI agent, meeting several times from 1948 through 1953 with Mr. Scales, had not apparently thus far testified to any incriminating statements, however, made by Mr. Scales during the three years prior to the indictment. He had testified that Mr. Scales had been firmly committed to the violent overthrow of the Government and had predicted that it would occur within the current generation.
In Los Angeles, two small boys had been found dead in an abandoned icebox the previous night following a search of several hours. The icebox had been stored in a chicken shed not far from the homes of the boys, ages eight and two. A fireman said that they had been dead for about five hours. Both of the mothers of the boys were pregnant.
In New York, entertainer Arthur Godfrey, who had fired six singers and three writers from his radio and television show the previous day, said that his programs needed fresh talent and a new pattern, that it had become top-heavy with stars and that they would try to break into the top ten again with a new show. He said it would give more people opportunity.
Also in New York, actor Paul Douglas had been placed on probation for a year by Actors Equity for remarks attributed to him the previous February about the South. He had been playing the role of Captain Queeg in a touring company of "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial", and had been quoted by the Greensboro Daily News as saying: "The South stinks. It's a land of sow belly and segregation." Mr. Douglas had said subsequently that he had been misquoted, but the newspaper stuck by its story. The Council of Actors Equity voted to suspend Mr. Douglas, but the suspension was stayed by the probation. The Council had taken the action based on the general conduct of Mr. Douglas while touring in the road company. It did not determine whether he had been responsible for cancellation of the tour following his remarks, but voted to submit that question to arbitration. It was believed in Equity circles that if the arbitrator were to rule against Mr. Douglas on that point, the actual suspension might be imposed. Paul Gregory, producer of the play, had filed charges with Equity, asserting that Mr. Douglas had been responsible for cutting short the tour, but Mr. Douglas had responded by filing a million-dollar damage action against Mr. Gregory. Mr. Douglas contended that Mr. Gregory had wanted to cancel the tour because of poor box office receipts and had merely used the quote attributed to Mr. Douglas as an excuse for the cancellation. The tour had closed on February 12 in Pittsburgh, after having been scheduled to continue for seven additional weeks in Southern cities.
On the editorial page, "Political Palliatives Will Not Do" indicates that a State Senator had proposed certain reforms during the week designed to plug some of the loopholes in North Carolina's absentee voting law. It finds that the suggestions represented earnest efforts to remedy a bad situation.
For instance, under present law, members of a family of a person planning to vote absentee could go to the county elections chairman, fill out a voting application and obtain the ballot, then take it to the voter for marking and then return it to the chairman. Under the proposed plan, a member of the voter's family could still fill out the application for the voter, but the chairman would have to mail the ballot to the voter directly or deliver it in person. The voter, after marking it, would then either mail it or deliver it in person back to the chairman.
It finds that to be a start, but questions why not simply end the abuse by disallowing, with certain exceptions, the absentee ballot in general elections. It indicates that the proposed measure would make it more difficult for votes to be sold but that it would still be possible to cheat, and that the absentee ballot would remain a source of trouble and suspicion, especially for losing candidates. Because of the sins of a few, suspicion would attach to the entire system and the reputation of the state would suffer. Thus, it concludes that political palliatives were not enough, that the entire civilian absentee ballot law regarding general elections ought be repealed, just as the law permitting the absentee ballot in primaries had been repealed in 1939.
"Fair Play: A Philosophical Gap" indicates that the President a year earlier, in praising what he had called the code of Wild Bill Hickok, had spoken of "the right to meet your accuser face to face … your right to speak your mind and be protected…" But a year later, there was still little resemblance between the Administration's security rules for Government employees and the fair play principles which the President had enunciated, being another disturbing philosophical gap between the general and his lieutenants.
The new security set-up unveiled by the Administration left much to be desired, with a few changes in procedure but the methods fundamentally remaining the same. There was still little or nothing to protect Government workers from malicious and anonymous charges. Attorney General Herbert Brownell had, before the Supreme Court, vigorously defended the system of anonymous informants. The well-advertised "improvements" also had other problems, for instance, that the new program required only that the charges be "specific enough to be meaningful", and only suggesting that a personal interview with an employee prior to his dismissal would be "helpful in most instances".
It indicates that an employee had to be fully informed of the reasons for his dismissal at the time of his suspension, a new requirement which had not been necessary previously. The old regulations had provided simply that charges be made "as specific and detailed as security considerations permit", including "all derogatory information except that which will reveal the source of the information or the identity of confidential informants." But in practice that had proved meaningless.
It indicates that it might share Mr. Brownell's enthusiasm for the anonymous informant had it not been for the type of people the Government usually relied on for such information, such as Harvey Matusow, who had recanted his prior grand jury and Congressional testimony implicating numerous people as Communists or Communist sympathizers, Paul Crouch and Marie Natvig. It opines that there were simply not enough safeguards in the system to prevent ignorance, carelessness and malice from entering into the judgment of an informant's reliability.
"Women's Legs & What They Inspired" indicates that several years earlier, the full-fashioned hosiery producing industry had become aware of the fact that women, in large numbers, had adopted a fad of not wearing hosiery because of hosiery being too loose fitting to be attractive. North Carolina was the leading producer in that industry and began trying to do something about the fad. Knitting mills came up with the nylon seamless stocking, which had struck the feminine fancy, and now, after about two years of its manufacture, the mills still were pressed to supply the demand, with their output sold out for several months in advance.
In the meantime, several months earlier, the full-fashioned hosiery industry's attention had been drawn to the tremendous popularity suddenly attained by the "stretch" nylon sock for men. That line of socks had become the rage in the hosiery business in 1954 and so the mills turned to "stretch" nylon full-fashioned hosiery. The president of Chadbourne Hosiery Mills had said several months earlier that his company's then newly introduced "stretch" nylon line was leading a "revolution" in the women's hosiery producing industry.
It finds that the prediction was proving to have been well-founded, as more mills were offering "stretch" nylon full-fashioned lines. Hopes for a long-range boom were hearty. That was important to hosiery-conscious North Carolina, not because it drew more admiring glances to trimmer than ever ankles but rather because it might be the medicine for an industry which sorely needed a good economic boost.
The new stockings hugged the leg tighter and wearers did not have to peer anxiously over their shoulders to see if seams were straight or to sneak peeks at their knees and ankles to see if anything was bagging. Women were willing to pay a bit more for such tighter fits. Price drops had contributed to the hosiery producers' problems and a new premium product at a premium price was just what the doctor had ordered.
All the news fit to print, and then some...
A piece from the Sanford Herald, titled "They're Making History", indicates that the trouble with the General Assembly having passed a resolution declaring that "the mixing of the races in the public schools within the state cannot be accomplished" was that the members did not know whether it could be or not. State Attorney General Harry McMullan had asked for the statement to support the argument which had been made before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, arguing against full and sudden integration. While it might reflect the convictions of both the lawmakers and most of their constituents, a future historian, it predicts, might find its dogmatism amusing, or perhaps ironic.
It explains that declarations of what could and should and could not be done with respect to black citizens of the state were not new to Raleigh, that they had punctuated proceedings during the state constitutional convention of 1868, following the Civil War. They had dominated Democratic conventions and legislative debates preceding adoption of the disfranchisement amendment at the turn-of-the-century, and some had proven less than prophetic. It cites the example of George Roundtree, chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments, who had told the Legislature of 1899 that "fitness of self-government was largely a matter of heredity. It must be obtained by inheritance and not by schools and learning." No one put any stock in that statement any longer. The black vote had long since become not only accepted but courted. It notes that Mr. Roundtree had been just as prepared to snatch the ballot from ignorant whites as from blacks, as he wanted Bourbon control. When it had been suggested that the Supreme Court might reject the "grandfather clause" which Mr. Roundtree had advocated, he had replied: "Your committee did not think this worthy of consideration."
It finds that those words might be compared by historians later to the words uttered the previous week by Representative Philip Whitley of Wake County when he urged that copies of the resolution declaring biracial classes to be an impossibility in the state be sent by registered mail to the individual members of the Supreme Court, each signed and certified by Secretary of State Thad Eure and bearing the seal of the state, indicating that if the Justices did not like it, "let them be insulted."
It suggests that a tremendous history book ought be placed at the dais of each presiding officer of the General Assembly to remind the legislators that when they made assertions, both formal and informal, they were leaving a record to be perused by generations in a position "to separate the sound from the silly."
The editorial was quite perspicacious, as, indeed, anyone in their right mind, even by the mid-1960's, would have regarded the language of the resolution as silly, as surely as Mrs. Partington having sought to hold back the ocean with a broom.
Drew Pearson tells of a member of the Women's Press Club observing two men who ruled the House of Representatives, as they sat on the speakers' dais at a press club dinner recently, saying that the fact that Speaker Sam Rayburn and House Minority Leader Joseph Martin were bachelors was a "sad commentary on us women". Mr. Rayburn had been single so long that most people did not know he had once been married, when, 42 years earlier, he had first come to Congress with a new bride. They had remained married for five months when she confided that she had made a mistake, that she had been in love with another man, breaking the heart of Mr. Rayburn, but he allowed her to return to Texas to the man she loved. Since that time, Mr. Rayburn had only one love, the Congress. He was married to it and had served in it longer than any other man except Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona. He knew every barber in the House barbershop by name and knew the various gavels with which he had called the House to order on specific occasions, as when Queen Elizabeth had spoken to the body, when General MacArthur had spoken, when the President of France had made an address, etc. The laws he had enacted and the debates which had enacted them were long and many, including the legislation creating the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Holding Corporation, etc., with Mr. Rayburn having been the sponsor of most of the early New Deal legislation. He was proud of that record but did not brag about it. Former President Truman had once remarked, "Sam is the only man I know who could stay in Washington 40 years and still wear the same size hat he wore when he came here."
When he had first arrived in Washington in 1913, just after the election of President Woodrow Wilson, World War I had not yet started. He had remained through the administrations of six Presidents, two world wars and the Korean War. Following the defeat of Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Mr. Rayburn had been discouraged and talked about quitting. He had long wanted to return home to his farm near Bonham, Tex., where he tinkered around the barn with a hammer and saw, cut wood in the fall and played a domino game called "42" in the cool of the evening. But his brother-in-law, a judge, had cheered him up and Mr. Rayburn had been leading the Democrats in Congress more effectively than ever. Outwardly, he was friendly and soft-spoken, but his jaw was square and hot blood flowed in his veins. Born in Tennessee and reared in Texas, Mr. Rayburn could and would fight stubbornly and relentlessly. Though from a conservative rural district, he had fought for a wage-hour law for labor and against the Taft-Hartley Act, just as much as he had fought for farmers, or against the power trust.
At the start of the Eisenhower Administration, he had sought to help the new President. He had told President Truman at the start of his time in office that he would not be "Harry" to him anymore but rather "Mr. President", but that as an old friend who had known him a long time, he would advise him that "you ain't as big a man as some people think you are." Mr. Truman had replied, "I sure ain't." Mr. Rayburn related that when he told President Eisenhower that story, the latter had leaned back and roared with laughter. He then told the new President that he had told President Truman that he was going to have two great problems, one with the people around him who would be afraid to let anyone else get near him and who would make him their prisoner, and the other with big business sycophants. He had told President Truman that his old friends from Missouri would come to town and find that he was busy and so would return home, but the big business people would hang around for months waiting to see him, and that if he was not careful, he would get too much advice from them and their advice would not be like that of his true friends back home. Mr. Rayburn said that he had also told that to President Eisenhower, and that President Truman had made some mistakes. But President Eisenhower had not understood what he was talking about. He said that the trouble with him was that he did not know any more of what was going on than had Ulysses Grant, who had been, according to Mr. Rayburn, a fine man until he became President. Mr. Pearson notes parenthetically that Mr. Rayburn's father had served under General Robert E. Lee. Mr. Rayburn further related that when General Lee had surrendered, he had told General Grant that his men were starving, that they had nothing to eat but hog hominy, whereupon General Grant gave the order that every man in his army with three rations was to give two of them to General Lee's army. But, he continued, when General Grant had become President, they had ruined him.
Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Rayburn had two passions, pure-bred cows and Robert E. Lee, that he had read scores of books on the Confederate General and cherished two rare photographs of him which he possessed. Once he had purchased a thoroughbred horse, grudgingly admitting that the horse had his points, but hastened to add that he had not liked him as well as he did his cows.
Speaking of the Civil War, incidentally, no one had made reference on either the front page or the editorial page or, for that matter, anywhere else in the newspaper, to it having been the 90th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln on April 14-15. Whether it was from absent-mindedness or because of the sensitivity of the times to impending school desegregation, or just the feeling that the matter had receded into time, the ninth decade after one of the darkest pair of days in U.S history, with its macabre mixture of celebration of the end of the war turned almost immediately to tragedy, went without mention.
A letter writer comments on an article in the Tuesday newspaper concerning the parking situation downtown, as proposed by the City traffic engineer, indicating his thought that it would be wise for the engineer and some of the more wide-awake City officials to conduct a survey of the bottlenecks in the outlying suburbs, relating of his observations on the way home from work on a recent day. He suggests that the City officials get together with officials of the Southern Railroad and adjust the train schedule to a time prior to or after rush hour traffic to enable movement of traffic at a faster pace.
A letter writer indicates that in view of the telephone strike impacting Southern Bell employees in nine Southeastern states, she wanted to say a few words on behalf of the "scabs", indicating that she was a Southern Bell employee and proud of the fact that she had reported for duty at her job as a service assistant on the first day of the strike on March 14. She indicates that she and her fellow employees who had kept the telephone system running had been berated by the strikers, which she finds typical of a "class of troublemakers who are infiltrating themselves into most of our union groups". She finds that the majority of working people respected organized labor, that big business wanted collective bargaining but naturally expected fair treatment in return, and that the company had been more than lenient in previous years in granting the Communications Workers of America about anything they wanted within reason, and in return were now asking for a no-strike clause for the duration of the present contract, which she feels was fair. She finds it grossly unfair to the CWA members for the union leaders to keep them off their jobs with "pretentious propaganda that the company is trying to 'bust up their union' by taking away their right to strike." She relates that the so-called scabs were receiving the same rate of pay they had prior to the strike and that the company had been more than fair, that working conditions had not changed since the contract had ended. She thanks those who had written letters of commendation, sent flowers and called to express their appreciation for their continuing on the job. She indicates that "scab" stood for Sincerity, Courage, Ambition and Brains, and that they were proud to be scabs for they believed the telephone company was a good place to work.
A letter writer indicates that capital punishment did not curtail crime, that Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wisconsin had abolished the death penalty and that all six states were among the ten with the lowest homicide rates. He indicates that abolition of the death penalty in the U.S. and abroad had been followed by a decrease in the murder rate in those localities. He finds the concept of capital punishment scientifically and historically on par with astrological medicine and the belief in witchcraft, that it was barbarous and had failed to accomplish any beneficial result, having the opposite effect, making conviction slower and more difficult. He offers that any person who committed a capital crime was diseased and that it was therefore wrong for society to kill the person, that sociological and psychological studies were needed to determine intelligently the causes of capital crimes. For those seeking retribution, a lifetime behind bars, he posits, was worse punishment than death. He suggests that only God could take a human life and that society had usurped God's power for too long. He concludes by urging abolition of the death penalty in North Carolina.
A letter writer from Dickson City, Pa., finds that there had been a persistent erosion of American liberties since the death of FDR, that the only similar era in American history had been that around the turn of the 18th Century, at the time of the Alien and Sedition Laws, a time of which all Americans were ashamed. He suggests that friends throughout the world had to be asking the question raised by George Kennan, former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, in a letter to the New York Times on March 6, 1955, when he asked whether there were really people in the Government who believed that the American political philosophy was so unconvincing and that Americans' attachment to it so weak, the youth so bewildered and gullible, and the outlook of the nation's adversaries so forceful, so logical and so persuasive, that the society had to shield the American people physically from every confrontation with Communist thought. The writer indicates that there were such people but that Americans tended to reject their counsel of fear, that as FDR had stated in 1933, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that the people of the South believed that blacks should enjoy betterment of life, good schools, churches, homes, jobs, good pay for work, good medical care, good hospitals, and anything which they wished, as long as it was obtained honestly, but also wonders about the rights of white people, suggests that the majority ruled in America and wonders therefore why a black person had any right, as a minority, to force their wishes upon the majority. He warns blacks to recall that they had advanced during the previous year in all ways of life without the help of any group outside of the South, and that as the white people of the South progressed, so did the black people. He says that they should have seen some of the schools he had attended when he was a child and that his parents did not go to court about it, but worked with the counties and states to improve the schools. He counsels settling differences at home in faith and honesty with one another, which would be better for all concerned, and to keep outsiders out of the affairs of the South.
A letter from Harriet Doar, formerly of The News during and after the time when W. J. Cash had been associate editor of the newspaper, finds it revolting to read the statement attributed to State Assistant Attorney General I. Beverly Lake, in orally arguing the previous Wednesday before the Supreme Court regarding the implementing decision of Brown v. Board of Education, indicates that "any supposedly educated, sane, and intelligent man—such as I would hope any high state official would be— [who] could, speaking in the highest court of the land, prophesy for the people of this state, under any circumstances, 'racial tensions and animosities unparalleled since those terrible days which gave rise to the original Ku Klux Klan'", bewildered and angered her. She questions whether North Carolinians were savages who could not be trusted to abide by the law of the land and democratic principles in comparative peace and comfort, that they should need "neither religious teachings nor legal threat to uphold a decision made in the interests of simple decency, fairness, and justice, which I hope and trust are still part of that Anglo-Saxon heritage to which Mr. Lake refers." She finds that there was no possible appeal to any principle for the continued injustice of segregation, only the lame excuse of custom and tradition, and that it was an evil custom and an evil tradition which would deny the right of anyone to "'burgeon out the best that is in him.'" She also indicates that to continue to say that black schools in the state were equal to white schools or that black facilities of any type were equal, was, at best, ignorance, as the fact of segregation alone would nullify such equality even if it existed. No one would deny, she offers, that social engineering, preparation and time were required or that every consideration ought be given to all the people impacted, but that instead of working out such plans, those in authority were stalling for time and making futile excuses. She concludes that integration of the schools would take the best use of intelligence and good will on all sides, but that there was no committee working on that endeavor in Mecklenburg County, the largest and most influential county in the state. She finds it surprising that ministers, educators, business and professional men, and, to a lesser degree, newspaper editors, had not spoken out with the wisdom and maturity which the people expected of them, and indicates that she had hoped for better as a white, native-born citizen of Charlotte.
A letter from two women indicates that they would like to see a movie theater built on the west side of town, around the new park or Queens shopping center, as they had to go to another section or uptown to see a movie, want an indoor, air-conditioned, plush, neighborhood theater.
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